Defense Officials Promote Low-Yield Nuclear Weapons for Destroying Chemical and Biological Agents Underground
By H. Josef Hebert Associated Press Writer
Published: Dec 18, 2001
WASHINGTON (AP) - A "low-yield" nuclear weapon may be the best way to destroy underground stockpiles of chemical and biological agents, Defense Department officials say in a report to Congress.
Conventional weapons cannot destroy the most deeply buried chemical and biological holding facilities, but a low-yield nuclear device could do the job, the report concludes.
The United States has no "bunker-busting" nuclear warhead that can penetrate deep enough and with enough accuracy to destroy such an enemy stockpile. And since 1994, the government has been barred by Congress from developing any new nuclear warhead.
Despite that, the report shows the Bush administration views a nuclear strike as "an intrinsic part" of dealing with deeply entombed enemy targets and "is essentially doing all the preparation" for a future full-scale research and development program for a new mini-nuclear warhead, said Martin Butcher, director of security programs at the Physicians for Social Responsibility.
This kind of warhead is "the dirtiest kind of all. It's highly radioactive," said Butcher, whose group as been a leading voice in the nuclear nonproliferation debate. It sends "the wrong signals" and will add to the risk of nuclear proliferation.
A low-yield nuclear weapon generally is considered to be 5 kilotons or less. By comparison, the atomic bombs dropped on Japan at the end of World War II were about 15 kilotons.
The report sent to key committees in Congress by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in October provides a general outline of U.S. capabilities for dealing with what defense officials believe is a growing gap in U.S. military response: The ability to attack deeply buried, hardened enemy targets that are suspected of housing weapons of mass destruction.
The House International Relations Committee has called for renewed U.N. inspections in Iraq on the belief that it has rebuilt its nuclear, biological and chemical weapons programs since Saddam Hussein stopped allowing inspections in 1998.
Notes and diagrams found in houses vacated by al-Qaida fighters in Afghanistan also point to an effort to create weapons of mass destruction.
The report said that enhancements expected to be completed by 2005 to an array of conventional weapons, including laser-guided bombs and cruise missiles, should be able to destroy most underground facilities. But it maintains such weapons cannot penetrate the most deeply buried facilities.
Defense officials and nuclear scientists "have completed initial studies on how existing nuclear weapons can be modified to defeat those (deeply buried targets) that cannot be held at risk with conventional high-explosive weapons," the report said.
It acknowledges that any decision to proceed with a nuclear device for attacking underground targets would be considered part of the administration's broader plans for the nuclear stockpile and overall nuclear weapons policy.
But it said that a joint nuclear planning board has been established to examine the use of nuclear weapons as bunker busters. The idea of using low-yield nuclear warheads to attack deeply buried enemy targets has been discussed for years.
It was the subject of a classified study concluded in 1997 and has been frequently discussed by nuclear weapons scientists at the Los Alamos and Sandia national laboratories.
But Butcher said the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the anthrax scare, and the U.S. war on terrorism in Afghanistan have brought the issue of chemical and biological weapons, and how to respond to them, into much greater prominence.
And "it clearly brings into much higher relief" the debate over whether to develop and use a tactical nuclear weapon in response to terrorism, said Butcher. If one were used, he added, the radioactive fallout and political fallout "would be very bad indeed."
The essence of the report sent to Congress was first reported Tuesday by The Albuquerque Journal. A copy of the report was distributed by Nuclear Watch of New Mexico, based in Santa Fe, on its web site.
The report had been requested by Sens. John Warner, R-Va., and Wayne Allard, R-Colo., and was part of this year's defense authorization legislation.
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