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Bush Administration Seeks New U.S. Nuclear Arsenal By David Ruppe WASHINGTON — A senior Bush administration official disclosed to Congress yesterday an ambitious 20-year goal to replace the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal with a new, smaller stockpile that provides new military capabilities, including lower yield and bunker-busting weapons (see GSN, April 4). National Nuclear Security Administration chief Linton Brooks did not say in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee that there are specific threats, safety problems or reliability concerns requiring the replacement of the current arsenal, estimated by independent experts at 10,000 strategic warheads and projected to shrink nearly in half by 2012 as ordered by President George W. Bush last year. “I’m confident that today’s stockpile is safe and reliable and I’m confident that there is no near-term requirement for nuclear tests,” he told the sole subcommittee member present, Chairman Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.). The ranking Democrat, Senator Bill Nelson (Fla.), appeared briefly at the beginning of the hearing but left to attend a presentation of the Medal of Honor at the White House. In presenting what he called the administration’s “emerging vision,” Brooks argued that the present arsenal is not ideal from a military and political standpoint, is costly to maintain, and could be exchanged for a smaller and more useful and reliable set of weapons. “If we were to build that stockpile today, we would probably take a different approach than we took during the Cold War,” he said. Brooks said the current arsenal may not be well suited to the types of threats the country could face in the future. He said a January 2002 review found that the explosive yields of the weapons are too high and “we have no capability against hardened and deeply buried targets.” That report also said that current weapons “do not lend themselves to reduced collateral damage and are unsuited for defeat of biological and chemical munitions,” Brooks said in his written testimony. They also were not designed for “small strikes or flexibility in command and control and delivery,” he said. Marine Corps Gen. James Cartwright, head of U.S. Strategic Command, said in testimony yesterday that hardened and deeply buried facilities are “a very real target set, and one that is growing.” “Today’s stockpile may not be the one you want to have 20 years from now,” Brooks said. Costs UncertainThe administration in previous years set aside funds for studies of technologies to provide some new capabilities, but until yesterday had not asked Congress to view such pursuits in a consolidated plan. Led by a skeptical Republican in the House of Representatives, Congress last year canceled funding for the Energy Department’s new capabilities research, including studies of a new nuclear earth-penetrating weapon and armaments for destroying chemical and biological agents. Brooks yesterday described a potential part of the administration’s vision, a new effort funded by Congress last year called the Reliable Replacement Warhead Program. He said the program could lead to a new weapon that could be more easily certified as safe and reliable, in part because it would be designed to have less stringent performance requirements, such as seeking to maximize a warhead’s explosive yield. Using more readily available and environmentally friendly materials, such a weapon also could be manufactured and maintained less expensively than current weapons, he said. With better mission-tailored capabilities and more reliable warheads, he said, the United States could shrink its future arsenal beyond the undisclosed, reduced level set for 2012 by Bush in a classified document last year. Brooks acknowledged that the administration’s vision could be costly. “No one will suggest that rebuilding nuclear weapons will be cheap,” he said. He did not provide estimates. Nelson raised questions about the potential cost and purposes of the administration’s earth penetrator and Reliable Replacement Warhead plans. “Is it an opportunity to have a serious review and discussion of nuclear weapons and nuclear policy? Or is it just an excuse to develop a new nuclear weapon and to return to nuclear weapons testing?” he said. Brooks said the replacement warhead would not require explosive testing to develop and would help avoid the need to test other warhead designs in the future. “I hope the committee finds our vision both coherent and compelling,” he said.
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