What's next? Fallout in Texas?

[Louis Proyect]

LA Times, Feb. 3, 2003
Making Nuclear Bombs 'Usable'

Pentagon wants to see whether deep bunkers can be blasted without the damage spreading.

By Richard T. Cooper, Times Staff Writer

WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon has launched a fast-track program to develop computers that would help decide when nuclear weapons might be used to destroy deep underground bunkers harboring weapons of mass destruction or other critical targets, documents show.

The program, described in unpublished Pentagon documents obtained by The Times, seeks to design an array of high-speed computers that could take in structural and other data on a prospective underground target, calculate the amount of force needed to destroy it, then determine whether a nuclear "bunker buster" would be required.

In addition, the system — supplemented by teams of experts — would assess the potential for killing nearby civilians and inflicting other collateral damage, including the spread of radioactive dust thrown into the air by the nuclear device and the dispersal of toxic chemicals from weapons in the bunker.

The $1.26-billion program is the latest step in a little-publicized campaign by some senior administration officials, members of Congress and their supporters in the defense community to press for a new generation of smaller nuclear weapons as an alternative to the huge but obsolescent strategic missiles of the Cold War.

Both the White House and the Defense Department declined to comment.

full: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-nukes3feb03,0,1013258.story

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