The U.S. Energy Department’s Sandia National Laboratories has begun testing designs for a new type of nuclear warhead that could be used to destroy underground bunkers, Sandia President C. Paul Robinson said Tuesday (see GSN, Feb. 20).

Researchers have used a large cannon to fire projectiles at targets made of rock and steel to simulate the force of a warhead hitting the Earth at high speeds, Robinson said.  The new tests build on a warhead design created in the late 1980s that was tested and certified for manufacture but ultimately shelved, he said.

“We picked it up as a point of departure,” Robinson said, referring to the 1980s design.

In the mid-1990s, Sandia researchers created a new steel case for an existing bomb that allowed it to survive slamming into the Earth, a requirement for a “bunker-busting” bomb, Robinson said.  Creating a ballistic missile warhead that can survive the same impact, however, is much more difficult because of the higher speeds involved, he said.

The tests are to help develop a conceptual design for any new nuclear weapons, said Sandia Vice President Joan Woodard.  She added that the U.S. military has not placed any purchase orders for the warhead and that the design could be used to develop bunker-busting bombs armed with conventional explosives.

The bunker-busting warhead development program is a component of an expanded nuclear weapons budget at the Sandia laboratories, according to the Albuquerque Journal (see GSN, Feb. 19).  The Bush administration included a 13 percent increase in funds for Sandia’s nuclear weapons development program in its fiscal 2003 budget proposal (John Fleck, Albuquerque Journal, Feb. 27).

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