The erosion of the decade-long ban on a new class of U.S. nuclear weapons has arms control activists nervous; if the sole superpower believes there is a need for nuclear arms, convincing other countries to abandon their atomic aspirations becomes much more difficult.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld insisted Tuesday the administration wants only the permission to explore the usefulness of such weapons.
"You make a study for a very simple reason: to learn whether you do believe that that is a need -- something that's needed, something that would be useful ... and many of the things you study you never pursue," Rumsfeld said.
"The only thing we've done that I know of is that we have proposed that the absolute ban on the study of a deep-Earth penetrator has been removed from the bill at our instance, because we do intend to study a variety of types of deep-earth penetrators, for very good reason."
The administration also sought a repeal of a 10-year-old law banning research, development and production of low-yield nuclear weapons, according to senior staff of members of the House and Senate Armed Services committees. Low-yield weapons are defined as less than 5 kilotons. The bomb that was used in Hiroshima, Japan, was approximately 15 tons.
Arms control advocates do not believe the Pentagon's intentions stop at research.
"They say they haven't made a decision to make nuke weapons but everyone knows that's what they'll do if research bears out," charged John Isaacs, president of the arms control advocacy group the Council for a Livable World.
Indeed, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for nuclear matters, Fred Celec, told the San Jose Mercury News last month that if a nuclear-tipped bunker-busting bomb can be designed, "it will ultimately get fielded."
The administration nevertheless maintains it is committed to reducing nuclear dangers. Secretary of State Colin Powell issued a statement in early May saying the United States intends "to reduce our reliance on nuclear weapons" and asserting "the spread of nuclear weapons would gravely destabilize our world."
Last year the United States and Russia agreed to slash their respective arsenals of strategic nuclear weapons to 1,700 to 2,200 warheads each within 10 years. However, just last month Los Alamos National Laboratory produced a plutonium pit -- the core of a nuclear warhead -- for the first time in nearly 15 years. It will be used to replace aging components in existing bombs, according to the lab.
The House committee stopped short of granting the administration its wish, allowing research but maintaining the restriction on development and production.
The research latitude was approved in large part because the ban prevented the United States from researching other nations' low-yield weapons, a House source told United Press International.
The Senate committee went farther -- repealing the total ban as requested by the administration. However, Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, inserted a last-minute amendment that says "nothing in this section shall be construed as authorizing testing, acquisition or deployment of low-yield nuclear weapons."
The House and Senate bills are going to be debated on the floor this week and then will be merged into a single bill in a conference of the two committees.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Richard Myers said Tuesday low-yield battlefield or tactical nuclear weapons would be useful when chemical or biological weapons are present.
Conventional explosives create plumes that can carry the pathogens or gases farther. Nuclear devices would incinerate them on the spot.
"In terms of anthrax, it's said that gamma rays can, you know, destroy the anthrax spores, which is something we need to look at. And in chemical weapons, of course, the heat can destroy the chemical compounds and make them -- not develop that plume that conventional weapons might do that would then drift and perhaps bring others in harm's way," Myers said.
Rumsfeld rejected the notion that a low-yield weapon would open a nuclear Pandora's box. He said Russia builds tactical nuclear weapons every day. The size of the United States' arsenal of tactical nuclear weapons is classified.
"We already have theater nuclear weapons," Rumsfeld admitted.
"The Russians have many multiples of the numbers of theater nuclear weapons that we have. I mean, the idea that a study is going to change something in that regard is just nonsensical; it's just not a fact. They already exist. The Russians are making them. Every day, they make new ones. So, there's not some threshold that's going to be left over here. It just is a non sequitur, it seems to me."
In addition to research into low-yield bombs, the defense authorization bills would fund $15 million in research into the "robust nuclear earth penetrator." The money would be used to modify two existing nuclear bombs, the B83 at the Lawrence Livermore and the B61 at Los Alamos laboratories in California.
North Korea is believed by U.S. intelligence to have moved much of its war machine into caves and underground facilities, making it difficult for conventional weapons to have much of an effect on them in the event of a war or an attack.
"To the extent the United States is prohibited from studying the use of such weapons -- for example, for a deep-Earth penetrator -- the effect in the world is that it tells the world that they're wise to invest in going underground. And that's not a good thing, from our standpoint," Rumsfeld said.
Copyright 2003 by United Press International.
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