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“Your association has taken a significant role in fostering public awareness of nuclear disarmament and has led to its advancement.”
– Kazi Matsui
Mayor of Hiroshima
June 2, 2022
October 2023
Edition Date: 
Sunday, October 1, 2023
Cover Image: 

UK May Host U.S. Nuclear Weapons Again


October 2023
By Shannon Bugos

The United Kingdom may host U.S. nuclear weapons on its territory for the first time since their complete withdrawal 15 years ago, a move that Russia stated would escalate already high nuclear tensions in Europe.

If the United States redeploys nuclear weapons to the United Kingdom for the first time in 15 years, they would be in addition to the 225 nuclear warheads that the UK has available for its submarine-launched ballistic missiles such as the Trident ballistic missile on this Vanguard class submarine. (Photo by Thomas McDonald courtesy of the UK Ministry of Defence)U.S. Air Force budget documents for fiscal year 2024 revealed plans for the construction of a dormitory at Royal Air Force Lakenheath that will be needed to handle “the influx of airmen due to the arrival of the potential Surety mission,” according to an analysis by Hans Kristensen and Matt Korda of the Federation of American Scientists on Aug. 28. The United States often employs the term “surety” when referring to the safety and security of U.S. nuclear weapons.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova denounced the potential move on Sept. 5, saying that “[i]f this step is ever taken, we will view it as escalation, as a step that would take things in a direction that is quite opposite to addressing the pressing issue of pulling all nuclear weapons out of European countries.” Meanwhile, Russia purportedly has been transferring tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus.

The UK nuclear arsenal consists of an estimated 225 nuclear warheads for submarine-launched ballistic missiles. The U.S. nuclear weapons that potentially are headed for the UK most likely would be B61-12 gravity bombs.

Currently, the United States is believed to deploy an estimated 100 B61gravity bombs across five other European countries—Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Turkey—under the NATO nuclear sharing mission. Washington withdrew an estimated 110 B61 bombs from Lakenheath in 2008.

A spokesperson for the UK Defense Ministry told The Guardian on Aug. 29 that “it remains a long-standing UK and NATO policy to neither confirm nor deny the presence of nuclear weapons at a given location.”

Kristensen and Korda offered a possible explanation for what looks like the return of U.S. nuclear weapons to the UK, suggesting that perhaps “the United States is currently preparing the infrastructure at RAF Lakenheath to allow the base to potentially receive nuclear weapons in the future or in the midst of a crisis, without necessarily having already decided to permanently station them there or increase the number of weapons currently stored in Europe.”

Marion Messmer of Chatham House in the UK suggested another interpretation. “There has also been a fairly sensitive discussion since the coup attempt in Turkey in 2016, and the long-running civil war in Syria, over whether the nuclear weapons which are assumed to be stationed in Turkey are safe there,” she told Arms Control Today on Sept. 19. “So, another potential explanation for this investment in Lakenheath might be that when the nuclear weapons are next going to be serviced, they won’t be replaced in Turkey, and will instead be stationed in the UK.”

Plans call for the dormitory construction to begin in June 2024 and finish in February 2026. The 2024 budget allotted $50 million for the project. Meanwhile, NATO is overseeing infrastructure and security upgrades at nuclear weapons storage sites in Europe, including Lakenheath, according to 2023 budget documents.

The activities at Lakenheath coincide with the anticipated arrival in Europe this year of new B61-12 bombs, which are replacing the B61-3/4 bombs, and amid the phased delivery of the nuclear-capable F-35A Lightning II jets to a U.S. Air Force squadron stationed at the UK base. The first aircraft of a planned 24 arrived in December 2021.

Russia said the deployment of U.S. nuclear weapons in the United Kingdom for the first time in 15 years would escalate tensions.

States Condemn All Cluster Munitions Use


October 2023
By Gabriela Iveliz Rosa Hernández

For the second year in a row, states-parties to the treaty banning cluster munitions have condemned any use of cluster munitions by any actor. In a rebuke of Russia, Ukraine, and the United States, they also expressed “grave concern” about the use of cluster munitions in the Russian war in Ukraine and its humanitarian impact. Days later, the Biden administration announced its second transfer of these weapons to Ukraine.

