US says needs new nukes, new conventional weapons

WASHINGTON: The United States needs both new advanced conventional weapons for future global strike plans and new low-yield nuclear weapons below 5 kilotons, a senior official has said.
"The advanced conventional weapons will enable the command to deliberately and adequately plan and rapidly deliver limited-duration, non-nuclear combat power anywhere in the world," James O.Ellis, the head of the US Strategic Command, told a Senate Armed Services subcommittee here on Tuesday.
Conventional and "non-kinetic" weapons, which put out electronic pulses as their kill mechanism, along with Special Operations capabilities for precision guidance, he said, will be incorporated "into the nation''s strategic war plan to further reduce our reliance on nuclear weapons."
Linton F. Brooks, acting head of the National Nuclear Security Administration, which runs the nation''s nuclear weapons complex, told Senators that a Pentagon study on the potential for a new nuclear weapon to go after deeply buried targets--the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator--was delivered last month, triggering release of $15 million dollars to begin feasibility and cost studies later this month.
In addition, Brooks said, $6 million dollars would be spent on studying advanced concepts for future nuclear weapons, "which someday may be needed."
He assured the Senators that the studies would not automatically lead to the production of new nuclear weapons without further Congressional approval.
The studies on the new nuclear weapons will be done at two nuclear weapon laboratories. They would look at adapting one of two existing nuclear warheads by putting a harder casing around it and creating a fusing that could survive digging into the ground before detonating. Using existing warheads would eliminate the need for new underground testing, thus maintaining the testing moratorium that went into effect in 1992 under the previous Bush Administration.
Brooks pressed the Administration''s desire to repeal a nine-year legislative ban on research and development that could lead to production of any new low-yield nuclear warhead below 5 kilotons. He said that the prohibition has "a chilling effect" on advanced nuclear studies and is "an artificial intellectual restraint."
Brooks revealed that among the concepts being studied is a weapon that could be used against stores of chemical or biological weapons. He said it could be used "against a particular set of biological agents where a large burst of radiation could be used to kill such bugs."
Two Democratic Senators, Jack Reed and Bill Nelson, expressed opposition to the plans. Senator Reed said that the repeal of the ban on plans to produce low yield nuclear weapons would hurt efforts at non-proliferation by sending a signal to other countries that the US, with a full arsenal of nuclear weapons, is looking for new ones.