Congress Allows for 2006 Penetrator Test

By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Congress last month approved a bill allowing the Defense Department this year to conduct a controversial earth penetrator research test, despite opposition from minority Democrats (see GSN, Dec. 15, 2005).

In approving a massive $441 billion fiscal 2006 defense authorization bill, Congress denied authorization for $4 million in funding requested by the Bush administration for the Energy Department to conduct a major “sled test” of a mock Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator (RNEP).

However, in report language accompanying the final version of the bill approved on Dec. 18, House and Senate leaders authorized $4 million for the Defense Department to conduct such a test as part of a new, related “penetrator study.” A senior Air Force official said last month that the test could support efforts to develop a nuclear penetrator.

The report says House and Senate conferees “agree to authorize no funding for the RNEP study under the Department of Energy, but instead authorize a related study effort within the Department of Defense.”

“The conferees agree to authorize $4.0 million … to conduct a sled test and a study on the physics of penetrating geologic media, to be completed by the end of fiscal year 2006,” it says.

Both houses subsequently approved the version of the bill agreed to in the report and it now awaits the president’s signature.

The test, which involves slamming the mock warhead into a huge block of concrete, is considered necessary for assessing whether it is feasible to develop a weapon better able to withstand slamming into solid earth before detonating than an existing conventional penetrator.

Critics have called the program — with a potential price tag of hundreds of millions of dollars — a waste of money. They argue that a nuclear penetrator would not likely be used because of potential casualties, and that it undermines U.S. nuclear nonproliferation efforts. Supporters have said a sturdier penetrator is needed for reaching deeply buried foreign facilities.

Senate Democrats unsuccessfully sought to include in the report a provision barring any testing that could support the feasibility assessment of a nuclear penetrator. 

Nevertheless, after Congress approved the report, Representative Ellen Tauscher (D-Calif.) suggested in a press release that the bill would only allow for study of conventional penetrators.

“I’m pleased that the FY 2006 Defense Authorization bill will not allow the creation of new nuclear weapons, but instead provides our military with resources to destroy hard and deeply buried targets with conventional weapons,” she said.

Supporting that notion, Congress on Dec. 18 also approved the fiscal 2006 defense appropriations bill report containing language that specified the Defense Department study be a “conventional” one.

However, an Air Force official said in a Defense Daily report on Dec. 6 that the sled test in fiscal 2006 is intended to determine the feasibility of the nuclear penetrator and that the Defense Department planned to complete the nuclear feasibility assessment by fiscal 2007 if money could be secured.

“There is some misunderstanding that the Defense Department has dropped the nuclear part of the [Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator]. Without the nuclear portion, the RNEP is not very attractive,” Billy Mullins, deputy director of strategic security for the Air Force, told Defense Daily.

“The defense appropriations conference report approved by Congress last month specifies on page 289 that the Defense Department appropriation is for a conventional penetrator study,” said Arms Control Association Executive Director Daryl Kimball.

“The reality is that the sled test that this money would support would produce data that is relative not only to a conventional penetrator but [to] a nuclear penetrator. But the DOD should be mindful that the legislative intent of Congress is that the RNEP program is not authorized,” he said.

Senate Armed Services Committee ranking Democrat Carl Levin (Mich.) in a Dec. 22 floor statement urged the Pentagon to use the $4 million only for studying conventional penetrators.

“I hope and urge the department to use at least the $4 million to support conventional, non-nuclear weapons development,” he said.

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