By David Ruppe

Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — President George W. Bush’s fiscal 2003 Energy Department budget request has called for completing a preliminary study on modifying a nuclear warhead for military “bunker-busting” operations (see GSN, Dec. 20, 2001).

U.S. military officials have said they need better earth-penetrating weapons for striking enemy assets protected in hardened and deeply buried bunkers such as missile silos and Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s command bunker.

Arms control advocates are concerned about unintended casualties from their use and that developing, testing and using such weapons could undermine international efforts to curb the global development and spread of weapons of mass destruction.

The request calls for completing program cost and feasibility studies for modifying B-61 nuclear warheads for use on a system called the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator.

The B-61 is “the weapon that everybody has looked at for modifications being possible to develop a so-called mini-nuke,” said Cathy Crandall, the associate director of security programs at Physicians for Social Responsibility.  By “mini-nuke” she means a lower-yield nuclear weapon that might create less collateral damage, making it theoretically more acceptable when used.

The earth-penetrating system appears to be in an early stage of development and other possible warhead options could include developing an entirely new warhead or developing a conventional warhead, experts say.

Arms control analysts are concerned developing new low-yield nuclear weapons for use in combat missions could lessen the stigma of using nuclear weapons by other countries.

“The United States using nuclear weapons in combat lowers the threshold on a worldwide basis,” says David Culp, an analyst at the Friends Committee on National Legislation.  It “makes it more politically acceptable for other countries to use nuclear weapons.”

Resuming Nuclear Tests?

There also is a concern that modifying the B-61 or developing a new warhead would lead to a resumption of U.S. nuclear testing, which was suspended in the early 1990s by former President George Bush.

“I think everybody understands that if we resume testing, you see the Russians resume testing.  And, this is no secret, there are hawks in Russia just like there are in the United States, and for many years people in their military and in their weapons laboratories have been arguing that Russia needs to develop a new small tactical nuclear weapon that would be deployed in Eastern Europe primarily along the Belarus-Polish border,” said Culp.

China, India and Pakistan might also feel freer to resume testing, he said.

There is, however, a legal hurdle that might need to be overcome. A 1993 law forbids research and development of nuclear weapons below a five-kiloton yield.

On the other hand, Congress passed language in the fiscal 2001 defense authorization bill requiring a study on “the defeat of hardened and deeply buried targets” (see GSN, Dec. 14, 2001).

Also, the current Bush administration has indicated the president has no intentions of submitting to the Senate the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, signed by President Bill Clinton, which would ban all further testing.

Not Clear Whether U.S. Testing Needed

Experts say it is unclear whether Energy would need to resume nuclear testing for a new nuclear earth-penetrating weapon.

While developing a new warhead probably would require a resumption of testing, modifying the B-61 probably would not, said Culp.  Fifty B-61s previously were modified essentially by putting them in hardened shells to create a lesser earth-penetration weapon, called the B-61 mod 11, first announced in the mid-1990s.

That modified bomb, with a yield potentially ranging from 10 to 340 kilotons, was not tested in the earth-penetrating delivery system, but the system containing the warhead reportedly had somewhat limited penetrating capability, according to the Federation of American Scientists.

That modified model “obviously doesn’t have the kind of capability they are looking for,” said Culp.

Whether a newly modified B-61 warhead might require testing, he said, could depend on both the extent of the modification and “whether the military that’s buying this weapon has enough confidence in it to deploy it without testing.”

Higher-yield warheads do not need to penetrate the ground as deeply as lower-yield weapons but can be more controversial, because they tend to cause higher collateral damage and fallout, experts say.  Crandall said the modifications would not necessarily involve further modifying the B-61 to create a lower-yield “mini-nuke.”

It might be preferred by the military, though, she said, to minimize radioactive fallout and collateral damage.

“It is generally considered that if there were a U.S. military requirement to use an earth-penetrating weapon — on caves in Afghanistan for example — that there would be some effort to reduce the ‘collateral damage’ by lowering the yield if it were a nuclear weapon,” she said.

Uncertain Intentions

U.S. officials have not said whether they plan to add new nuclear bunker busters to the arsenal.

Results of the Pentagon’s most recent Nuclear Posture Review, a reconsideration of its nuclear strategy, alert status and holdings, released last month, alluded to future nuclear testing and new roles for nuclear weapons in U.S. strategy (see GSN, Jan. 24).

The review called for shortening the time needed to prepare for a nuclear weapons test, citing possibly testing needs for maintaining the current stockpile (see GSN, Jan. 10, 2001).  The Bush budget request allocated $15 million to Energy for making that change.

While citing a need for new earth-penetrating weapons, however, the review did not say whether nuclear weapons should be developed for such a role.

Information prepared for a briefing on the review only said there is a need for developing improved “non-nuclear strike” capabilities for use against “hardened and deeply buried targets.”

Responding to a question, however, the principal briefer, Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy J.D. Crouch, seemed to say the administration is considering developing new nuclear weapons that could be used for special battlefield operations like bunker busting (see GSN, Jan. 10, 2002).

“Now, we are trying to look at a number of initiatives,” he said.  “One would be to modify an existing weapon, to give it greater capability against hard targets and deeply buried targets.  And we're also looking at non-nuclear ways that we might be able to deal with those problems.”

The Energy and Defense departments completed a study last July examining how nuclear weapons could be modified to attack buried, hardened targets, but reportedly they made no conclusions about developing such weapons.

Crouch also said no recommendation was made on that in the Nuclear Posture Review.

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