Senate Preserves Funds for New Weapons Capabilities

By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate yesterday rejected an attempt by Democrats to block funding requested by the Bush administration for research and development of new nuclear weapons capabilities.

An amendment to the fiscal 2005 defense authorization bill, proposed by Senator Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), would have prohibited $37 million requested by the administration for researching the high-yield Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator, and research and development on other nuclear weapons capabilities, possibly including low-yield nuclear weapons, in a program called the Advanced Concepts Initiative.

The House last month authorized the requested funding in its version of the bill (see GSN, May 21).

Full funding for the program, however, still is uncertain. A Republican-controlled House Appropriations subcommittee last week completely eliminated funding for those nuclear weapons programs, along with money to build a new nuclear pit manufacturing facility (see GSN, June 10).

The National Nuclear Security Administration “needs to take a ‘time-out’ on new initiatives until it completes a review of its weapons complex in relation to                     security needs, budget constraints, and this new stockpile plan,” wrote Chairman Dave Hobson (R-Ohio) shortly after the subcommittee decision.  

David Culp, a lobbyist of the Friends Committee on National Legislation (Quakers), said he anticipates the House will pursue at least some reduction through the appropriations process.

“The question now is whether there it is a small reduction or big reduction,” he said.

The Kennedy legislation, co-sponsored by Democratic Senators Dianne Feinstein (Calif.), Jack Reed (R.I.), Frank Lautenberg (N.J.), Daniel Akaka (Hawaii), and Russell Feingold (Wis.), was defeated in a 42-55 vote that went mostly along party lines.

Five Democrats — Evan Bayh (Ind.), Ernest Hollings (S.C.), Zel Miller (Ga.), Bill Nelson (Fla.), Ben Nelson (Neb.) — voted against the measure. Senators James Jeffords (I-Vt.), Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry (D-Mass.) did not vote.

In a debate before the vote, Democrats charged the programs would harm U.S. efforts to persuade other countries to forgo nuclear weapons development.

“America should not launch a new nuclear arms race,” Kennedy said.

“Even as we try to persuade North Korea to pull back from the brink, and even as we try to persuade Iran to end its nuclear weapons program, even as we urge the nations of the former Soviet Union to secure their nuclear material and arsenals from terrorists, the Bush administration now wants to escalate the nuclear threat by developing two new kinds of weapons for the United States,” he said.

“It is a shameful double standard,” he said.

Senator Wayne Allard (R-Colo.) challenged the idea that pursuing the programs could threaten U.S. national security.

“I believe that we do have peace through strength,” he said.

Echoing administration arguments, Allard said the proposed funding is only “to study options for modernizing our nuclear deterrent,” but is important for ensuring the United States maintains a credible deterrent and necessary for moving toward a smaller stockpile.

“Over the last several years, the Department of Defense closely examined our nuclear weapons posture … [and found that] increasingly, irrational rogue nations and nonstate actors had emerged as a greater threat to U.S. security than our historical adversaries,” he said.

Given the suspected proliferation of deeply buried and hardened bunkers by some potential adversaries for housing command-and-control facilities, ballistic missiles and the development of weapons of mass destruction, “Our ability to deter such undesired activities is greatly eroded,” Allard said.

Kennedy argued that new nuclear weapons of high- or low-yield would not be usable against such bunkers and could turn world opinion against the United States.

The use of a nuclear bunker-buster in Baghdad during the Iraq war, he said, “Would have killed hundreds of thousands of people, including aid workers and journalists. We would have turned the entire area into a radioactive wasteland, and all to capture the person we captured with conventional means a few months later.”

The Bush administration has said that the programs are intended only to explore concepts, and that no requirements or plans have been developed for new nuclear weapons. 

The administration earlier this year, though, disclosed long-term cost projections for RNEP research and development, totaling as much as $485 million over the next five years (see GSN, March 10).

“This is a clear indication of what the administration is intending,” Kennedy said.

Another indication was given in the administration’s 2002 Nuclear Posture Review, a major strategic weapons planning document leaked early that year.

It recommended developing a “new level of capability” for striking hardened and deeply buried facilities “by 2007, with new technologies deployed by 2012.”

“The fight will continue for many more months and years,” John Isaacs, president of the Council for a Livable World arms control organization, said in a statement.

“President Kerry will certainly kill the program if he is elected. President Bush will have significant difficulty moving from research into production if he is re-elected,” he said.

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