A US plan for simpler, safer nuclear arms

Cold War-era US warheads are too complex for the needs of today's geopolitical climate, some say.

By Peter Grier | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

from the March 9, 2007 edition

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WASHINGTON - US nuclear weapons are among the most sophisticated scientific devices on the planet. Through the years of the cold war, US designers labored to make warheads that were frighteningly powerful, yet so small that as many as 10 could fit on top of a single missile.

Now the nation's nuclear bureaucracy believes the time has come to start replacing these complex weapons with simpler ones. Last week the Department of Energy announced the selection of a design for a new Reliable Replacement Warhead, meant to be safer, easier to manufacture, and more robust than current models.

If approved by Congress, development of this warhead could set the course for the US nuclear arsenal for decades to come.

But when it comes to nuclear weapons, does the US really need to swap Cadillacs for Fords? Critics say the current arsenal is reliable enough – and that any new US bomb would send the wrong message to potential nuclear proliferators such as Iran and North Korea.

"Other countries are going to look at this, and they are going to keep their warhead development and production options open," says Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association.

Stockpiles: cold war legacy

The current US nuclear stockpile is the legacy of decades of scientific and military competition with the Soviet Union. Driven by what they felt was a need to counter an existential threat to the nation, US scientists perfected methods of extracting enormous explosive yields from weapons that were also as small as possible.

That meant designing weapons with little margin for engineering or manufacturing error. For example, the W-88 submarine-launched warhead is crammed into a dart-thin reentry vehicle to decrease its susceptibility to wind and thus increase its accuracy. The W-76, an older Navy weapon, has a uranium radiation case the thickness of a soda can. That case must remain intact for a microsecond upon detonation if the warhead is to fully explode.

Throughout the cold war, US scientists also treated plutonium as a scarce and valuable resource and made weapons whose fissile hearts were relatively small.

But today's geostrategic world is vastly different than the one of decades ago. The US has no need to counter a large nuclear adversary move for move.

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