(Updated: Originally posted January 10, 2007)
"U.S. Selecting Hybrid Design for Warheads" by WILLIAM J. BROAD, DAVID E. SANGER and THOM SHANKER
WASHINGTON, Jan. 6 — The Bush administration is expected to announce next week a major step forward in the building of the country’s first new nuclear warhead in nearly two decades.
The new weapon would not add to but replace the nation’s existing arsenal of aging warheads, with a new generation meant to be sturdier, more reliable, safer from accidental detonation and more secure from theft by terrorists.
If approved by President Bush and financed by Congress, would require a huge refurbishment of the nation’s complex for nuclear design and manufacturing, with the overall bill estimated at more than $100 billion.
But nothing for you, 'Murkns!
It also raises the question of whether the United States will ultimately be forced to end its moratorium on underground nuclear testing to make sure the new design works.... officials in the administration... said that the White House should make no commitment on testing.
If Mr. Bush decides to deploy the new design, he could touch off a debate.... critics have long argued that this is the wrong moment for Washington to produce a new nuclear warhead of any kind.... when the administration is trying to convince the world to put sanctions on North Korea and Iran to halt their nuclear programs....
Any move to improve the American arsenal will be seen as hypocritical, an effort by the United States to extend its nuclear lead over other countries. Should the United States decide to conduct a test... China and Russia... would feel free to do the same.
Gen. James E. Cartwright, head of the Strategic Command, which controls the nation’s nuclear arsenal, argue that because the United States provides a nuclear umbrella for so many allies, it is critical that its stockpile be as reliable as possible:
“We will not ‘un-invent’ nuclear weapons, and we will not walk away from the world. Right now, it is not the nation’s position that zero is the answer to the size of our inventory. So, if you are going to have these weapons, they should be safe, they should be able to be secured, and they should be reliable if used.”
Yeah, what a shame and preservation of life if we dropped one and it DIDN'T GO OFF, huh?
How sad! All those lives spared!
General Cartwright, saying that it is critical to keep America’s “intellectual capital” in producing weapons alive:
“We are starting to get to the point where the people who actually have experience designing a weapon are reaching that point at which they will start to leave the industry. And are we able to attract the minds that we will need to sustain this activity?”
In the few years since its debut, the reliability program has grown from a fringe effort at the nation’s nuclear arms laboratories into a centerpiece of the Bush administration’s nuclear policy....
A generation of more reliable arms would give military commanders the confidence to abandon the current philosophy of holding onto huge inventories of old weapons, and could speed a shrinkage of the American arsenal from some 6,000 warheads to perhaps 2,000 or less.
Yeah, cloak the advancement of our nuclear agenda in a move of "reduction," right!
Critics say a main justification for the program vanished in November when a secretive federal panel known as Jason found that the plutonium “pits” at the heart of many nuclear warheads aged far better than expected, with most able to work reliably for a century or more.
Lisbeth Gronlund, a nuclear arms specialist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a private group based in Cambridge, Mass.:
“This research eliminates a major rationale."
Since that study was revealed, the administration has emphasized other reasons to build a new warhead, especially new, highly classified technologies to make the weapons virtually impossible to use if they fall into unfriendly hands. Other objectives are to simplify manufacturing, reduce toxic byproducts and improve safety of triggering devices.
Yup, any excuse will do!!!
We'll always find a reason to have and make these monstrous weapons!
As a signatory to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, the United States and other nuclear weapons states have committed, at least on paper, to the ultimate goal of “the liquidation of all their existing stockpiles” of weapons.
General Cartwright cautioned that much of the criticism of the program was cast in terms of achieving that disarmament:
"[The government’s policy, and that of the new warhead program, was to maintain a nuclear stockpile] that would be the smallest practical to maintain its credibility. [The nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile as] an artifact of the cold war — cold war both in its delivery systems and its characteristics and certainly in its technology. We stopped testing a while back. So, from the testing standpoint, we have not been fielding new weapons. From the standpoint of engineering and design, there has been only marginal activity, mostly reacting to the age of components.”
So that is where we are headed.
Updating and advancing our nuclear arsenal.
How hypocritical!
