Small Nuclear Weapons and the Hardened Bunker-exploding even a 1-kiloton nuclear weapon at a depth of 50 feet would eject 1 million cubic feet of radioactive debris into the air from a crater the size of Ground Zero.
MIRVman
and as I do more research I'm sure I will get up to speed rather
quickly... So......Could these weapons be used against the American
Public?
In February 2002, the United States put on the most impressive display
of precision bombing in the history of warfare and demonstrated the
unmatched power of the U.S. military. But despite this overwhelming
conventional superiority, the Bush administration is pursuing a new era
of smaller, less powerful nuclear weapons.
The Senate Armed Services Committee voted to end a 10-year-old ban on
the development of small nuclear arms, and the repeal of this ban is
expected to pass the full House and Senate as part of the defense
authorization bill later this month. In addition, the committee
approved the administration's request for funds by allotting $46.5
million to conduct further research on advanced nuclear weapons
concepts and to allow the Pentagon to recommence nuclear weapons
testing. Despite denials of plans to build such bombs, according to the
Nation, the Bush administration is the first since World War II to
endorse a policy not based on nuclear arms control
It's a shocking piece of legislation that shows the Pentagon wants the
option to use nuclear weapons not just for deterrence against nuclear
states but for war-fighting against non nuclear countries as well. Its
chief goal is the capability to destroy deeply buried bunkers, where it
believes rogue states may house weapons of mass destruction. That would
indeed be a good capability to have, but nuclear weapons can't provide
it.
If we wanted to use a nuclear weapon to destroy an underground bunker,
we'd need to know precisely where the bunker was located, and we'd need
to be very sure that destroying its contents was worth breaking a
58-year taboo against nuclear use, enraging our allies and friends and
scaring our enemies into developing their own atomic arsenals.
Our recent experience in Iraq shows just how elusive that certainty
would be. Of all the rogue states thought to be pursuing weapons of
mass destruction, Iraq should have been the one about which we had the
best information. After all, in addition to the work of our own
intelligence agencies, which made Iraq a priority, we also had eight
years of on-the-ground reports from U.N. weapons inspectors.
And yet 3 years after our forces crossed the Iraqi border, we have yet
to find any chemical or biological (let alone nuclear) weapons. That
does not mean they aren't there, but it does show how difficult it
would be to obtain intelligence good enough to sanction a nuclear first
strike.
Even if our intelligence were good enough, the depth to which a
speeding warhead can dig before it disintegrates is limited. Our
current earth-penetrating weapons can dig only a few meters into the
ground, and even with further research, physicists believe that the
limits of existing materials would prevent weapons from reaching below
50 feet. The bunkers we're worried about could be buried as deep as
1,000 feet.
The Bush administration had wanted to repeal the ban on low-yield
nuclear weapons because it thinks they can do the job while limiting
collateral damage, making their use more acceptable. But according to
nuclear physicist's , exploding even a 1-kiloton nuclear weapon at a
depth of 50 feet would eject 1 million cubic feet of radioactive debris
into the air from a crater the size of Ground Zero. And it wouldn't
destroy a target 1,000 feet down -- you'd need a weapon hundreds of
times larger to do that.
Logistical and technical arguments aside, using a nuclear weapon to
destroy a target in a non nuclear country would destroy U.S.
nonproliferation efforts. Our nuclear policy already balances on the
thin edge of hypocrisy -- after all, we have thousands of nuclear
weapons but we insist that others do not develop them. It's a one-sided
arrangement that has held only because of a treaty promise we made to
work toward nuclear disarmament.
That is a distant goal, but moving in the opposite direction is
inexcusable and self-defeating. Building new nuclear weapons would make
it nearly impossible to roll back nuclear programs in states such as
Iran, India and North Korea. Bush officials who support new nuclear
weapons ought to heed an old cliché and put themselves in the shoes of
their enemies.
What would they recommend to their leader if faced with a United States
that declared a doctrine of preemption, named countries against which
it was prepared to use nuclear weapons and sought to build new nuclear
weapons whose use would be more "acceptable"? In that situation, I'd
recommend immediately building a nuclear deterrent.
What about those bunkers? Well, if we have good enough intelligence, we
could probably seal them off by destroying entrances and air ducts.
And, if we needed to destroy a bunker itself, physicists are
researching the idea of dropping successive precision-guided munitions
on the same spot, digging a deeper hole with each strike until the
bunker is reached and breached. Intelligence and creativity are the
answers to this problem, not nuclear weapons.