U.S. presses program for new atom bombs

[Dover]

(International Herald Tribune)

Pentagon is seeking weaponry to strike at adversaries buried deep in bunkers

This week, 10 minutes by car south of Omaha, Nebraska, the U.S. Strategic Command is holding a little-advertised meeting at which the Bush administration is to solidify its plans for acquiring a new generation of nuclear arms.

Topping the wish list are weapons meant to penetrate deep into the earth to destroy enemy bunkers. The Pentagon believes that more than 70 nations, big and small, now have some 1,400 underground command posts and sites for ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction.

Determined to fight fire with fire, the Defense Department wants bomb makers to develop a class of relatively small nuclear arms - ranging from a fraction the size of the Hiroshima bomb to several times as large - that could pierce rock and reinforced concrete and turn strongholds into radioactive dust.

"With an effective earth penetrator, many buried targets could be attacked," the administration said in its Nuclear Posture Review, which it sent to Congress last year...>> more >>

http://www.iht.com/articles/105137.html

[Pert_UK]

1. Bomb some sense into them!!!

Nice to see the US operating consistent standards when it comes to the possession and development of WMDs.

Of course, it will be VERY peaceful after the initial round of strikes and counter-strikes....

P.

[proud patriot]

2. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH

:grr: :mad: :grr:

[Code_Name_D]

3. I remeber how Hitler mantained his post war treties.

After WWI, Germany was not aloued to make war ship over so many feet. But when Hittler took power, he through that out the window, and began crusing the waters with the most powerful ships the world had ever seen.

And the world comunity was slow to act. You do not build weponds without having plans for their use.

Bush has plans for thoese nukes.

[Wonder]

19. These parallels are coming up fast & furious

Welcome to The Realm!

On Edit:

And yes I would imagine Bush has plans for those nukes. Kissinger set the whole thing up for us during a quicky CNN interview just after 9/11. He marbled out that whatever network was found to be behind this attack would be answered in the way we answered Pearl Harbor. Only a matter of time.

[Newsjock]

4. We have found evidence ...

... that Bush does indeed have a weapons program. The U.N. Security Council will consider a resolution condemning the U.S. pursuit of WMDs. If Bush does not completely disarm and allow U.N. weapons inspectors full, unfettered access to all of its facilities, including interviews of all scientists, the U.N. will be forced to declare the United States in material breach of the resolutions, which will lead to "serious consequences."

Sorry, it's late and you caught me in the middle of a dream.

[Julien Sorel]

5. If the U.S. has the power to take out another

country's nukes, and other countries now must depend entirely on nuclear weapons as a deterrant to U.S. dominance, are these new weapons making us more, or less, safe? It's the security paradox.

[Dover]

6. Welcome to the Cold War......n/t

.

[Julien Sorel]

9. The Cold War had MAD.

This is UAD -- only one side has the security of knowing they can obliterate the other. It's a situation that begs for abuse, begs for more Bushmen to come along and throw U.S. military weight around whenever they please. We've already seen how easy it is to manipulate public opinion in favor of a walkover war; with these things, all wars would be walkovers. Other countries now have to think about launching nukes a lot earlier than they otherwise would, because they won't get a second chance: these weapons will see to that.

[bodhisattava]

7. If these weapons are as small as they say they are,

expect these plans to fall in the hands of terrorists who will use it by bringing it in suitcases or some such things and detonate it
in our towns.

I love the irony of our defense department feeding the terrorists
weapons design that they need badly.

[enki23]

8. america...

go fuck yourself with your atom bomb

[Q]

10. The headline writers have it all wrong...

...it's not the "US" pushing for more nukes...IT'S THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION.

- The US media goes out of their way to make sure the Bush* name is never connected to any of his crimes.

[DagmarK]

11. They're calling them ATOM bombs, eh?

As opposed to NUCLEAR BOMBS. Nukes sounds just so...well destructive and final. ATAM bombs, though......shoot...you can't even SEE an atom. Couldn't be that big a problem.

This is the scary part: "over 70 nations have underground bunkers...."

Are other nations precluded from having hiding places? Is that an imminent threat to the USA. These warmongers are totally MAD! All of our politices are premised on the entire world being against us.

It's like Richard Nixon has reincarnated into the collective soul of this country: "they're out to get us......they are ALL out to get us."

INSANE.................

[the_acid_one]

13. There is a BIG differance between atomic bombs and nukes.

Atomic bombs are what was dropped on Japan. Reletively weak compared to nuclear weapons. It could be PR wording, or it could be accurate, but atomic bombs and nukes arent quite the same thing.

[Nihil]

17. Could you please explain that?

Maybe it's just a bad brain day today but I'm having difficulty
distinguishing atomic (fission devices) from nuclear (fission devices).

If you were associating "nuclear" with "fusion" and "atomic" with
"fission" then I can see what you mean but didn't see that association
made anywhere.

I suspect the use of "atomic" rather than "nuclear" is simply to
allow George W to link into the current media message without any
tricky words to trip up his tongue and make him look like a twat (again).

[the_acid_one]

20. To be honest...

I really dont know what differentiates the two (other then the size of the blast). My airforce E.O.D. friend explained it to me one time after i said something about the "nukes we dropped on japan". At which point he corrected me and said we dropped atomic bombs and not nuclear ones and then went on to explain to differance, which i immmedietly forgot.

I was thinking the differance might be fission and fusion aswell being that fusion makes a much bigger boom.
I am fairly certain thats what he said was the qualifying differance between the two. But once again, in all honesty, am not completely sure. If I see him around today and happen to remember I'll ask him.

