New push for bunker-buster nuke

It was March 1996. Libya had tunneled deep into a mountain south of Tripoli, allegedly to build a large chemical-weapons plant. To stop the project, the Clinton administration threatened to retaliate with "the whole range" of US weaponry – up to and including a nuclear bomb.

Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi apparently heeded the warning. Construction at the site halted, US intelligence showed.

Yet the Libyan complex was just one of more than 10,000 underground military facilities that have mushroomed in number during the 1990s in more than 70 countries – from Iraq, Iran, and North Korea to Russia and China. Of those, more than 1,400 are known or suspected to be sheltering weapons of mass destruction (WMD), ballistic missiles, or military commands, according to US government reports.

To counter what the Pentagon considers a growing threat from such "hard and deeply buried targets," the Bush administration today is accelerating steps to develop more effective, earth-penetrating nuclear bombs.

The move – which is gaining momentum with a push in Congress for funding in the 2003 budget – comes charged with controversy. Challengers say the weapons are unnecessary, would still produce heavy collateral damage, and could spur nuclear proliferation if they are used to threaten non-nuclear states with preemptive strikes.

Attacking what he called the administration's "reckless new nuclear weapons policy," House Armed Service Committee member Rep. Tom Allen (D) of Maine said this month it could "ignite a nuclear arms race."

But Defense officials say that better bunker-busting nukes will provide vital deterrence against US foes. "The president ought to have options that enhance his ability ... to credibly threaten those targets," says a senior Pentagon official. "The obvious purpose of having a lower-yield weapon would be to ... make threatened use of that capability more credible and thereby to enhance deterrence."

The administration's immediate aim is to improve on its only existing earth-penetrating nuclear weapon, the 1,200-pound B61-11 gravity bomb. Entering the US arsenal in 1997, the B61-11 has an selectable yield of from 1 to 300 kilotons, nuclear experts say. But it can reach only a limited depth underground – 10 to 20 feet in a dry lake bed in one government test – and "cannot survive penetration into many types of terrain," according to the Pentagon's Nuclear Posture Review submitted to Congress in January.

A study is planned on the design and cost of a heavier, 5,000-pound modification of the B61-11, to see whether it could burrow deeper with its original warhead intact. Greater depth, in theory, would allow a lower-yield bomb to cause more underground destruction while also limiting nuclear fallout on the surface. Legislation moving through the House this week grants $15 million in the fiscal year 2003 budget to study such a "robust nuclear earth penetrator."

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