(originally posted at:
Hoot at the Dark)
There has been a lot of controversy lately, and rightly so, over the Defense Department's continued development of the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator (RNEP) or 'Bunker Buster', a low yield nuclear weapon designed to penetrate and destroy hardened targets buried deep underground.
Yet the Bunker Buster is just part of an even more dangerous nuclear program in the works - the 'Reliable Replacement Warhead' (RRW).
From
Strategic Security Project:
The Department of Energy's (DOE) Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) Program is, as one might guess from the name, intended to develop more reliable nuclear warheads to replace existing warheads. One of the most important Congressional supporters of the Reliable Replacement Warhead Program, Congressman David Hobson of Ohio, was recently quoted saying, "This [the RRW] is a way to redo the weapon capability that we have and maybe make them more reliable, make them better mission capable."
On the surface, the idea of replacing old, worn out warheads with shiny new ones sounds might sound fairly innocuous. But this dangerous and wholly unnecessary program does nothing to advance security, and instead could very well trigger a new, global arms race.
More Reliable?
Of course the first question to be asked is whether the current US nuclear arsenal is actually in need of the upgrade. Has there been a significant degradation in weapons reliability? Experts say no.
Among several of the participants, who had extensive knowledge of nuclear weapons' design and the stockpile stewardship program, a debate arose about the reliability of the current arsenal. Some claimed that the current arsenal is 98% reliable while others challenged that number, arguing that the reliability is better than that. No one suggested the reliability was less. The fact is, the current arsenal is extremely reliable and there are no foreseeable problems that will change that assessment. (One should note that 98% "reliable" does not mean that 2% of the weapons will not go off, but that they might explode with a yield somewhat less than specified; so a 400 kT bomb that explodes with a yield of 300 kT is considered "unreliable.")
With the reliability of the current US nuclear arsenal at 98%, there is absolutely no need for an expensive upgrade program.
It is possible that an RRW could be more reliable than current weapons. If the current arsenal is 98% reliable, then an RRW could, in theory, be 99% reliable. But 98% is a pretty high bar to vault and it is not at all clear that an RRW could be made more reliable than existing weapons. Moreover, there is no conceivable meaningful difference between the two cases. If some war plan depends on the difference between 98% and 99%, then we need a new war plan, not a new warhead.
Indeed, if anything related to our nuclear weapons capability is in need of an upgrade, its not the warheads - its the rockets that deliver them.
The warheads sit atop missiles that are reckoned to be about 90% or so reliable, which swamps the unreliability of the warheads themselves. Indeed, given the finite number of weapons and tests that might be available even in theory, it will be difficult, from a statistical point view, to even measure the difference between 98% and 99%.
Thus there appears that RRW will provide no measurable increase in reliability over existing nuclear weapons systems.
In this case, the RRW is clearly a solution to a problem that we either do not have or don't need to fix. It is highly unlikely that the RRW will be more reliable than the highly reliable current arsenal and certainly not meaningfully more reliable.
Replacement?
So, if RRW fails to provide any meaningful increase in weapons reliability, why do we need to replace the existing warheads? In actuality, it is not all clear that RRW WILL replace the old warheads.
The Departments of Defense and Energy are not going to stop the stockpile stewardship program for existing warheads while the RRW is being developed. There are several hints that the RRW will be deployed, not in place of existing warheads, but in parallel with existing programs. Even if the new warhead replaces old warheads in a one-to-one exchange, the old warhead program will remain in place until it has been completely replaced by the new warhead. There is some indication that the military users will want to keep the two types of warheads deployed in parallel for some time, a decade or more, to reassure themselves that the RRW holds up to its billing, before completing any replacement.
So for a decade at least under the RRW program, the number of nuclear weapons in the US stockpile will actually be
increasing, justified by the circular logic that we must be sure the new warheads are as reliable as they ones they are intended to replace.