This classroom in Lyman, Ukraine, was destroyed by a cluster bomb in July during the Russian war on Ukraine. (Photo by Gian Marco Benedetto/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)States-parties to the Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM) held their 11th annual meeting Sept. 11-14 in Geneva. They concluded with the adoption of a final document that highlighted the obligation of the 123 states-parties, including several NATO members, to “never, under any circumstances,” use, develop, produce, otherwise acquire, stockpile, retain, or transfer cluster munitions.

The document said the meeting “condemned any use of cluster munitions by any actor” and “expressed its grave concern at the significant increase in civilian casualties and the humanitarian impact resulting from the repeated and well documented use of cluster munitions since the second [CCM] review conference.”

“This grave concern applies in particular to the use of cluster munitions in Ukraine,” it added.

Under the convention, states-parties have prohibited the use of cluster munitions, which tend to disperse unexploded bomblets across battlegrounds. The bomblets often do not detonate on impact, posing ongoing risks of injury or death to military personnel and civilians who can encounter them long after hostilities have ceased.

After much internal debate, the Biden administration decided on July 7 to transfer thousands of cluster munitions worth up to $250 million and known as Dual-Purpose Improved Conventional Munitions (DPICMs) to Ukraine in exchange for assurances about how the weapons would be used. (See ACT, September 2023.)

“By providing Ukraine with DPICM artillery ammunition, we will ensure that the Ukrainian military has sufficient artillery ammunition for many months to come. In this period, the United States, our allies, and partners will continue to ramp up our defense industrial bases to support Ukraine,” Colin Kahl, U.S. undersecretary of defense for policy, told a press conference on July 7.

In announcing another cluster munitions transfer on Sept. 21, the Biden administration argued that the weapons are “helping Ukraine on the battlefield,” but the U.S. Cluster Munitions Coalition said it was “appalled by the…decision to initiate another transfer of these indiscriminate weapons.”

Russia, Ukraine, and the United States are not CCM states-parties, but their activities in the full-scale war that Russia launched on Ukraine in 2022 are being closely monitored by countries that have joined the convention.

In response to the U.S. transfer, and “as president of the Convention on Cluster Munitions that has been signed or ratified by 123 states, we express our concern over this decision,” Abdul-Karim Hashim Mostafa, Iraq’s ambassador to UN international organizations in Geneva, said as the meeting opened on Sept. 11.

In terms of annual casualties from cluster munitions, Ukraine has overtaken Syria, which from 2012 to 2021 experienced the highest total of any country. The Cluster Munitions Monitor, a report published by the Cluster Munition Coalition of civil society groups, totaled 1,172 new cluster munitions casualties worldwide in 2022, the highest annual number of victims since the first report in 2010.

The report said that most of Ukraine’s 916 casualties were due to Russia’s use of cluster munitions. Ukrainian forces used cluster munitions during the first year of the war to a lesser extent. Experts expect the casualty numbers to increase in the years ahead following the Biden administration’s decision to transfer cluster munitions to Ukraine.

Under the treaty, countries commit to clear within 10 years any cluster munitions contaminating the territory they control and pledge to achieve a world free of these weapons. (See ACT, October 2022.) It was announced at the meeting that Bulgaria, Slovakia, and South Africa have completed the destruction of their stockpiles of cluster munitions while Bosnia and Herzegovina completed clearing these weapons from its territory. Peru is now the last state-party with stocks left to destroy.

During the meeting, the Cluster Munition Coalition stressed that “states-parties to the CCM should ensure they do not assist with the transfer or use of the U.S. cluster munitions being sent to Ukraine; for example, they should not allow transit of those munitions through their territory.”

Turkey, which has been accused of transferring cluster munitions to Ukraine, attended the CCM as an observer and told the gathering that “it has never used, produced, imported or transferred cluster munitions since 2005, nor does it intend to do so in the future.” (See ACT, September 2023.)

Ukrainian officials have opted to underscore the perceived military benefits of cluster munitions. Kyiv has requested that Washington transfer unguided M26 rocket projectiles, which can distribute 644 DPICMs into a 200-by-100-meter area and are intended to pierce through armor. The M26 rocket can be launched by the M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) and the M270 Multiple Rocket Launch System.

“Sending cluster rockets for the HIMARS would greatly increase the number of submunitions delivered by each round. Rather than 70 to 80 per canister, as is the case with the DPICM rounds, the [M26] rockets would carry well over 500 submunitions per canister,” Titus Peachy, a member of the U.S. Cluster Munition Coalition steering committee that helped establish the humanitarian demining program in Laos in 1994, told Arms Control Today.

