Building nuclear weapons for all the wrong reasons

[Vympel]

Link

We Keep Building Nukes For All the Wrong Reasons
Dr. Bruce G. Blair, CDI President, bblair@cdi.org
First appeared in The Washington Post May 25, 2003.

You would think the United States would be getting out of the business of pursuing new nuclear weapons. After all, the Cold War is over, President Bush warns of the danger of weapons of mass destruction and the administration has cast doubt on the role of deterrence in stopping the greatest threats of the 21st century — "rogue states" and terrorists.

Yet last week Congress approved further research on nuclear bunker busters, weapons that can penetrate deeply into the ground before exploding, and "mini-nukes," weapons with explosive yields below five kilotons. Although spending on these programs will remain minuscule by Pentagon standards, the stakes are higher than the dollars suggest. America's nuclear future hangs in the balance. The underlying question: If the United States wants to reduce nuclear tensions and arsenals, why is anyone at the Pentagon even thinking about building new nuclear weapons?

In the public debate over bunker busters and mini-nukes, it is commonly assumed that the weapons' primary targets are the states still turning on the "axis of evil" — Iran and North Korea — as well as the other leading candidates for that dubious distinction: Syria, Sudan, Libya and Algeria. All have aspired at one time or another to acquire chemical and biological, if not nuclear, weapons. These countries indeed have come into the nuclear cross hairs of the U.S. Strategic Command (SAC) in Omaha, Neb. Nuclear targeting of a dozen or so countries is a cottage industry now that President Bush has blessed the notion that U.S. nuclear weapons can, and should, be adapted for use against a growing list of enemy weapons in a widening array of circumstances. That notion was floated by Bush's 2001 Nuclear Posture Review, and codified in presidential nuclear guidance issued in 2002.

The military utility of new U.S. nukes, however, would be limited, while the risk to local civilians and friendly soldiers would be high. A nuclear bunker buster powerful enough to destroy a deeply buried target would not penetrate the Earth far enough to avoid venting deadly radioactive material into the atmosphere. The practical maximum depth for earth-penetrating warheads currently may not exceed 50 feet or so; at that depth, the warhead yield could not exceed a small fraction of one kiloton without spewing fallout. If strength of the warhead were that small, it might not destroy a hardened subterranean target. So the choice is between an ineffective weapon or one that could kill many thousands of local inhabitants and friendly soldiers.

No U.S. regional commander would approve nuclear strikes of questionable military impact that would also contaminate a battlefield, especially given the variety of non-nuclear options at his disposal, from precision-guided conventional weapons to assaults by Special Forces. Even against the most subterranean of adversaries — North Korea, with its innumerable caves and mazes — nuclear strikes and the contamination left behind would merely complicate and delay a conventional victory that even South Korea alone could win within 10 to 30 days.

Die-hard nuclear war planners actually have their eyes on targets in Russia and China, including missile silos and leadership bunkers. For these planners, the Cold War never ended. Their top two candidates in Russia are located inside theYamantau and Kosvinsky mountains in the central and southern Urals. Both were huge construction projects begun in the late 1970s, when U.S. nuclear firepower took special aim at the Communist Party's leadership complex. Fearing a decapitating strike, the Soviets sent tens of thousands of workers to these remote sites, where U.S. spy satellites spotted them still toiling away in the late 1990s. Yamantau is expected to be operating soon.

According to diagrams and notes given to me in the late 1990s by SAC senior officers, the Yamantau command center is inside a rock quartz mountain, about 3,000 feet straight down from the summit. It is a wartime relocation facility for the top Russian political leadership. It is more a shelter than a command post, because the facility's communications links are relatively fragile. As it turned out, the quartz interferes with radio signals broadcast from inside the mountain. Therefore the main communications links are either cable or radio transmitters that broadcast from outside the center. These are vulnerable to nuclear weapons from the existing U.S. arsenal and would be even more vulnerable to new bunker busters.

Kosvinsky is regarded by U.S. targeteers as the crown jewel of the Russian wartime nuclear command system, because it can communicate through the granite mountain to far-flung Russian strategic forces using very-low-frequency (VLF) radio signals that can burn through a nuclear war environment. The facility is the critical link to Russia's "dead hand" communications network, designed to ensure semi-automatic retaliation to a decapitating strike.

