The winning lab will then shift to an engineering phase, a move that would require congressional approval and funding. The design contest between Livermore and Los Alamos is expected to last two to three years and cost about $15-million per year. Russia is attacking the Azovstal steel plant, the main remaining Ukrainian stronghold in the besieged port city of Mariupol, with bunker-buster bombs, Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo. The United States has worked on nuclear earth penetrators for decades, and scientists involved in the project say they expect to succeed.Ĭelec wouldn't discuss targets for the weapon, but seven countries _ China, Russia, Iraq, North Korea, Iran, Libya and Syria _ reportedly were listed as possible targets of U.S weapons in the classified Nuclear Posture Review, a 2001 Pentagon document describing Bush administration policy. If a hydrogen bomb can be successfully designed to survive a crash through hard rock or concrete and still explode, "It will ultimately get fielded," Celec said in an interview with the San Jose Mercury News. '(W)hile we do not advocate an Israeli military strike, we believe a more credible. They say such weapons are unnecessary because buried bunkers can be destroyed with conventional bombs or by sending in troops to attack entrances, air shafts and communications cables.īut Fred Celec, the deputy assistant to the secretary of defense for nuclear matters, made clear that the administration wants the weapon and is moving forward. GBU-31 'bunker buster' bombs to add to its existing stockpile of about 100 bunker-buster GBU-28 munitions. Because of the lead time needed for congressional funding, officials at the National Nuclear Security Administration say, they might seek additional money for the next phase of development even before the preliminary work is completed in 2005 or 2006.Īrms-control advocates are disturbed by earth-penetrating nuclear weapons, saying they are unneeded and will only encourage other countries, such as North Korea or Iran, to build their own nuclear weapons as fast as possible. It would be thousands of times more powerful than the conventional "bunker busters" dropped on Baghdad.įederal officials signed documents in Washington this week to launch a preliminary design contest between Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. Russia claimed this morning to have liberated Mariupol and President Putin ordered the military to call off an assault on a steelworks where more than 2,000 Ukrainian fighters were making a. The weapon _ known as the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator _ would be a full-power hydrogen bomb that would throw up enormous clouds of radioactive dust while wreaking large-scale damage and death if used in an urban area. Demonstrating a significant shift in America's nuclear strategy, the Bush administration intends to produce _ not just research _ a thermonuclear bunker-busting bomb to destroy hardened, deeply buried targets, the Pentagon has acknowledged for the first time.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |