From: neutopia@kona.javanet.com (Doctress Neutopia)
Newsgroups: alt.society.neutopia
Subject: NEW EARTH-PENETRATING NUCLEAR BOMB
Date: 1 Apr 1997 18:13:16 GMT
Message-ID: <5hrj7s$7hd$1@as1000.javanet.com>

UNITED STATES DEPLOYS NEW EARTH-PENETRATING NUCLEAR BOMB

by Marylia Kelley with Greg Mello and Bruce Hall
from Tri-Valley CAREs newsletter, Citizen's Watch, February 1997

Scientists at the weapons labs in New Mexico, with some help from their
counterparts at Livermore, have finished two year's work on a new nuke for
the U.S. arsenal-an earth-penetrating nuclear bomb designed to embed itself
in the ground before detonating.

The Air Force has begun to deploy the bomb, which is the first new nuclear
weapon capability put into the U.S. arsenal since 1989. The Department of
Energy is now in the process of delivering the "conversion kits" for
modifying a classified number of existing B61-7 nuclear weapons into the
new, earth-penetrator B61-11 weapon.

The B61-11 nuke will then be deliverable by a variety of U.S. aircraft
including F-16 fighter planes, B-1 and B-2 bombers, and possibly the B-52
bomber. The earth-penetrator bomb has a feature weaponeers call dial-a
yield, meaning it can be configured to produce several nuclear yields,
ranging from 300 tons of TNT-equivalent to 340 kilotons, or 20 times the
explosive power of the Hiroshima bomb.

This earth-penetrating capability is intended for use against deeply-buried
targets such as command and control bunkers. DOE officials say the B61-11
will replace the much larger, 9-megaton B53 bomb introduced into the
arsenal in the early 1960s, although a final decision on the fate of the
B53 has not been made. Moreover, if the B53 is retired, as it should be, no
new bomb needs to take its place. Stealing a page from George Orwell, the
Energy Department calls the B61-11 a "safer" nuclear weapon.

Senior Pentagon officials ignited controversy last April by suggesting that
the earth-penetrating weapons would soon be available for possible use
against a suspected underground chemical factory being built by Libya at
Tarhunah. This thinly-veiled threat came just eleven days after the U.S.
signed the African Nuclear Weapons Free Zone Treaty, designed to prohibit
signatories from using or threatening to use nuclear weapons against any
other signatory, including Libya. (See May 1996 Citizen's Watch.) Pentagon
officials were forced to backtrack on that threat but development of the
earth-penetrating weapon continued on an accelerated schedule.

The earth-penetrating bomb is at the center of a little-publicized but
crucially important debate over what constitutes a new nuclear weapon. The
Clinton administration has repeatedly and publicly stated that no
"new-design" nuclear weapons are being created. The DOE's "Stockpile
Stewardship and Management" plan makes the same assertion. Stealing yet
another page from Orwell, the government classifies the earth-penetrator as
a "modification" of an existing weapon. However, even in the hazy, shifting
and often deliberately gray world of DOE definitions, it is generally
accepted that a weapon is "new" if it employs a new bomb technology or
represents a new military capability.

 The earth-penetrator clearly has a new and horrific military application,
in our view. And as our colleague Greg Mello of the Los Alamos Study
Group-which has been monitoring the development of the B61-11-remarked,
"Those who are newly targeted will not care if the weapon is 'new' or
merely 'modified.'"

The earth-penetrating weapon was designed principally at Los Alamos and
Sandia National Labs. The New Mexico labs and the Defense Department
conducted drop tests of bomb prototypes in Alaska and Nevada. New parts for
the B61-11 are being manufactured at Tennessee's Oak Ridge Reservation and
at the Kansas City Plant in Missouri. Assembly is taking place at a
classified locale.

The DOE is now developing other "modified" nuclear weapons systems under
the guise of its "Stockpile Stewardship" program. DOE plans to build the
National Ignition Facility at Livermore Laboratory and to conduct at least
six underground "subcritical" nuclear tests at the Nevada Test Site as part
of that  program.



Marylia Kelley
Tri-Valley CAREs
5720 East Ave. #116
Livermore, CA
Ph: (510) 443-7148
Fx: (510) 443-0177





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       <*>      Doctress Neutopia aka Libby Hubbard, Ed.D
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