Posted on 07/13/2005 10:49:00 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) - Sixty years after the first atomic bomb was tested in the New Mexico desert, the United States still has some 2,000 nuclear weapons on hair trigger alert and is considering new weapons such as earth-penetrating bunker busters.
The US administration has agreed to pare back its nuclear arsenal from about 10,000 warheads today to about 6,000 in 2012 under the Moscow Treaty reached with Russia in 2001.
But even as it moves to retire much of its Cold War arsenal, it has pressed a reluctant Congress for funds for nuclear bunker-buster studies, refurbished nuclear testing facilities, and a facility to build the plutonium triggers for new weapons.
The US Strategic Command in Omaha, Nebraska, is reported to be developing "global strike" options, including a nuclear option, against potential adversaries with nuclear weapons such as Iran and North Korea.
More than 15 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, nuclear weapons "are alive and well," said Robert S. Norris, an expert at the Natural Resources Defense Council, an arms control and environmental advocacy group.
Norris points to the administration's Nuclear Posture Review of 2001 as "the revealing document" that shows its intention to use nuclear weapons to counter a new cast of potential adversaries armed with weapons of mass destruction.
The review called for a "new triad" in which conventional and nuclear forces would be meshed in a "global strike" capability, enabling the United States to respond to a threat anywhere in the world on very short notice.
It envisioned more precise long-range missiles armed with conventional warheads as well as smaller, lower yield nuclear tips.
The other parts of the triad are missile defense systems and a revived infrastructure of weapons labs and production facilities that had deteriorated since the end of the Cold War.
"So the vision of the Bush administration is that we are going to need nuclear weapons well out into the middle of the 21st century, and beyond. I mean for decades to come," said Norris.
But the administration appears not to have counted on Representative David Hobson (news, bio, voting record).
The Ohio Republican, chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee that oversees the Energy Department's nuclear weapons programs, stunned the administration by rejecting last year's request for new nuclear weapons funding.
He nixed nine million dollars in funding for research into new low yield "mini-nukes;" denied another 27.6 million dollars request for study of a Robust Nuclear Earth-Penetrating Weapon; and put off a request for another 30 million dollars for a new plant to manufacture the plutonium pits that trigger nuclear explosions.
"The development of new weapons for ill-defined future requirements is not what the nation needs at this time," Hobson said in a speech February 3 to the Arms Control Association.
"What is needed, and what is absent to date, is leadership and fresh thinking for the 21st Century regarding nuclear security and the future of the US stockpile," he said.
The United States currently has 5,300 operational nuclear warheads, and another 5,300 in reserve, said Victoria Sampson, an expert at the Center for Defense Information.
"We have about 2,000 which are on hair trigger alert, which means they can be ready to go within minutes of that decision to launch," she said.
Hobson and others are worried that new nuclear weapons initiatives could lower the threshhold for their use, and warned it would send the wrong signal at a time when the United States was demanding that North Korea and Iran stop their weapons programs.
But the administration has struck back with a request for 8.5 million dollars of renewed funding for the nuclear earth penetrator in 2006.
It also has asked for 25 million dollars to get its Nevada test site ready to resume testing in 18 months if needed, instead of the 24 to 36 months it would currently take. Those requests are working their way through Congress where opposition remains strong.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld argued that only "very large, very dirty nuclear bombs" could now destroy the increasing numbers of facilities that potential adversaries have buried deep underground.
"So the choice is: do we want to have nothing and only a large, dirty nuclear weapon, or would we rather have something in between. That is the issue," he said in April.
"It seems to me studying it makes all the sense in the world," he said.
But scientists warn that no earth-penetrating nuclear weapon could bore deep enough to trap devastating fallout that the National Academy of Sciences has concluded would still kill more than a million people on the surface if it was near a densely populated urban area.
