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When the classified U.S. Nuclear Posture Review leaked in March, an old policy debate burst into the mainstream press. The administration of President George W. Bush, Americans are finding out, may develop a new breed of nuclear weapons. These weapons, generally known as mini-nukes, are relatively small nuclear weapons designed to destroy underground targets, such as chemical, biological and nuclear weapons manufacturing facilities, and command bunkers.
For years nuclear scientists have been calling for the development of new nuclear weapons with yields, meaning the energy released in nuclear explosion, as low as a fraction of kiloton (the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, for comparison, had a yield between 10 and 15 kilotons). Proponents of these weapons see them being used for a variety of war-fighting purposes, from missile defense, to destroying airstrips, to killing enemy troops on the battlefield.
While such roles for nuclear weapons may seem revolutionary, in fact, the United States has had thousands of nuclear weapons designed for war-fighting for decades, so-called tactical nuclear weapons, which Cold War nuclear weapons planners envisioned using on the battlefield against the Soviet Union to thwart an invasion of Western Europe. About 200 of these weapons are still deployed in Europe.
What is revolutionary about current proposals is the idea of reducing the yield of tactical nuclear weapons to levels approaching those of conventional explosives, to around one-tenth of a kiloton, which would theoretically bridge the gap between a conventional and nuclear weapon. Bunker-busting (the destruction of hard and deeply buried targets) is only one of the missions proposed for these miniature nuclear weapons, but it is the mission that has been picked up and seemingly endorsed by the Nuclear Posture Review.
There is a rub, however. A 1993 law currently prevents the government from designing new nuclear weapons with a yield below 5 kilotons.
As a result, the goal of developing true mini-nukes has been tabled for now, and the Energy Department will primarily focus on modifying an existing nuclear warhead, either the B83 or B61, to develop new bunker-busters with yields around 5 kilotons.
The Bush administration's Fiscal Year 2003 Energy Budget Request would fund studying the development of this new weapon, called the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator.
Proponents claim these weapons could destroy deeply buried facilities used in the production of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons and would thereby dissuade people like Saddam Hussein from developing such weapons in the first place. Opponents claim creating such weapons would threaten international law and might accelerate the proliferation of nuclear weapons without giving the United States much added bunker-busting capability. Little noted in this debate is the fact that the United States has been at work on similar weapons since the mid-nineties and already has a bunker-busting nuclear weapon, the B61-11, a nuclear gravity bomb.
The Pentagon began developing the B61-11 in 1993 and deployed it in 1997. Treading lightly around its obligations under the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which the United States observes but has never ratified, American nuclear scientists billed B61-11 as a spin-off of an existing weapon. By putting an iron casing around the nuclear warhead, the design theoretically allowed the weapon, released from an aircraft, to burrow through earth or concrete to destroy its target - the same mission officials at the Department of Energy envision for weapons currently being studied.
In 1996, the United States even threatened to use the B61-11 against Libya. When American intelligence learned that the Libyans were building a large underground plant to develop chemical weapons, Defense Secretary William Perry stated publicly that the United States would consider its whole range of weapons to stop construction - an implicit reference to nuclear weapons.
One of Perry's assistants, Harold Smith, departing from the administration's script of calculated ambiguity, later explicitly mentioned to reporters that, since the United States lacked the conventional capability to destroy such targets, the B61-11 would be the "weapon of choice" for this role.
Although it is unclear what factors influenced their decision, the Libyans eventually halted construction.
Since the United States already has a nuclear bunker buster, one that seems to have proven itself as a deterrent, why develop new weapons for the same purpose? Three related factors underlie the push for new development: depth, accuracy, and usability. The B61-11 only burrows around 20 feet, which is not deep enough to destroy many underground bunkers.
Wedded to smart-bomb technology, a lower-yield weapon could theoretically destroy a buried target, which previously would have required a more powerful, less accurate nuclear weapon.
According to its advocates, this added accuracy and depth lowers the needed yield and makes the weapon less damaging and therefore more useable.
