President mulls plan to build mininukes

President mulls plan to build mininukes Policy shift reflected in Bush's $21 million budget request for design of new weapons in 2004

Saturday, February 15, 2003 - Policy shift reflected in Bush's $21 million budget request for design of new weapons in 2004

Top Bush administration nuclear-weapons executives and weapons scientists are sketching out a strategy for adding a new menu of mininukes, neutron bombs and other nuclear arms to the nation's Cold War-style arsenal.

In talks at the Pentagon last month, federal defense executives and weapons scientists from California and New Mexico set the stage for a debate over "selecting first 'small builds'," or choosing tailor-made weapons for limited production runs.

"What's clear is, in this administration, the brakes are off in nuclear development and the push for nuclear testing," said Greg Mello, head of the Los Alamos Study Group, an arms-control group in New Mexico that obtained minutes to a meeting of top nuclear-weapons advisers.

The revelations are the latest herald of a potential sea change in U.S. nuclear policy:

- On Thursday, House Republicans touted an aggressive new nuclear-weapons policy calling for scientists at Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos labs to begin studying "advanced concepts" for new weapons for the first time since 1994. GOP lawmakers say they also are thinking of repealing a 1993 ban on research into low-yield nuclear weapons, or those with an explosive yield at or below a third of the Hiroshima bomb.

- President Bush's new budget asks for $21 million for design of new or modified nuclear weapons in 2004.

- White House pronouncements since September lay out a new defense policy giving greater prominence to pre-emptive strikes on foreign weapons of mass destruction. Pentagon war planners already are drawing up contingency plans for a nuclear strike in Iraq, to pre-empt or retaliate for a chemical or biological attack, according to a Los Angeles Times report.

- Nuclear Weapons Council Chairman and Assistant Defense Secretary E.C. "Pete" Aldridge Jr. asked weapons scientists in October "to assess the potential benefits that could be obtained from a return to nuclear testing." Meanwhile, Assistant Defense Secretary for Nuclear, Chemical and Biological Weapons Dale Klein has said the nation will have to test within five to 10 years.

"The drums are beating pretty loudly on all quarters," said Thomas Cochran, a physicist and head of the Natural Resources Defense Council's program on nuclear arms.

"Like kids in a toy shop, they have all these ideas (for weapons) they want to pursue but without any utility," Cochran said. "The U.S. has not designed a new, successful weapon in decades, and that's because all the practical improvements you can make in nuclear weapons were made at least two decades ago."

Senior administration officials stress that they have no requirements for new nuclear weapons, meaning the military services and Bush have not yet detailed a new attack mission demanding a new weapons design.

Yet according to minutes of a Jan. 10 meeting, federal defense executives and top lab scientists are laying the preliminary groundwork for those new weapons requirements as they prepare for a Stockpile Stewardship Conference in August, their first in seven years. They plan to debate among other things whether a return to low-yield or high-yield nuclear testing for the first time since 1992 would be needed in proving the new designs.

"What forms of testing will these new designs require?" Defense Department officials asked themselves and scientists on a panel advising the Nuclear Weapons Council, the foremost body for recommending weapons policy to the president.

"What is the role of nuclear testing in reducing risk in the stockpile? What parts of those risks are associated with the absence of nuclear testing, in comparison to the risk association with a 150kt (kiloton explosive yield) threshold or a low-yield test program. ...What would demand a test?"

The talks offer a rare glimpse into the Bush administration as it mulls building modified or wholly new bombs and warheads as hardware for pre-emptive attacks.

Administration officials cautioned that the document distilled frank conversations among the executives and scientists responsible for "very long-range issues for the nuclear stockpile."

"So it's appropriate that they consider any range of possibilities and that's exactly what this group is doing," said Anson Franklin, chief of governmental affairs for the National Nuclear Security Administration. "That shouldn't be read to suggest we are actively considering new weapons systems or a return to testing.

"It's a far cry from a planning document for administration policy," Franklin said.

Even so, the Bush administration is asking for $21 million for "advanced concepts" studies of modified or new weapons in 2004. That includes $15 million for scientists at Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos national labs to compete for design of a "bunker-buster" bomb for attacking deeply buried, hardened concrete bunkers. Called the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator, the bomb would be based either on Livermore's B-83 or Los Alamos B-61, both featuring adjustable explosive yields.

The president also is asking for $6 million for "additional and exploratory studies" of advanced weapons designs.

"These are not vague plans for the future," said the Los Alamos Study Group's Mello. "This is a detailed planning process that bespeaks a great deal of thought and coordination between branches of government."

He finds especially disturbing a portion of the document in which top defense executives and weaponeers ask themselves "what should the policy and practice be for granting authority to adapt and build small quantities?"

Traditionally, only the president may authorize the production of a nuclear weapon. The conversation to Mello suggests lax oversight and control of the nation's key nuclear weapons agencies at the Defense and Energy departments. "That you would even talk about that would suggest the democratic governance of these institutions is already very, very weak. Every member of Congress should sit up and take notice that we are losing congressional oversight of the nuclear weapons program of the United States."

Why would anyone have a problem with reduced-yield nuclear weapons? The smaller the bomb's yield, the more precisely the damage from it can be known, and the better it can be contained to the intended target, rather than allowing it to afflict surrounding people and structures of no military importance.

An improvement in weapons technology is almost always an improved ability to destroy what you want to destroy, and only what you want to destroy. If we'd had a way to lay a mini-nuke on Hitler's headquarters in 1944, wouldn't that have been an enormously better thing than fighting our way across Europe, killing all those enemy soldiers -- and allowing them to kill so many thousands of ours?

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Francis W. Porretto
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The Neutron bomb. Works for me. I never understood why (was it President Ford?) nixed them....

Don't think it was Ford. Ford wasn't in office long enough to nix his morning breakfast cereal.

It seems like Carter may have been involved, though.

I can conceive building mini-bombs and neutron bombs, but what is the need for full scale bomb production. From where I sit we already have enough nukes to destroy the world a time or two. Just a honest question.

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