Pentagon Nuclear Arms Session Worries Critics
Date: 05-Aug-03
Country: USA
Author: Will Dunham
Maj. Michael Shavers, a Pentagon spokesman, said yesterday roughly 150 senior officials from the Defense Department and other parts of the government will meet in private on Thursday at Offutt Air Force Base, headquarters of U.S. Strategic Command near Omaha, Nebraska.
Arms control advocates worried that the Pentagon will use the meeting as a key next step toward creating a new generation of atomic bombs and resuming nuclear testing.
Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, said the meeting could produce a formal determination of a military requirement for a new or modified type of nuclear weapon.
"Traditionally, once there has been a stated need by the uniformed military for a new weapon to deal with some contingency or some threat that's out there, that has been the catalyst for design, engineering, development and testing of nuclear weapons," Kimball said.
Arguing that new threats such as deeply buried bunkers and enemy chemical and biological weapon stockpiles may require new weapons, the administration has asked Congress to permit research on possible new low-yield (less than 5 kiloton) nuclear bombs and on modifying two existing higher-yield ones.
Administration officials, citing concerns about the aging U.S. nuclear stockpile, also have said they can foresee conditions under which they would urge President Bush to resume nuclear testing. America has observed a nuclear test moratorium since 1992.
"Why in the world would we move toward manufacturing small, usable nuclear weapons and show how valuable they are, and then expect that no one will ever try to steal, beg or borrow one and use it against us?" asked Robert Musil, executive director of the Physicians for Social Responsibility advocacy group.
"It really stirs up proliferation, and that is one of our key concerns," Musil said.
Shavers said this week's meeting will be chaired by Pentagon official Michael Wynne. Shavers said others taking part come from the departments of state and energy, the National Nuclear Security Administration and the White House National Security Council.
"They're going to take a look at the status of the nation's nuclear stockpile, particularly with an eye toward the Moscow Treaty that says we've got to get our stockpile numbers down, and how do we do that in a manner that still allows us to maintain a credible nuclear deterrent," Shavers said.
Under this pact, the United States promised to cut the number of operationally deployed strategic nuclear weapons to 1,700 to 2,200 warheads by 2012, down from the current 6,000.
The Pentagon has not released specifics of what will be discussed at the meeting. But a leaked document released by a disarmament group, the Los Alamos Study Group, revealed the minutes of a January planning session.
The document said one panel will discuss "requirements for low-yield weapons, EPWs (earth-penetrating weapons), enhanced radiation weapons, agent defeat weapons (designed to obliterate enemy stocks of chemical and biological weapons) ... What forms of testing will these new designs require? ... What is the testing strategy for weapons more likely to be used in small strikes?"
