WHAT’S A “BUNKER BUSTER” NUKE?

In the debate tonight, Sen. Kerry made an aside about cut­ting the money to develop a new, “bunker-​​busting” nuclear weapon. What’s he talk­ing about?
Some of the bad guys’ most lethal arse­nals are assumed to be buried in deep, under­ground cav­erns — places that America’s cur­rent arse­nal has trou­ble hit­ting. So the Bush Administration would like to build a nuclear bomb — a “Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator” — that bur­rows into the ground before unleash­ing all kinds of atomic hell. The San Jose Mercury-​​News explained how it might work in a story last year:

A nuclear pen­e­tra­tor is built in the shape of a thin cylin­der with a pointed nose. Dropped from an air­plane, its weight and speed allow it to smash through the sur­face of the ground or punc­ture rock or con­crete. It buries itself 20 to 30 feet deep before explod­ing, Fred Celec, the deputy assis­tant to the sec­re­tary of defense for nuclear mat­ters, said. The power of the explo­sion “cou­ples” with the earth to send shock waves down toward buried targets.

Anti-​​nuclear groups are spooked by the new brand of bomb, of course. “Because of its earth pen­e­trat­ing capa­bil­ity, the RNEP is con­sid­ered by some in the Administration as a more “usable” nuclear weapon than exist­ing nuclear weapons,” says one.
But, accord­ing to the Merc-​​News, there may not be a whole lot of enthu­si­asm for the new nuke.
“If you can find some­body in a uni­form in the Defense Department who can talk about a new need” for nuclear bunker busters “with­out laugh­ing, I’ll buy him a cup of cof­fee,” said Robert Peurifoy, a retired vice pres­i­dent of Sandia National Laboratory.
THERE’S MORE: No. He. Didn’t. When asked about the biggest threat fac­ing America, President Bush men­tioned — after nuclear pro­lif­er­a­tion — his cocka­mamie mis­sile defense sys­tem. You know, the one that can’t pass its tests — and is being deployed any­way. When will this guy let a bad idea go?

September 30th, 2004 | Nukes | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.