Pentagon urges funding for nuclear bunker-buster study

The Defense Department, saying the ability to carry out its new nuclear policy is at stake, has urged Congress to fully fund a study of new nuclear weapons designs to destroy hardened and underground bunkers with weapons of mass destruction.

As part of a series of memos appealing budget actions taken by the House and Senate Armed Services committees, the Pentagon last week asked lawmakers to approve all of the $15.5 million requested by the Energy Department for the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator when they iron out a final fiscal 2003 defense authorization bill.

House legislation supports the Bush administration proposal, but the Senate bill forbids the National Nuclear Security Administration from pursuing the project. House and Senate conferees plan to negotiate a final bill when they return to Washington next month.

The Pentagon says its recently revised nuclear policy, which raises the profile of nuclear weapons in military planning, depends highly on developing such a weapon design. Without it, the military's ability to defeat emerging threats to national security would be limited, the Defense Department said.

"This concept is a critical component of the capability envisioned by the Nuclear Posture Review," the Pentagon's office of legislative affairs told lawmakers on July 29, "and it is essential that the Congress authorize and fully fund the administration's $15.5 million request."

The Bush administration, seeking to strengthen nuclear deterrence, signaled for the first time in the January review that the United States might strike pre-emptively at states or terrorist groups developing chemical, biological or nuclear weapons. The Nuclear Posture Review called for developing a nuclear bunker-buster to attack hidden weapons of mass destruction programs without dispersing contaminants into the atmosphere.

"Cutting the [Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator] program would severely hamper the quest to overcome emerging threats including hard and deeply buried targets," the Pentagon said.

Key lawmakers and arms control advocates, however, believe that the arguments in favor of a nuclear bunker buster are weak. They fear its development will only harm nonproliferation efforts.

Developing a nuclear warhead to defeat hardened and deeply buried targets would adversely affect both the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the British American Security Information Council said in a July report. The move would raise doubts about Washington's pledge to reduce reliance on nuclear weapons and might require new nuclear testing to prove the utility of new weapons, the group said.

The money, if fully restored in the final bill, would build on efforts already underway at national labs. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is studying a modified B83 nuclear warhead and Los Alamos National Laboratory is studying the feasibility of modifying the B61, one version of which can already penetrate earth.