This doomsday apparatus, which became operational in 1984 during the height of the Reagan-era nuclear tensions, is an amazing feat of creative engineering. It features hard radio nodes near Moscow that can use remote control to launch communications rockets, which in turn can launch virtually the entire Russian missile force without human intervention. But the Moscow-area radio nodes have grown vulnerable over the past 20 years. Kosvinsky restores Russia's confidence in its ability to carry out a retaliatory strike.

Kosvinsky came on line recently, which could be one explanation for U.S. interest in a new nuclear bunker buster. If there's a new item on the target list, U.S. strategy requires a weapon to destroy it. Even with a "robust nuclear earth penetrator," as the bunker buster is called, destroying Kosvinsky is not an easy assignment; the command center is protected by roughly 1,000 feet of granite. More importantly, why would we want to if Russia is no longer the enemy?

While logical in the alternate universe of Cold War-era nuclear war planning, building a new weapon to threaten these mountain redoubts would not increase our security. President Bush's nuclear guidance doubtless instructs the Pentagon to plan the destruction of Yamantau and Kosvinsky, along with 2,000 other targets in Russia and hundreds more in China. But such targeting requires very high-yield weapons, typically 10 to 100 times more destructive than the bombs dropped on Japan in 1945. We are talking about a doomsday plan in which Yamantau and Kosvinsky are struck as part of an all-out nuclear exchange that would kill hundreds of millions of people. Apart from the horror of such destruction, now that Russia is no longer the "evil empire," such a war seems more and more far-fetched.

So what is the real driving force behind the administration's chase for bunker busters and mini-nukes? It is the U.S. nuclear security establishment's desire to preserve — indefinitely — a nuclear weapon design capability at the national laboratories, particularly Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore. The labs fear that atrophying intellectual capital in this arena would leave the United States crippled if it ever wished to re-start a nuclear design effort in a national emergency. They are therefore trying hard to portray new nuclear weapons as essential to national security.

This argument is self-serving for the national laboratories. Officials there recognize that their mission is shrinking. Where nuclear weapons once offered unique military solutions, precision conventional weapons now can do the job. As long as two decades ago, a SAC study found that most of the Soviet "soft" targets, such as electricity generating plants located east of the Ural Mountains, could be destroyed by cruise missiles armed with conventional warheads. SAC actually proposed replacing nuclear weapons with such warheads in the U.S. strategic war plan. But both Strategic Command and the nuclear laboratories are peddling the case for bunker busters and mini-nukes because of their own stakes in new nuclear weapons.

At another level, however, this is not only a story of bureaucratic self-interest. The nation faces a profound choice. The United States can continue basic nuclear weapons research. However, it should forgo designing, building, testing and fielding new weapons. This would enable the nation to maintain and nurture its storehouse of intellectual capital, while adequately supporting critical missions such as nuclear bomb disposal and safeguards. And it would still promote nonproliferation and arms control.

Designing bunker busters and mini-nukes or any other new nuclear weapon is yesterday's agenda. The old nuclear game is ending. The new missions that will make Americans secure and attract new recruits to the nuclear enterprise almost certainly will revolve around the challenge of preventing nuclear terrorism.

Bruce Blair, a former Minuteman launch officer, is president of the Center for Defense Information, a nonpartisan think tank.

Yamauntu is a focal point for all the delirious ranting of the 'vast commie Russian conspiracy theory' wing of the kook fringe of the internet, I should note. A google search should yield many theories: they're hiding hundreds of SRBM and MRBMs banned under INF there, building new weapons, etc etc

[Sea Skimmer]

Yamauntu is a focal point for all the delirious ranting of the 'vast commie Russian conspiracy theory' wing of the kook fringe of the internet, I should note. A google search should yield many theories: they're hiding hundreds of SRBM and MRBMs banned under INF there, building new weapons, etc etc

Fringe? Might be if Russia hadn't done those things before, Russia has built complete underground nuclear weapons planets with reactors. Russia has concealed hundreds illegal INF nuclear weapons underground. Russia has offered several dozen explanations for this complex, all-civilian, yet has blocked all attempts by US and other nations officials to visit it.


