Reply #11: B61-11 Concerns and Background

[Jcrowley]

B61-11 Concerns and Background

Los Alamos Study Group

February 10, 1997

For further information contact:
Greg Mello
Los Alamos Study Group
212 E. Marcy Street, Suite 7
Santa Fe, NM 97501
[phone]

Summary

The United States is now fielding a new tactical and strategic nuclear military capability that has already been used to threaten a non-nuclear country. This new capability was certified without nuclear testing, using an existing surrogate testing facility with capabilities much less than those under construction and planned. The weapon was developed and deployed in secret, without public and congressional debate, contrary to domestic and international assurances that no new nuclear weapons were being developed. Other new or "modified" nuclear weapons, earth-penetrating and otherwise, are planned.

Concerns

• The B61-11's unique earth-penetrating characteristics, not to mention its wide range of yields, allow it to threaten otherwise indestructible targets from the air and are its raison d'etre. The new weapon is uniquely useful from a military perspective?and hence provocative from an arms control and nonproliferation perspective.

• A central and expressed purpose of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) has always been to arrest the further evolution of the world's nuclear arsenals. This modified weapon? certified without nuclear testing and deployed after signing the CTBT?undercuts that treaty and could provide political cover to countries which have their own unsatisfied nuclear ambitions.

• Earth-penetrating weapons, deployed by the Clinton adminstration in the post-Cold-War era, were rejected for deployment by Presidents Carter, Reagan, and Bush. What is the new reason to deploy these weapons? What are the new targets? What is known about the B61-11 strongly suggests that its rushed development has been motivated by a desire to target one or more non-nuclear-weapon states.

• On July 8, 1996, the International Court of Justice ruled that any use or threat of use of nuclear weapons, other than possibly in the case where the very survival of a nation was threatened, was against international law. After this landmark decision, it is difficult to legally support the deployment, let alone the new development, of any tactical nuclear weapon? especially one whose development appears to have been motivated by a desire to target non-nuclear weapon states.

• In order to gain support for indefinite extension of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the United States repeatedly assured the world during April and May of 1995 that it would not continue "vertical proliferation." Yet during these same months the Department of Energy (DOE) was seeking, and obtaining, approval for a weapon modification with significant new military utility.

• Development of this weapon was approved outside the regular budget process and without congressional debate, by means of secret letters to key committee chairmen, raising constitutional questions.

http://www.brookings.edu/FP/PROJECTS/NUCWCOST/lasg.htm

You should be more specific, with possibly a point by point analysis, lest people not simply take your word.