Back to the good old cold war mindset?

Ragusa · Feb 28, 2003

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Seemingly old plans and concepts have a remarkable resistance to change and as ever old heads can't get rid of their ideas .... seemingly the cold-war warheads want more warheads. Or maybe it's just that the Lawrence Livermore labs run out of funds and tasks .... long live lobbying

US plans for mini-nuke arsenal revealed

By Will Knight

A leaked Pentagon document has confirmed that the US is considering the introduction of a new breed of smaller nuclear weapons designed for use in conventional warfare. Such a move would mean abandoning global arms treaties.

The document, obtained by the Los Alamos Study Group, a nuclear weapons watchdog based in the US, describes plans for a gathering of senior military officials and nuclear scientists at the US Strategic Command in Omaha, Nebraska, during the week of 4 August.

The meeting would discuss further development, testing and introduction of a new generation of low-yield nuclear weapons. These weapons, with a destructive power of less than five kilotons, could be designed to penetrate an underground bunker before detonating. The Hiroshima bomb dropped by the US in 1945 had a yield of about 15 kilotons.

The US military believes mini-nukes may provide a stronger deterrent to rogue states. This is because the US would be more willing to use them than standard nuclear weapons, which have yields of hundreds of kilotons.

US government officials have confirmed the authenticity of the document, but say that it covers "very long range planning" and "what-if scenarios".

Enhanced radiation
Also on the agenda for the August meeting would be enhanced radiation weapons, also known as neutron weapons. These produce a large amount of radiation without a devastating blast and can be used to decimate weapons stockpiles and troops without destroying much infrastructure.

Patrick Garrett, an analyst with the military think-tank GlobalSecurity.org, says the document is alarming. "It's like looking at the cold war all over again," he told New Scientist.

"The fact that they're actually going to sit down and to talk about reliability issues and what would need to happen for production, testing and guidance, means these people are particularly serious about deploying these things sometime very soon," he says.

Garrett adds that the long-term implications of contaminating a target with radiation may not be well understood. "I don't think these people understand that any use of a nuclear weapon is a bad use," he says.

Treaty threat
The Los Alamos Study Group also condemns the plans for threatening international non-proliferation agreements. Greg Mello, head of LASG, says: "It is impossible to overstate the challenge these plans pose to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the existing nuclear test moratorium, and US compliance with Article VI of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, which is binding law in the US."

Recent US interest in the development of smaller, more targeted nuclear weapons is well documented. New Scientist reported in October 2000 that the US Defense Appropriations Bill ordered a study of the feasibility of low-yield nuclear weapons. This overturned a ban on research into the development of battlefield nuclear weapons imposed in 1993.

In November 2002, New Scientist also reported a further $15m in US government funding for research into a nuclear "bunker buster", called the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator.(taken from http://www.globalsecurity.org/org/news/2003/030219-nukes01.htm and again taken from New Scientist)
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The part about enhanced radiation weapons is unprecise. Neutron bombs were developed to counter the russian threat of a massed armored assault in europe. The problem was that these had to be destroyed individually as they would to a good part resist a nuclear blast. That, so felt the US strategists, endangered the concept of nuclear deterrence as you cannot deter who you cannot hit.

Enhanced radiation weapons now utilise the ability of neutrons to penetrate armor and to kill the inhabitants of armored vehicles who would be protected from alpha and gamma rays as well as from blast.
The statement that they leave little damage to infrastructure is pretty questionable as the "core effect" would still be that of a small nuke - with all the niceties like blast, radiation and fallout. Additionally neutron radiation induces gamma radiation in material exposed to it. The exposed material, like tanks or artillery, would be radiating for quite a while. Not to mention the fact that it is a particularly cruel death to die of radiation, even when you would die in the light of your brightly luminating body (that's in fact what neutrons do to a human) and not in utter darkness ...

I still recap how great it felt to do radiation recce when I was in the army and to hear the geiger tube crisping and crisping in the otherwise complete silence of my protective suit .... indicating: You're at the wrong place at the wrong time

Besides, it's a little surprising that the US would even go so far to violate as important treaties as the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty .... we certainly don't need another nuclear arms race - as russia and china would most likely follow.

[ February 28, 2003, 10:01: Message edited by: Ragusa ]

Taluntain · Feb 28, 2003

Well, you know how it is in politics... Treaties are only respected for as long as whoever respects them profits by it. As soon as there is no more gain (or if there is more to gain by breaching them than by respecting them), they are breached as if they had never existed. (I'm sure I don't need to give examples, there are plenty in the air.)

So something like this coming from the US is not really a surprise, but I don't expect that US is the only country in the world doing things like this. Mostly every country with enough money is secretly developing things they shouldn't (one way or another), and couldn't use at this point, but might want to at some point in the future in an "if/then" situation.

It is sad, however, to see how some powerful countries can do just about anything they want because there is no one to step on their toes.

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Back to the good old cold war mindset?

Ragusa Eternal Halfling Paladin Veteran