The author of this article does not impressive. This is clearly demonstrated by claiming planners doing their jobs are cold war relics or in another universe. If nukes are so very unimportant and the US is just warmongering then why is Russia still fielding new ICBM's?

[Axis Kast]

China is building new weapons as we speak. The Russians have for decades possessed MAD capability of their own. If not already underway, one can bet that Moscow will kick-start its own nuclear upgrades in coming years. Much of the problem is fear of an American missile shield. Both the Russian Federation and People’s Republic of China worry that a comprehensive nuclear defense by both land- and space-based munitions could render vast percentages of their older weapons inadequate, however unlikely – and financially prohibitive – any such endeavor would be on the Americans’ part. This boils over into general opposition for any kind of nuclear improvement in the United States whatsoever, because, of course, any successful deployment of a missile shield immediately brings into question the MAD potential for either Asian (well, for Russia’s part, Eurasian) superpower. And as I’ve said before, a great deal of that position is silly hyperbole since the countless trillions of dollars needed to build an anti-ballistic missile protection and pursuit network aren’t exactly available and probably – as in 99.9% positive – never will be. That means its jealousy that the United States can afford to improve its systems. Not that it’s likely to increase tensions anyway. Those new weapons don’t mean that everybody loses MAD either. The Chinese have an arsenal of over four hundred warheads, and the Russians over ten thousand at last count. And since the United States’ perfectly rational leadership won’t conscience the loss of even one city in atomic rain – never mind that the dream of adequate ABM defense [around which this whole fear exists] rests somewhere between sending a manned mission out past Pluto and sinking the country of France -, the nuclear ante isn’t being raised at all. It’s really just a bunch of verbose bullshit by our friendly competitors trying to trick us moral giants into questioning our own motives. Well, to that I tell you, thanks a million - but not this year.

And by the way … Wanting to keep our boys in Los Alamos on their toes and constantly cracking the intellectual whip isn’t exactly a poor idea. What do you think the Russian military’s been doing with their conventional designers since the fall of the Soviet Union?

[NapoleonGH]

when we have enough nukes to destroy every human and almost every other living being on the planet, we have no need for new weapons regardless of what the chinese and russians can field, so long as they cannot knock out weapons out of the sky, it really doesnt matter if we can only destroy the earth 10 times over but they can do it 20 times over now does it?

[Axis Kast]

when we have enough nukes to destroy every human and almost every other living being on the planet, we have no need for new weapons regardless of what the chinese and russians can field, so long as they cannot knock out weapons out of the sky, it really doesnt matter if we can only destroy the earth 10 times over but they can do it 20 times over now does it?

No, actually, it does - and the article proves the point.

Right now, we're talking about specifically hardened bunkers designed to withstand general area-strikes. Hence the need for smaller, more precise weapons with which to do "busting."

Then there's also the continued necessity of having to upgrade older machinery - which could always fail after so many years -, and of improving guidance to ensure that in a small war - against Iran, say -, we hit the desired area and nothing else.

[NapoleonGH]

Does it matter if 3 bunkers survive in the world so long as everything else the world over is dead?

[phongn]

IIRC, at the height of the Cold War we could "only" kill 70% of the world's population, maximum - and we had a lot more nukes then than we do now. The US nuclear forces peaked at around 20GT total, far more than today.

[Axis Kast]

Error - not every nuclear exchange must result in either mutually assured destruction or holocaust. Notice that a large number of nations and movements have in the past either built and tested, built, had access to, or began the requisite research to independently achieve nuclear fission. A handful of other nations either have access to nuclear fuels via civilian reactors managed by foreign firms or have signed Non-Proliferation Treaties ending several years of concentrated – and what is ultimately thought would be fruitful – research into weaponization. Let’s list.

The following nations possess nuclear weaponry: the United States of America, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom, France, the People’s Republic of China, India, Pakistan, North Korea, and Israel.