I think that a fusion powered nuke is probably much to powerful to use as a bunker buster. Even someone like myself, who likes big booms, can see that ;) But then again, I am not George W either, laughs.
Personally, i am inclined to give the benefit of the doubt in this case, as i have been told there are differances between atomic and nuclear and the article says atomic. Not that the media is reliable or anything....

[oneighty]

23. Your EOD man

did not pay attention in class. I went to that school too!

180

[NickB79]

24. Atomic and nuclear are both fission weapons

The extremely powerful ones are thermonuclear warheads. Those are the fusion-based weapons. Average atomic/nuclear bombs yield 5-75 kilotons of power, while thermonuclear bombs can run from 50 kilotons up to 75 MEGATONS (one megaton is 1000 times more powerful than a kiloton). Unbelievably powerful things, horrible creations.

[teryang]

12. First strike capability sought

...to renew arms race. Can we decapitate China? Can we decapitate Russia? Can we decapitate India? These countries will have to react by building new first strike delivery systems.

The whole notion is absurd because it focuses on the first 20 minutes or so of survivability. The fact in the strangelovian scenarios, that entire nations are turned into a radioactive wasteland for millenia appears not to enter their calculations. There are big dollars in this for the defense contractors.

[the_acid_one]

22. Unfortunettly, it does make sense.

In the event that a nuclear war does occour (please not in my lifetime!) then every government has a responsiblity to protect it's citizenry. With nukes, there is no time for strategy and conventional weapons. You have to annihilate your enemy completely and totally or they may beat you to the punch. In dealing with these kinds of weapons, the first punch is probably the only one that matters.

Hopefully, such a thing wont happen, and I personally wish that nuclear weapons could be erased from the colective memory of the world. You know, total disappearance. But now that they've been invented, someone somewhere is going to have them.
I'd rather my country has the best ones available even if their motives are questionable because "they" are obviously going to use them to protect "themselves" and thereby protecting me by proxy.
Anyways, yeh...someones always going to be trying to one up someone else. But given the choice I'd rather that WE stay one step ahead.

[teryang]

28. You're kidding right?

I think the thousands of nuclear warheads we already have are sufficient to do the job.

Nukes don't protect anybody. They threaten with mutual anihilation.

With our SSBN fleet, the ultimate outcome is a foregone conclusion. If that isn't enough to protect us, a "better designed smaller deeper nuke" isn't going to do anything but make nuclear war more likely to occur.

[izzie]

14. What balls we have.

We make and sell more of all weapons than any one is the world and that industry is GROWING. Bush always shows up where they make things that kill.My dear old GOP father said that was a false way to make money, as you only blow up things and do not build.

[THUNDER HANDS]

15. did it ever occur to these geniuses...

that maybe in the future the enemy will start building its bunkers directly underneath major cities?

Well, maybe that still wouldn't deter these guys...

[Nihil]

18. Yes but they just need a "surgical strike" right?

You mean like in Baghdad? The bunkers where Saddam "definitely" lived?

The ones that justified dropping large lumps of conventional munitions
in the middle of a civilian enclave - with the explicit approval of
Rumpy himself?

Damn right it wouldn't deter those guys ...

[oneighty]

16. Never say never

but I speak with some experience. For an object of any type to burrow into the earth with out some type of "Boring device" seems quite unlikely. I am aware sometimes bombs will penetrate soft earth hit a solid object, be deflected and bounce out of the earth. They also have been known turn in the earth and tunnel sideways.

Further "Google Nuclear Weapons" you will find that very small Nukes already exist.

180

[ze_dscherman]

21. Good CS-Monitor article on Nuclear Bunker Busters from 2002

http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0509/p01s02-usmi.html

[ColumbusGirl]

25. He's trying to re-create the cold war

When there isn't an enemy.

* doesn't have the balls to go after N. Korea (since even he isn't idiot enough to think they won't do something)

Does anybody else seem like an actual threat? I can't think of anybody.


There's only so far we can go pissing off the Middle East as well.

I hate feeling such a sense of dread all the time.

[ColumbusGirl]

26. He's trying to re-create the cold war

without the big bad enemy.

* doesn't have the balls to go after N. Korea (since even he isn't idiot enough to think they won't do something)

Does anybody else seem like an actual threat? I can't think of anybody.


There's only so far we can go pissing off the Middle East as well.

I hate feeling such a sense of dread all the time.

[ColumbusGirl]

27. It seems like he is trying to recreate the cold war

without the big bad enemy.

* doesn't have the balls to go after N. Korea (since even he isn't idiot enough to think they won't do something)

Does anybody else seem like an actual threat? I can't think of anybody.


There's only so far we can go pissing off the Middle East as well.

I hate feeling such a sense of dread all the time.

[IndianaGreen]

29. Do you want Bush's finger on the nuclear button?

This is the man that got a woody everytime he sent a condemned prisoner to the gallows. This is the man that publicly mocked Karla Faye Tucker on the eve of her execution. This is the man that slept soundly at night while thousands of innocent civilians were butchered by his armies. This is the man that wants to expand America's arsenal of WMD, and intends to use them against his phantom enemies.

This is the man that some day will top Hitler in butchery and savagery!

Do you want Bush's finger on the nuclear button?

[imax2268]

30. I smell...

The Carlyle Group...

This is just absurd...it goes to show how hypocritical the * admin is...

We can have them but you can't...that's one way to say that your pushing for peace.