“Our opposition, of course, is to the indiscriminate nature of the weapon, not the number used. However, the increased number of submunitions only increases the indiscriminate effect. Sadly, it would also make the U.S. disregard for international humanitarian law and the norm set by the CCM even more blatant,” he added.

Civil society activists also have pushed back against the coverage of the cluster munition issue by Russian state-controlled media. Russian President Vladimir Putin has denied that Russia used cluster munitions in Ukraine prior to the U.S. transfer of DPICMs.

“Russia’s state-controlled media are keen to demonstrate civilian harm from Ukraine’s use of cluster munitions. They show unexploded U.S. submunitions, yet disregard Russia’s own failed submunitions,” Mary Wareham of Human Rights Watch wrote on Sept. 6.

The next CCM meeting of states-parties will take place in Geneva in 2024.

States-parties to the treaty banning cluster munitions rebuke Russia, Ukraine, and the United States for the use of the munitions in the Russian war on Ukraine.

Pentagon Plans Mass Autonomous Weapons Deployment


October 2023
By Michael T. Klare

The United States is unable to rely exclusively on existing human-operated weapons systems to prevail in a future war with China and will need to field vast numbers of autonomous weapons systems controlled by artificial intelligence (AI) to meet the challenge, according to Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks.

A XQ-58 Valkyrie aircraft launches for a test mission Aug. 22 at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla. According to the U.S. Air Force, the mission successfully tested components that greatly reduce the risk of large scale crewed and uncrewed autonomous systems. (U.S. Air Force photo by 2nd Lt. Rebecca Abordo)To ensure that sufficient numbers of these platforms, including drone ships, planes, and ground vehicles, will soon be available for battlefield use, Hicks on Aug. 28 announced a new Pentagon initiative, dubbed “Replicator,” to field “multiple thousands” of such systems “within the next 18 to 24 months.”

“Replicator is meant to help us overcome [China’s] biggest advantage, which is mass. More ships. More missiles. More people,” she said in a speech to the National Defense Industrial Association. By deploying thousands of autonomous weapons systems, the United States will “counter the [People’s Liberation Army’s] mass with mass of our own…[with] platforms that are small, smart, cheap, and many,” she said.

The new initiative, Hicks explained, represents a shift from the Pentagon’s historic emphasis on the acquisition of giant vessels and other major platforms that are “large, exquisite, expensive, and few.” Such systems are still needed, but must be augmented by hordes of “attritable,” or expendable, autonomous weapons, she said.

Pressed by reporters to provide more details about the new approach, Hicks gave a second speech about Replicator on Sept. 6 at the Defense News conference.

“Let me give you a window into the possibilities of all-domain, attritable autonomy,” she began, referring to technology she identified as ADA2. “Imagine distributed pods of self-propelled ADA2 systems afloat…packed with sensors aplenty…. Imagine constellations of ADA2 systems in orbit, flung into space scores at a time…. Imagine flocks of ADA2 systems flying at all sorts of altitudes, doing a range of missions.”

Some of these systems, Hicks said, will be designed for surveillance and intelligence gathering alone, and others will be armed in some fashion and designed for combat missions. She cautioned that, at least initially, this would not entail entirely new weapons projects, but rather the acceleration of programs already under development by the various military services.

Of these, the project that is furthest along in development and most likely to be designated a program of record, or established budget item, is the Air Force’s “collaborative combat aircraft.” Envisioned as a high-performance combat drone with substantial autonomous capabilities, this aircraft is intended to accompany manned aircraft on high-risk missions in contested airspace over or near Chinese or Russian territory.

The Air Force has been testing a project model, the XQ-58A Valkyrie, at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida. Built by Kratos, a San Diego-based maker of unmanned aircraft, the Valkyrie has been flown autonomously in simulated combat missions while under close human supervision. Future tests, scheduled for later this year, will involve increasing degrees of autonomous operation.

The Air Force requested $392 million for development of the collaborative combat aircraft in its fiscal year 2024 budget submission and expects to spend an additional $5.4 billion on its development over the next four years. No plans have yet been announced for serial production of the proposed aircraft, but this is one experimental project that might be accelerated under the Replicator initiative.

Other projects that are likely to receive Pentagon attention are the Navy’s plans for procurement of both large and medium-sized unmanned surface vessels. According to the Navy, these vessels will be used to help locate enemy ships and submarines for attack by manned vessels. (See ACT, May 2021.) Development of the vessels has proceeded slowly even though they were deemed a major service priority. Some $757 million was requested for their development during fiscal years 2022-2024, with no funding for procurement of operational vessels.

The slow, steady approach of the Air Force and Navy regarding autonomous weapons systems development and the similar approach being pursued by the Army conflict with Hicks’ pledge to field thousands of such devices by 2025. Without congressional approval of billions of dollars in additional spending and the adoption of a more rapid development timeline, industry commentators said it is difficult to imagine how these existing programs can be readied for combat in such a short time.

Many analysts worry that the software needed to drive these proposed autonomous weapons systems is not yet fully developed and, if rushed into use, could lead to catastrophic accidents. Trying to design the software for the collaborative combat aircraft while the aircraft itself has yet to be constructed is “dangerous,” said Brett Darcey, vice president of Shield AI, which makes aerial drones. Even when the software is designed, he added, “we must still test it enough to make sure that we trust it” and that it works seamlessly with the drone aircraft. “These things have to arrive at the same time, and we’re still years away there.”

Such doubts fuel concerns within the arms control and human rights communities that the rapid deployment of autonomous weapons systems, as proposed by Hicks, could lead to the loss of human control over battlefield operations and to unintended attacks on civilians. “You’re stepping over a moral line by outsourcing killing to machines, by allowing computer sensors rather than humans to take human life,” Mary Wareham of Human Rights Watch told The New York Times on Aug. 27. Her organization is pushing for international limits on autonomous weapons systems.

 

The United States, unable to rely exclusively on human-operated weapons systems to prevail in a future war with China, must field autonomous weapons systems controlled by artificial intelligence, a senior defense official says.   

 

IAEA Reports No Progress on Iran Probe


October 2023
By Kelsey Davenport

A group of states rebuked Iran for failing to meet its legal safeguards obligations and threatened to pursue further action against Tehran if it does not cooperate with inquiries from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Rafael Mariano Grossi, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, told reporters in Vienna on Sept. 11 that Iran still must provide the agency with “technically credible explanations for the presence of uranium particles” at two locations in Iran.(Photo by Thomas Kronsteiner/Getty Images)France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States accused Iran of persisting in its “deliberate refusal to engage earnestly” with the IAEA in a Sept. 13 statement, issued during the agency’s Board of Governors meeting. The states said the board must be prepared to take further action to support the IAEA and “hold Iran accountable” if Tehran does not fulfill its safeguards obligations.

One of the safeguards issues the four states noted is Iran’s failure to provide technically credible answers to IAEA questions about processed uranium that inspectors detected at two locations in 2019 and 2020. The presence of the uranium particles and the IAEA analysis suggest that Tehran should have declared these locations to the agency under its legally required safeguards agreement. The agency analysis suggests that the illicit activities involving uranium took place prior to 2003, when Iran’s organized nuclear weapons program ended.

The statement came after IAEA Director-General Rafael Mariano Grossi raised concern about the “routinization” of the Iran case during a Sept. 11 press conference and said there is a “decrease in interest” from member states regarding the outstanding issues. Grossi said the agency’s issues with Iran are “as valid today as they were before.”

The board has already passed three resolutions, most recently in November 2022, urging Iran to cooperate with the agency. The board has not taken any action since then.

Iran committed in March to “resolve the outstanding safeguards issues” and provided answers regarding a third site in May, but Grossi said on Sept. 11 that there has been no progress on that pledge over the past three months. He said Iran must provide the agency with “technically credible explanations for the presence of uranium particles of anthropogenic origin at Varamin and Turquzabad.” Grossi said this issue must be resolved for the IAEA to “provide assurance that Iran’s nuclear program is exclusively peaceful.”

Evidence analyzed by the IAEA suggests that Iran conducted activities related to uranium milling and conversion at Varamin prior to 2003 and stored equipment from its pre-2003 illicit activities at Turquzabad.

Iran disputed the IAEA assessment that there was no progress on the March commitment over the past quarter.

Mohsen Naziri Asal, Iranian ambassador to the IAEA, said that the report “could have been better and presented to the Board of Governors in a manner that more accurately reflects the existing realities.” In a Sept. 13 interview with Iran Nuances, he said that Tehran has had “numerous discussions” with the IAEA that demonstrate that Tehran can “resolve issues through a highly constructive and positive engagement with the agency.” Iran is committed to addressing agency questions about the two sites, he said.