The following nations have at one time built and tested or served as long-term hosts to nuclear weapons (with significant operations performed by domestic personnel): South Africa, Kazakhstan, the Ukraine, Romania, and Belarus. That excludes both Uzbekistan and Poland, who themselves were home to major bases or outlying facilities for the Soviet nuclear force. We can add Germany to this list too, for nuclear weapons were stationed for nearly a half-century on both sides of the Cold War divide.

The following nation has built nuclear weapons but never tested the same for lack of fissile material: Iraq. Another, Iran, is merely five years (at best) from achieving independent nuclear fission. The following nations sought, are seeking, or probably will seek nuclear weapons sometime within the next two decades: Argentina, Brazil, Egypt, Syria, Libya, Algeria, Serbia, Indonesia, and Cuba.

The following nations could potentially construct nuclear weapons if they so desired within two or fewer years: Japan, Australia, Canada, Italy, Spain, Taiwan, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Switzerland. The following nations certainly have sufficient intellectual capital and the money with which to do produce atomic arms on some level, although there is no guarantee the programs would be as short: Portugal, Turkey, and possibly Mexico.

The following nations or organizations are suspected of dealing in fissile materials: Sudan and Chechnya.

Clearly, there are numerous “second-tier” powers without the potential for Mutually Assured Destruction against whom current nuclear powers might seek to defend themselves and a large number of options for non-state actors (or even members of the “Axis of Evil”) by which to acquire information, equipment, and expertise.

[phongn]

Error - not every nuclear exchange must result in either mutually assured destruction or holocaust.

Once one flies, they all fly, it's merely a matter of time when you bring in major nuclear powers.

[The Albino Raven]

IIRC, at the height of the Cold War we could "only" kill 70% of the world's population, maximum - and we had a lot more nukes then than we do now. The US nuclear forces peaked at around 20GT total, far more than today.

Still a shitload of dead and dying folk. Not to mention the permanenty devastating effect on world agriculture, meaning that most of the world is still fucked if nuclear war goes down.

Clearly, there are numerous “second-tier” powers without the potential for Mutually Assured Destruction against whom current nuclear powers might seek to defend themselves and a large number of options for non-state actors (or even members of the “Axis of Evil”) by which to acquire information, equipment, and expertise.

The current nuclear powers can defend themselves, becuase they are current nuclear powers, thats the whole point. Designing mini-nukes that can be dropped guilt free isnt going to make us any more defensible against nuclear weapons than we are with our current arsenal of both conventional and nuclear weapons.

[phongn]

Still a shitload of dead and dying folk. Not to mention the permanenty devastating effect on world agriculture, meaning that most of the world is still fucked if nuclear war goes down.

Nuclear winter is a myth, if that's what you're referring to.

[Axis Kast]

The current nuclear powers can defend themselves, becuase they are current nuclear powers, thats the whole point. Designing mini-nukes that can be dropped guilt free isnt going to make us any more defensible against nuclear weapons than we are with our current arsenal of both conventional and nuclear weapons.

Again, there's no reason to let your arsenal atrophy and antiquate merely because it's large and can serve a purpose.

Not to mention that those "mini-nukes that can be dropped guilt free" are indeed a great boon. They mean we can penetrate the earth and destroy bunkers previously unassailable by conventional means - all without the stigmatizing after-effects of a massive area-explosion.

[phongn]

There are certain uses these mininukes have over conventional munitions - they can destroy hardened CBW facilities and ensure the agents really are destroyed. Conventional penetrators cannot assure that. It's certainly better than groundbursting 9MT B53s over it.

[Axis Kast]

Amen.

[MKSheppard]

Yamauntu is a focal point for all the delirious ranting of the 'vast commie Russian conspiracy theory' wing of the kook fringe of the internet, I should note. A google search should yield many theories: they're hiding hundreds of SRBM and MRBMs banned under INF there, building new weapons, etc etc

You don't exactly excavacate an area equal in square miles to Washington
DC, to just sit and play hotel in WWIII

[Darth Wong]

when we have enough nukes to destroy every human and almost every other living being on the planet, we have no need for new weapons regardless of what the chinese and russians can field, so long as they cannot knock out weapons out of the sky, it really doesnt matter if we can only destroy the earth 10 times over but they can do it 20 times over now does it?

The P-T mass-extinction "dino-killer" asteroid struck this planet with an estimated 100 million megatons of KE. It killed off roughly 70% of the biosystem. The world's nuclear powers have a few thousand megatons worth of nuclear weapons. They would not kill off the whole population.

Indeed, OTA estimated that a simultaneous attack upon eighty different cities in the US with 1-megaton nuclear devices would kill only 5 million short-term. And the long-term environmental effects are somewhat exaggerated.

That's not to say that nuclear war isn't a horrible thing; it most certainly is. But many groups with an agenda have systematically distorted and exaggerated the public's view of just how destructive a nuclear war would really be, presumably because they felt that the end (discouraging nuclear war) justifies the means (discarding intellectual integrity).

[Vympel]

The author of this article does not impressive. This is clearly demonstrated by claiming planners doing their jobs are cold war relics or in another universe. If nukes are so very unimportant and the US is just warmongering then why is Russia still fielding new ICBM's?

Because the older ICBMs are reaching the end of their service lives and without a new ICBM (Topol-M) in production Russia is in danger of losing it's deterrent.

Besides, that's not even what the article is saying.

[Vympel]

You don't exactly excavacate an area equal in square miles to Washington
DC, to just sit and play hotel in WWIII

So would you argue that NORAD is filled with secret American uber-weapons

[Crayz9000]

Not to mention that those "mini-nukes that can be dropped guilt free" are indeed a great boon. They mean we can penetrate the earth and destroy bunkers previously unassailable by conventional means - all without the stigmatizing after-effects of a massive area-explosion.

Well, there is the slight problem of having radioactive gases pouring out of where the bunker used to be for a few dozen years or so.

But at least it's highly localized.

[phongn]

They want to try and detonate the nuke so deep that radioactive crap won't head to the surface. Unfortunately, that will mean a lot of irradiated junk down there.

[phongn]

So would you argue that NORAD is filled with secret American uber-weapons

Bah, you mean Raven Rock

[Sea Skimmer]

You don't exactly excavacate an area equal in square miles to Washington
DC, to just sit and play hotel in WWIII

So would you argue that NORAD is filled with secret American uber-weapons

Cheyenne mountains total excavated area is less then a square kilometer as I recall, and they where allowing tours of the thing at one point.
They had to move the half ton explosives they keep around to blast open the tunnels after a nuclear strike because it disturb some visitors.

[Sea Skimmer]

They want to try and detonate the nuke so deep that radioactive crap won't head to the surface. Unfortunately, that will mean a lot of irradiated junk down there.

Gases are going to be released no matter what, no metal in existence could be used to make a casing strong enough to penetrate the hundreds of feet needed for total containment.

However overall a small buried bomb, while dirty, will have mostly localized effects because there’s no huge blast reaching into the upper or even much of the lower atmosphere. Little in the way of bomb material escapes as well, though modern nukes don’t leave much of that behind, and its bomb material that creates long term long distance fallout.

[Axis Kast]

Because the older ICBMs are reaching the end of their service lives and without a new ICBM (Topol-M) in production Russia is in danger of losing it's deterrent.

And this argument applies to no one else?

It's good strategy for the United States to wait until its own deterrent is on so-called "last legs" to do anything about it? Just because the Russians will whine about "nuclear brinksmanship" as an alternative to having admit they're terrified that their MAD capability will disintegrate - which I have already proven is ludicrous at least inside the next fifty if not one hundred years - and America sideline them completely? Our current nuclear programs - or any of these planned upgrades and expansions - do nothing to "raise the ante" or change the potential for Russian security and response. Whatever comes out of Moscow is hopeless hyperbole and rhetoric designed to play on our moral fibres and have us shackle our own legs in irons.

[Sea Skimmer]

IIRC, at the height of the Cold War we could "only" kill 70% of the world's population, maximum - and we had a lot more nukes then than we do now. The US nuclear forces peaked at around 20GT total, far more than today.

I'm pretty sure it was far less then that, 70% might be true counting our chemical weapons as well. The bio agents where all trashed before our nuclear forces reached there peak yield IIRC.

Most of the "kill the world ten times over" crap is counting biochemical munitions being deployed with perfect dispersion would wide anyway.