Agenda
So what is going on here? Why is the Pentagon strenuously pushing a reliability replacement program for its nuclear warheads that itself is neither reliable nor a replacement? The answer lies in Congress' strengthening resistance to Rumsfeld's desire for new types of nuclear capability. From Arms Control Today
For two years, Congress grudgingly went along with the administration's new weapons research proposals. But last year, in a refreshing blast of common sense, a bipartisan coalition blocked funding for new design concepts and modifications of existing warheads to create a new Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator (RNEP). Lawmakers rightly concluded that the pursuit of such weapons undermines vital efforts to convince other states to exercise nuclear restraint as well as the credibility of U.S. disarmament commitments in the context of the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
...
Recognizing the lack of political support for new weapons, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) is now trying to market a nuclear weapons product: new "reliable replacement warheads to sustain existing military capabilities" at lower cost and without nuclear test explosions. Last month, NNSA Administrator Linton Brooks told Congress the goal of the effort should be to develop and produce a "small build" of the new warheads by 2012-2015.
In plain terms, couching RRW as a maintenance program is simply a convenient cover for restarting the bomb factories mothballed at the end of the Cold War, in order to develop new and more sophisticated nuclear weapons without the constraints of Congressional oversight.
Yet, if weapons scientists get the green light to build more rugged nuclear weapons, the Bush administration may be able to achieve their controversial new nuclear weapons ambitions without getting approval from Capitol Hill. In a revealing comment to The Oakland Tribune, outgoing NNSA deputy administrator Everet Beckner said, "[T]hat's not the primary objective, but [it] would be a fortuitous associated event."
SSP is more blunt:
The program is still not entirely clear, but clearer. It seems that the RRW is grist for the mill of the nuclear weapons complex. The overarching objective is indefinite maintenance of a warm nuclear weapons manufacturing base. The Department of Energy, no matter how far into the future it looks, cannot envision an America without thousands of nuclear weapons.
Fallout
Non-proliferation advocates worry that the move to develop new types of nuclear weapons could trigger another nuclear arms race - as other established nuclear powers seek to add similar weapons to their arsenals (increasing 'vertical' proliferation) and non-nuclear countries seek to obtain their own nuclear weapons as a deterrent (increasing 'horizontal' proliferation).
Moreover, despite Pentagon assurances, the RRW program could very well harbinger a new round of nuclear tests - breaking the US nuclear test moratorium preserved for the last ten years under the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CBTB).
[R]eplacing existing, well-proven nuclear warhead designs with "new" and "improved" replacement warheads or warhead components could, if carelessly pursued, increase pressure to conduct nuclear explosive proof tests. Like a car buyer looking at a first-model-year car, key political or military officials may insist on taking a test drive before buying a new set of untested nuclear bomb designs.
Most disturbing however, is the Pentagon's strategic shift from nuclear defense to offense.
For now, Brooks and others claim that the RRW program is intended solely to provide "comparable military capabilities as existing warheads in the stockpile." Yet, Department of Defense officials and Brooks continue to cite the need for new lower yield nuclear weapons that can knock out shallow bunkers and defeat biological and chemical munitions and "are geared for small-scale strikes."
Prior to this Administration, the US arsenal existed strictly as a deterrent to enemy aggression. So while a first strike was never wholly eliminated as an option, it was only to be contemplated in an extreme worst-case, defensive scenario where an invasion already in progress could not be stopped using conventional mean - such as a massive drive by Soviet tanks through Germany's Fulda Gap.
The current US nuclear arsenal of approximately ten thousand warheads is far more than necessary to deter any would be attacker now or for the forseeable future. Rumsfeld's Pentagon, however, envisions a new generation of 'limited use' nuclear weapons that would be used not for defense, but to intimidate recalcitrant countries into submitting to the US's will. Basically, Rumsfeld wants more 'mission capable' tools so he can to say to any country, "Do this or we'll nuke you."
I've talked before about this Administration's growing penchant for using nuclear intimidation as an alternative to diplomacy. Bunker Busters and other tactical nuclear weapons, produced without meaningful Congressional oversight and under the guise of 'Reliable Replacements', bring Rumsfeld's sick dream of nuclear blackmail ever closer to reality.