BUNKER-​​BUSTER WIPED OUT

I couldn’t quite believe it, when I first got the news over the week­end. But it’s true: “Congress, in a sur­pris­ing blow to the Bush administration’s nuclear weapons ambi­tions, has elim­i­nated fund­ing for two major bomb research pro­grams, includ­ing a so-​​called bunker buster that the pres­i­dent had said was essen­tial to the country’s secu­rity,” the San Francisco Chronicle (among oth­ers) is report­ing.
The bunker-​​buster or, more for­mally, the “Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator” is a weapon that bur­rows about 10 yards beneath the ground before unleash­ing hell. And it has been a con­tentious issue in Congress ever since it was pro­posed by the Administration in 2002. Last year, leg­is­la­tors cut funds for the project in half. Then, in June, a key Republican rep­re­sen­ta­tive Ohio’s David Hobson, who chairs the House Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee moved to wipe out funds for the pro­gram entirely. The money was later restored in the Senate.
Now, Hobson seems to have struck again, ful­fill­ing a pledge John Kerry made in the Presidential debates, to ban the bunker-​​buster.
“The U.S. has about 10,000 war­heads in the stock­pile already. To him, that num­ber is enough,” Hobson’s press sec­re­tary, Sara Perkins, tells the Chron.
But while Hobson has com­plained long and loud about America’s Cold War-​​sized atomic stock­pile, there’s a lit­tle more to his bunker-​​buster oppo­si­tion than that. Hobson has also been a big-​​time critic of the Energy Department bureau­crats in charge of the country’s nuclear weapons pro­grams. And he’s not afraid to use issues like the bunker-​​buster as a club against them. As I wrote back in June:

[In 2003], he pared back pro­posed fund­ing for some weapons research pro­grams. For oth­ers, he with­held funds until the Bush admin­is­tra­tion came up with a plan to shrink the country’s nuclear weapons stock­pile. That road map — to halve the American arse­nal by 2012 — was sub­mit­ted last week.
“After sev­eral years of frus­tra­tion, we finally put a fence around some of (Energy Department’s) advanced con­cepts fund­ing and said that it would not be avail­able until the depart­ment deliv­ered a revised stock­pile plan,” Hobson said in a state­ment. “I admit that we held a DOE pro­gram hostage until they pro­duced this revised stock­pile plan, and you know what? — the power of the purse does work!” 

November 23rd, 2004 | Nukes | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.