|
|||||
|
|||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||
 |
 |
    |
|
|
|||
 |
|
||
|
|||
|
|
|
|
||||||||
|
Congress Cancels Funding for New Weapons Research By David Ruppe WASHINGTON — In a significant blow to the Bush administration’s nuclear weapons plans, Congress on Saturday rejected funding research and development of a large earth-penetrating nuclear weapon and other “advanced” capabilities (see GSN, Nov. 19). The money requested by the White House ð— $27.6 million for the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator program and $9 million for the Advanced Concepts Initiative — was excluded from the fiscal 2005 Omnibus Appropriations bill passed by both houses on Saturday. Congress also eliminated $30 million in funding to shorten the preparation time to conduct a nuclear test, if ordered by the president, and all but $7 million of $29.8 million requested for constructing a new facility to build plutonium pits, according to a statement by Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.). It further barred any of that money for use in selecting a new construction site. The Senate had included the money in its version of the multiagency appropriations bill, but the House of Representatives did not and the House’s cuts ultimately won out. Critics said the programs were globally destabilizing and would undercut U.S. efforts to persuade other countries to end suspected nuclear weapon proliferation. “If we are to convince other countries to forgo nuclear weapons, we cannot be preparing to build an entire new generation of nuclear weapons here in the U.S,” Representative Edward Markey (D-Mass.) said in a statement released on Sunday. He called the cuts, “The biggest victory that arms-control advocates in Congress have had since 1992, when we were able to place limits on nuclear testing.” Opposition to the funding was led by a House Republican, Representative Dave Hobson (Ohio), who chairs the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development. The Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator program was to continue studies of options for a new capability for striking deeply buried and hardened facilities. The Advanced Concepts Initiatives included planned studies to modify a cruise missile nuclear weapon to improve its safety, security and control, on using nuclear weapons to destroy chemical and biological agents in storage, and on replacing some existing warheads with longer-lasting warheads that would be less likely to require nuclear testing (see GSN, July 16). Advocates of the programs had argued that new nuclear weapons, of high and low yield, are needed to deter other countries from someday attacking the United States. “To be effective deterrents in the future, our nuclear weapons must have greatly increased accuracy, reduced yields, specialized capabilities (such as deep earth penetration) and tailored effects (such as ability to neutralize chemical-biological agents), wrote Robert Monroe, a retired Navy vice admiral and former director of the Defense Nuclear Agency, in a commentary published last week in the Washington Post. Critics have argued the United States already has low-yield capabilities inherent in its stockpile and that potential adversaries would be deterred by the current U.S. arsenal.
| ||||||||||
Back to top
