BUSH OKS NEW NUKE
By BRIAN BLOMQUIST Email
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November 25, 2003 -- WASHINGTON - President Bush signed a huge new defense bill that includes millions of dollars for a small nuclear bomb designed to destroy deep, hardened underground bunkers. Among the many items tucked away in the $401 billion defense authorization act was a $15 million three-year research project by the Energy and Defense departments to create the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator.
The legislation repeals a decade-old ban on research into low-yield nuclear weapons.
The controversial new weapon would consist of a hard-nosed rocket able to penetrate 20 feet into the earth with a small-scale nuclear bomb, modified from an existing nuke, that would go off on a delay - so that it would explode at the deepest point.
Critics say that such a bomb would cause massive collateral damage if it were ever used, and that just introducing it might mean an end to the ban on underground nuclear testing.
They also say the whole idea of building small-scale nukes - the RNEP would be 5 kilotons - would blur the distinction between conventional and nuclear war.
But defense officials said they're seeing a trend toward deeper and harder bunkers being built by enemy forces, as well as caves. The underground shelters are used for command and control operations, and even stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction.
Adm. James Ellis, commander of the U.S. Strategic Command, testified that the deepest bunkers cannot be destroyed by the biggest conventional bombs, even the 4,000-pound "bunker-buster" that recently smashed a 60-foot-deep hideout in Baghdad.
"Our enemies seek to inflict mass casualties, without fielding mass armies. They hide in the shadows, and they're often hard to strike," Bush said at yesterday's bill-signing ceremony.
"The terrorists are cunning and ruthless and dangerous, as the world saw on September the 11th, 2001, and again in Istanbul last week.
"Yet these killers are now facing the United States of America, and a great coalition of responsible nations, and this threat to civilization will be defeated.
"Right now, America's armed forces are the best trained, best equipped and best prepared in the world. And this administration will keep it that way," Bush said.
"The bill I sign today authorizes $400 billion over the next fiscal year to prepare our military for all that lies ahead."