An IAEA report on Sept. 4 noted that Iran told the agency in June that it “exhausted all efforts” to determine the origin of the uranium particles and again suggested that the sites may have been contaminated with uranium as an act of sabotage.

During an Aug. 28 meeting with the IAEA in Tehran, Iran said it had “collected additional information” about the dismantled storage containers present at Turquzabad that were removed from the site prior to a visit by IAEA inspectors. Iran said it would provide the agency with that information. The IAEA requested to receive it as soon as possible.

Eight states, including China and Russia, issued a statement supporting Iran’s position. It welcomed Iran’s continued cooperation with the IAEA and said the remaining issues should be resolved in a “depoliticized manner without interference from the outside.”

In a separate statement, 63 states underscored the “urgent need” for Iran to provide “technically credible” answers to the IAEA’s questions.

The IAEA was investigating two other locations never declared as part of Iran’s nuclear program, but the agency ended those inquiries.

The agency concluded in May 2022 that, at one of the sites, Lavisan-Shian, Iran conducted activities related to uranium metal that should have been declared.

 

A group of states is threatening further action against Iran if it does not cooperate with safeguards-related inquiries from the International Atomic Energy Agency.   

Concerns Mount Over Possible New Nuclear Tests


October 2023
By Mohammadreza Giveh

New construction at nuclear test facilities in China, Russia, and the United States has heightened global apprehension that one or more of these nations potentially could resume nuclear testing.

These satellite images show improvements to the Russian nuclear test site at Novaya Zemlya. Improvements are also reported to be underway at sites in China and the United States. (Photos courtesy of Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, Planet)A CNN report on Sep. 22 published satellite images showing increased activity at China’s Lop Nur nuclear test site, Russia’s Novaya Zemlya nuclear test site, and the U.S. Nevada nuclear test site. The construction activities of concern at these sites include “new tunnels under mountains, new roads and storage facilities, as well as increased vehicle traffic coming in and out of the sites,” CNN reported.

“It’s very clear that all three countries, Russia, China and the United States have invested a great deal of time, effort and money in not only modernizing their nuclear arsenals, but also in preparing the types of activities
that would be required for a test,” commented Retired US Air Force Col. Cedric Leighton, a former intelligence analyst who reviewed the images of the three countries’ nuclear sites, according to CNN.

The report came out on the same day as the biennial Conference on Facilitating the Entry into Force of the 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), which prohibits all nuclear testing but is not yet in force. The final conference declaration called on all states to “refrain from nuclear weapon test explosions or any other nuclear explosions.”

Speculation about Russia’s potential return to nuclear testing surged earlier this year when Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu visited the Novaya Zemlya site. Shoigu “checked the organization of official activities and the fulfillment of tasks for the purpose of special units and units deployed on the Novaya Zemlya archipelago, including readiness for actions to protect and defend critical facilities," according to a Russian Defense Ministry statement on Aug. 12.

Located in the Arctic, the Novaya Zemlya complex last held a nuclear test in 1990 and now is the venue for “tests of advanced samples of weapons and military equipment,” the ministry stated.

On Feb. 21, Russian President Vladimir Putin, along with declaring Russia’s suspension of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, instructed the defense ministry to “make everything ready for Russia to conduct nuclear tests.”

“If the United States conducts tests, then we will,” Putin said. “No one should have dangerous illusions that global strategic parity can be destroyed.”

Further increasing speculation, Kommersant reported on Aug. 3 that Russian officials over the past few months have debated the possibility of withdrawing the country’s ratification of the CTBT in order to achieve “complete parity” with the United States.

Dmitry Glukhov, a member of the Russian delegation to the United Nations, played down the notion that Moscow is preparing for a nuclear test mission. In a statement on Aug. 29, which is the International Day Against Nuclear Tests, he criticized the United States for “keeping open the issue of resuming tests and refraining from ratifying the [CTBT]…for this reason for years.”

In response, Bonnie Jenkins, U.S. undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, emphasized the Biden administration’s concern about “the disturbing nuclear rhetoric from [Russia] over the past year and a half.” She reiterated that “the United States has maintained a zero-yield moratorium on nuclear explosive testing and calls on all states possessing nuclear weapons to declare or maintain such a moratorium.”

