Posted on 03/27/2010 2:41:54 PM PDT by neverdem
In a challenge to the White House, the nation’s nuclear weapons laboratories have warned Congress that federal programs to extend the life of the nation’s aging nuclear arsenal are insufficient to guarantee the viability of the weapons for decades to come.
The warning, which implicitly endorsed the idea of creating an expensive new generation of more reliable nuclear warheads, has no direct bearing on the new arms control agreement reached this week by the United States and Russia.
Rather, it addresses a long-simmering debate on what steps the United States should take to ensure confidence in the destructive capacity of its shrinking nuclear arsenal.
President Obama came into office vowing to end a Bush administration initiative to build a new generation of nuclear arms. In a speech last month to the National Defense University, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. praised the labs for maintaining the arsenal and promised an additional $5 billion over the next five years to support that work.
The new warning about the arsenal’s reliability came in letters from the directors of the nation’s three nuclear weapons labs to Representative Michael R. Turner, an Ohio Republican who is the ranking minority member of the Armed Services Committee’s subcommittee on strategic forces. He had asked the directors for their opinions about a federal report, made public late last year, that suggested programs to extend the life of the nation’s nuclear weapons were good enough to guarantee their potency for decades to come.
That finding, from an independent group of scientists that advises the federal government on issues of science and...
--snip--
Republicans on Capitol Hill have argued that concerns over the reliability of the aging stockpile and the possible need for new designs compel the nation to retain the right to conduct underground tests of new weapons...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
This is probably great new to il douche in the oval office.
I say shoot them off - see if they still work. Sell tickets. Bring popcorn.
The infrastructure supporting the R&D for nuclear defense competence must be carefully monitored and maintained...this article brings into question whether it is intended to be maintained or secured at all. It suggests that it is not being maintained and that the defense of the nation is not being maintained as a matter of policy.
This is serious. Without a credible nuclear weapons arsenal, we have no way to deter other nuclear powers.
The Zero Presidents just agreed to cut what we have by a third.
What is left may not work.
Let’s see: economic ruin and added threat to our national security. Thanks Democrats.
*ping
*
Don’t be ridiculous. No one should ever consider launching except maybe to see if sand really can be turned to glass and demonstrate parity to the enemy for each roadside bomb exploded or American soldier killed.
It was meant to be humorous ....
... prob’ly the tickets and popcorn threw you ....
The viability of these weapons was first questioned during Clinton’s regime. Everytime some one came up with a way to test, someone stopped it, then Los Alamos began a series of “mysterious” disappearances - laptops, hard frives - gone, and as far as I know, never explained or recovered.
Hussein is simpily putting the final touches on the whole nuclear arsenal thingy.
BTW, did anyone ever restore the launch cards to our ICBMs - removed by Clinton?
But, but, but, our wunnerful GOV’T is rooting for the arabs or N. Koreans to make a good strike on U.S.
He's the one who pushed using massively parallel supercomputers to SIMULATE aging of the warheads, as opposed to the Russian "strip 'em down, inpsect, replace".
Together with the Loral guidance systems to China and the W-88 specs to China, it is clear treason: he should have been waterboarded to find out his contacts, then given the electric chair.
Cheers!
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