The nuclear explosion of a B61-11 would level and contaminate the area where any such bunker might be, killing most nearby civilians. Using the weapon preemptively would be so morally deplorable that no president is likely to consider it. This reluctance, argue advocates of new nukes, makes the weapon unusable and the United States self-deterred -- stayed by our moral and political sense.
The Libyan case notwithstanding, rogue states might count on this reluctance, making it less likely that the threat of the weapon would deter them. Like most nuclear weapons, the value of a bunker-buster lies less in its use than in the threat of its use. If this threat is not credible, the B61-11 serves little purpose.
From a technical perspective, critics of mini-nukes argue that it would be impossible with existing technology to adequately limit the damage of the weapon. Dr. Robert Nelson, of the Federation of American Scientists, has argued that a mini-nuke could not penetrate the earth deep enough to avoid creating a huge crater above the target and spreading harmful radiation for miles - the kind of damage you expect from a nuclear weapon.
Collateral damage would still be unacceptable.
Arms control advocates attack proponents of new nuclear weapons for threatening international arms control efforts. Since the United States used nuclear weapons in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, an international consensus has developed against the first use of nuclear weapon. Most nuclear weapons states agree not to use nuclear weapons unless threatened with a nuclear weapon. Although the United States has never taken a "no first use" pledge, since the Carter administration it has offered what is called a "negative security assurance." This pledge says the United States will not launch a nuclear attack against a non-nuclear state unless that nation first attacks the United States in alliance with a state possessing nuclear weapons. The U.S. undersecretary of state for arms control, John Bolton, recently announced the United States will no longer be bound by this guarantee.
Critics of mini-nukes argue that, coupled with the abandonment of the negative security assurance, the development of nuclear weapons for the express purpose of destroying non-nuclear targets will undermine the international no-first use norm. Other nations will lower their threshold for use and even develop similar weapons for war-fighting. Non-nuclear states might then be compelled to develop nuclear weapons to avoid being blackmailed by nuclear states, leading to acceleration in nuclear proliferation and a heightened risk of nuclear war. Proponents of mini-nukes respond that states' decisions to develop nuclear weapons are not driven by the international norms, but by their regional security concerns - the balance of power with their potential adversaries.
Critics of mini-nukes additionally argue that developing mini-nukes would be impossible without nuclear testing, which the United States ended in 1993. Proponents of mini-nukes argue that the weapon could be deployed without testing by relying on simple designs and on computer modeling. Opponents note, however, that the Nuclear Posture Review recommends accelerating testing readiness, possibly presaging a resumption of testing in order to deploy mini-nukes.
Abandoning the nuclear testing moratorium might encourage other nuclear states to test their weapons undermining the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which was put in place to stem the spread of nuclear weapons.
From an academic perspective, critics note that threats to use nuclear weapons to destroy non-nuclear targets often carry logical implications that are not immediately apparent. As the example of the Libyan chemical weapons plant demonstrates, weapons designed for a highly specific purpose often generate explicit threats to use them for that purpose, even when the official policy is to avoid specific nuclear threats.
Scott Sagan has argued that threats, even implicit threats, can lead to a "commitment trap," where a leader whose state has a made a particular threat feels compelled to act on it, even if he feels it is extreme, in order to insure future credibility.
A president might use a mini-nuke against a bunker containing chemical weapons even though he sees it as a disproportionate response, because a failure to do so once a threat has been made might undermine the deterrent value of future threats. In other words, there is slippery slope from deterrence to actual use. Proponents of new nukes might respond by arguing that using the weapons is the point - the dictators and terrorists who these weapons are designed for cannot be deterred like more rational leaders.
According to the Bush administration, a final decision on whether to develop mini-nukes has not been made. As Bush, Congress and the American public consider the value of these weapons, they should evaluate the security trade-offs and non-nuclear military alternatives. Deterrence does not exist in vacuum, but interacts with other factors - the United States' international reputation, international norms and laws, nuclear proliferation, the balance of power in other regions - that combine to enhance or detract from the ultimate value of any American weapon: our security.
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