In a speech June 19, National Nuclear Security Administrator Jill Hruby said that “the United States has not conducted a nuclear explosive test since 1992, and the National Nuclear Security Administration has not been directed to prepare for a new test.” She also said that her agency is “open to working with others to develop a regime that would allow reciprocal observation with radiation detection equipment at each other's subcritical experiments to allow confirmation that the experiment was consistent with the CTBT.”

A similar message was reiterated by the U.S. Energy Department in conversations on the sidelines of an International Atomic Energy Agency meeting in Vienna, Bloomberg reported on Sept. 28. This occurred after the Russian delegation, at the CTBT conference on Sept. 22, reiterated support for the treaty and dismissed criticism that Russia had threatened to resume nuclear testing.

Eight holdout countries—China, Egypt, India, Iran, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan, and the United States—must ratify the CTBT before the treaty can enter into force. At the September conference, none of them announced new positions.

New construction at nuclear test facilities in China, Russia, and the United States is stoking global apprehension.

Industry a Focus at Latest ATT Meeting


October 2023
By Jeff Abramson

As the war in Ukraine drags on, the relationship of industry to the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) was a special topic of this year’s annual conference of ATT states-parties.

No binding commitments were made, but the final report approved by the conference Aug. 25 encouraged states-parties to deepen contacts with industry on the issue of responsible international transfers of conventional weapons and to engage industry in future ATT meetings.

South Korea announced in 2022 that industry’s role in responsible arms trade would be the special focus of its presidency at this year’s ATT conference. At the time, many civil society experts hoped that would include pushing industry to do a better job of accounting for human rights concerns in their company assessments and practices, often called “human rights due diligence.”

There was some reference to those issues in the report, but more attention was paid simply to improving engagement and sharing resources.

In a statement during discussion of industry, Control Arms, a coalition of civil society advocates, argued that South Korea’s approach was to define what benefits industry could gain from engaging ATT member states, rather than what responsibilities industry should undertake “to mitigate the demonstrable humanitarian cost of the international arms trade.”

For many years, ATT conference presidents have chosen different themes for special discussion, but those topics have not necessarily remained in the spotlight at future meetings. How or if engagement with industry will be tackled during future ATT conferences remains to be seen.

The United Nations established “guiding principles on business and human rights” in 2011. In recent years, there has been increased attention as to whether and how the arms industry has been implementing those principles and the human rights due diligence approaches that have evolved since 2011.

A 2022 report by the UN working group on business and human rights found that the arms industry was failing to adequately conduct such diligence. The report explained that because governments generally are responsible for approving arms transfers, arms companies argue that their compliance with national laws acts “as a substitute for human rights due diligence.”

In Europe, there is an ongoing discussion of whether to exempt the arms industry from a separate directive being developed on corporate responsibility, hinging in part on whether arms manufacturers are accountable for what end users do with their products.

A paper presented by South Korea as president of the ATT conference mentioned the UN guiding principles and included a reference to the UN working group document in an annex. A separate paper sponsored by Austria, Ireland, and Mexico more explicitly called attention to human rights due diligence practices and the 2022 report.

Despite the ongoing major transfer of conventional weapons to combatants in Russia’s war on Ukraine, Russia and Ukraine are not mentioned in the meeting’s final report. Historically, ATT final reports have not addressed specific arms transfers or conflicts.

As it did last year, the European Union indicated in its statement that supplying arms to Ukraine would be consistent with the treaty but those weapons transfers to Russia should not be permitted. Ukraine has signed but not ratified the ATT, and Russia is not a party to it. Neither attended the meeting.

Compliance with annual national reporting of arms transfers, which is required by the treaty, continued to be low. The ATT Secretariat reported that 58 percent of states-parties submitted such reports for 2022, down from 66 percent a year earlier and 85 percent in the first year of the treaty. In December, Andorra ratified the treaty, bringing the total states-parties to 113.

The United States, whose 2013 signature to the treaty was rejected in 2019 by President Donald Trump, again sent a delegation to the meeting. In February, Washington issued a new conventional arms transfer policy, but has not announced a new approach to the treaty. (See ACT, April 2023.) In 2021, it had indicated that that policy would inform the U.S. relationship to the treaty.

The 10th conference of ATT states-parties, led by Romania, will be held in Geneva in 2024.

The annual Arms Trade Treaty conference urged states-parties to deepen contacts with industry on the issue of responsible international transfers of conventional weapons.

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