A nuclear cloud. Sixty years after the first atomic bomb was tested in the New Mexico desert, the United States still has some 2,000 nuclear weapons on hair trigger alert and is considering new weapons such as earth-penetrating bunker busters(AFP/File)
Bunker-buster bombs. The United States is close to testing a new missile aimed at destroying deep bunkers where suspected weapons of mass destruction are stored, the British weekly New Scientist says.(AFP/US Navy-HO/File/Felix Garza Jr.)
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld argued that only "very large, very dirty nuclear bombs" could now destroy the increasing numbers of facilities that potential adversaries have buried deep underground.
"So the choice is: do we want to have nothing and only a large, dirty nuclear weapon, or would we rather have something in between. That is the issue," he said in April.
"It seems to me studying it makes all the sense in the world," he said.
Who the hell is this guy to decide America's entire strategic weapons posture?
These people are either wearing blinders or they have taken China off their maps.
Who was the expert that recently said it's one big bluff? Our military would carry out the order, but that order would never come since no president would ever retaliate. That's what this expert said.
Re: "the United States still has some 2,000 nuclear weapons on hair trigger alert"
Didn't Clinton tell us that those weapons aren't on alert?
Publications of the Center for Security Policy
August 1998 Missile Defense Poll
Interview Schedule
11. The United States and Russia have signed an agreement promising not to target each other's countries with their ballistic missiles. Government information indicates however that Russia's implementation of this agreement cannot be verified and that Russia could quickly and secretly retarget the United States. How much confidence do you have that Russian missiles are not pointed at the U.S.? Would you say that you are
13% TOTAL EXTREMELY/VERY CONFIDENT
3% EXTREMELY CONFIDENT
10% VERY CONFIDENT
28% SOMEWHAT CONFIDENT
58% TOTAL NOT CONFIDENT
29% NOT VERY CONFIDENT
29% NOT AT ALL CONFIDENT
2% DON'T KNOW/REFUSED
12. President Clinton has just reached an agreement with China not to target missiles at each other's countries. Government information indicates that this agreement cannot be verified and that China could quickly and secretly retarget the United States. How much confidence do you have that Chinese missiles are not pointed at the U.S.?
14% TOTAL EXTREMELY/VERY CONFIDENT
5% EXTREMELY CONFIDENT
9% VERY CONFIDENT
22% SOMEWHAT CONFIDENT
62% TOTAL NOT CONFIDENT
29% NOT VERY CONFIDENT
33% NOT AT ALL CONFIDENT
3% DON'T KNOW/REFUSED
http://www.security-policy.org/papers/other/poll898i.html
We can piss away millions on the Byrd Memorial Urinal and we can't spend money on this?
And not a single one of them is pointed anywhere in the USA. It's one reason I sleep well at night.
"We have about 2,000 which are on hair trigger alert, which means they can be ready to go within minutes of that decision to launch," she said.
Ooooooh! "Hair trigger." That sounds so scary! They could go off with the slightest nudge. Horsesh!t. The author of this article is using "hair trigger" words to work on your emotions.
These weapons, at least the ones the US has, are impossible to detonate accidentally, or even on purpose without authorization. We lost a nuclear submarine with two nuclear weapons on board. Both are at the bottom of the sea. They did not, and never will, explode. We've jettisoned them from airplanes, both into the sea and onto land; crashed airplanes with nukes aboard, and blew at least one out of a silo when the rocket booster exploded. None of them went off. None caused any damage.
I'm not sure if you are referring to Robert McNamara, who was the Secretary of Defense for at least part of the Vietnam War and one of the architects of MAD (mutually assured destruction). After the Cold War he admitted that the whole "attack Berlin and we'll hit Moscow with a nuclear weapon" strategy was a bluff, since there was no way the US would sacrifice a major US city and risk nuclear war to save the Europeans.
I don't think we're bluffing when we say, "Use a nuclear weapon against us and we'll retaliate massively in kind", so in that respect, there's no bluff.
LOL! We have 2,000 nukes on a hair trigger. :D Let me at the sights and give me the keys! :D
I remember something about early russian warheads that were in the 100 megaton size to make up for the inaccuracy of their ICBMs. What happened to THOSE fatboys.
Looking to be paid off, and big. Of course.
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