The U.S. nuclear program 'is rusting its way to disarmament,' some experts say
As weapons age, U.S. should develop a new generation of hydrogen bombs, many experts say
Two
decades after the U.S. began to scale back its nuclear forces in the
aftermath of the Cold War, a number of military strategists, scientists
and congressional leaders are calling for a new generation of hydrogen
bombs.
Warheads in the nation's stockpile are an average of 27 years old,
which raises serious concerns about their reliability, they say.
Provocative nuclear threats by Russian President Vladimir Putin have
added to the pressure to not only design new weapons but conduct
underground tests for the first time since 1992.
"We
should get rid of our existing warheads and develop a new warhead that
we would test to detonation," said John Hamre, deputy secretary of
Defense in the Clinton administration and now president of the Center
for Strategic and International Studies. "We have the worst of all
worlds: older weapons and large inventories that we are retaining
because we are worried about their reliability."
The incoming Republican-controlled Congress could be more open to exploring new weapons.
"It
seems like common sense to me if you're trying to keep an aging machine
alive that's well past its design life, then you're treading on thin
ice," said Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Texas), chairman-elect of the House
Armed Services Committee. "Not to mention, we're spending more and more
to keep these things going."
Thornberry also offered support for
renewed testing, saying, "You don't know how a car performs unless you
turn the key over. Why would we accept anything less from a weapon that
provides the foundation for which all our national security is based
on?"
Some of the key technocrats and scientists of the Cold War
say the nation has become overly confident about its nuclear deterrence.
The nuclear enterprise, they say, "is rusting its way to disarmament."
"We
should start from scratch," said Don Hicks, who directed the Pentagon's
strategic weapons research during the Reagan administration. "We have
so much enriched uranium and plutonium left from old weapons that we
could use it properly for a new generation of weapons."
In the 25
years since the Cold War ended, the U.S. has significantly retreated
from the brinkmanship of the arms race, reducing its stockpile from a
peak of 31,000 nuclear weapons in 1967 to its current level of 4,804
weapons. Russia has cut its stockpile to about the same size.
After
the Soviet Union fell in 1991, the U.S. agreed to an international
moratorium on testing, though it never ratified the Comprehensive
Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty. Halting underground tests was seen as a crucial
step toward full nuclear disarmament because it would put a high
barrier against developing new weapons.
The
U.S. allowed much of its weapons complex to deteriorate, particularly
production facilities, as cooperation with Russia flourished in the
1990s.
Today, the signs of decay are pervasive at the Pantex
facility in Texas, where nuclear weapons are disassembled and repaired.
Rat infestation has become so bad that employees are afraid to bring
their lunches to work.
"They literally have to keep their lunch
bags on a shelf that's head high so it won't get eaten," Thornberry
said. "They find them on their computers, in the hallways. It's a
continual problem."
The buildings at the Y-12 National Security
Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn., are so old that a concrete ceiling recently
collapsed into a production area.
The Obama administration has a
$60-billion plan to modernize the Energy Department complex and update
weapons, including a new type of warhead that cannibalizes components
from older weapons.
The
device would combine an atomic trigger from one weapon with a
thermonuclear assembly from another. Called the interoperable warhead,
it would reduce the number of weapons designs from seven to five, on the
hopes that it would save money.
The device, which has been
derided as an atomic "Frankenbomb," has prompted criticism from arms
control factions. Advocates of a strong U.S. nuclear posture are not big
supporters, either.
"Mixing and mashing parts into configurations
that have never been tested before is not a good idea, by any means,"
said Kingston Reif, director for disarmament and threat reduction policy
at the Arms Control Assn. "It's going to cost money that we don't have
for a mission that plays an increasingly limited role in U.S. national
security."
Some of the nation's top nuclear weapons scientists say
a better option is to design new weapons better suited to current
threats.
In many ways, the growing
nuclear capability of China, coupled with the addition of North Korea,
Pakistan and India to the status of nuclear powers, has made deterrence
strategy more complicated than during the Cold War.
John S. Foster
Jr., former director of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and
chief of Pentagon research during the Cold War, said the labs should
design, develop and build prototype weapons that may be needed by the
military in the future, including a very low-yield nuclear weapon that
could be used with precision delivery systems, an electromagnetic pulse
weapon that could destroy an enemy's communications systems and a
penetrating weapon to destroy deeply buried targets.
"After more
than two decades, the nuclear deterrent could be in worse shape than we
want to believe," Foster said. "We need to demonstrate the proficiency
of our weapons labs and our strategic forces."
Restarting
design and production in the U.S., however, would requires billions of
dollars to build new facilities, including a metallurgy plant in New
Mexico for plutonium triggers and a uranium forge in Tennessee for
thermonuclear assemblies.
In addition, since the mid-1990s, the
National Nuclear Security Administration, the Energy Department branch
that oversees the atomic arsenal, has lost some of the expertise to
build weapons. Most nuclear lab scientists are older than 50, and
younger scientists have no experience building a weapon.
Moving
ahead with any agenda for producing new bombs will require surmounting
large political, financial and technological hurdles, all of which have
killed Energy Department attempts in the last two decades to design new
weapons.
Norton A. Schwartz, a retired four-star general who
served as Air Force chief of staff, said he sensed little support for a
new round of nuclear competition. "I don't see any appetite for breaking
these taboos," he said.
The political and environmental dynamics
of testing — detonations 100 miles from Las Vegas so powerful that
casinos would shake — are almost impossible to comprehend in today's
climate.
Siegfried
Hecker, a former director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory and now
a professor at Stanford University, said testingcould
cause another problem. A resumption of U.S. testing would probably
prompt other nuclear powers to resume as well, allowing them to catch up
with the U.S.' huge experimental lead.
The U.S. has by far the
greatest archive of test data, having conducted 1,032 nuclear tests.
Russia conducted 715 and China only 45.
Hecker
said the U.S. has so much experience, data and scientific capability
that it could build a new generation of weapons without testing.
Advocates
of a strong nuclear posture say that's an option worth pursuing because
the nation's aging weapons cannot go on indefinitely.
Absent an
international deal to eliminate every nation's nuclear stockpile, the
U.S. will eventually need new weapons to maintain its deterrent effect,
even if it renews some of the fear that gripped the world in the Cold
War.
"The interesting thing about a nuclear deterrent is that
enough of it has to be visible to scare the living daylights out of the
enemy," said Joe Braddock, a long-time Pentagon science advisor and
nuclear weapons effects expert. "But if you are not careful, you scare
the living daylights out of yourself."
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