Source: Carnegie

The following are excerpts from remarks by Linton F. Brooks, administrator of the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration, to the 2004 Carnegie International Non-Proliferation Conference, June 21, 2004. 

Perhaps the single most contentious issue in our program is not a weapon at all. It is a study: the study of a so-called "Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator," often mischaracterized in the press as a "bunker buster." This study is to determine whether an existing warhead can be adapted--without nuclear testing--to improve our ability to hold at risk hardened, deeply buried facilities that may be important to a future adversary.

Public and Congressional Perceptions

The possibility of developing an earth-penetrating weapon is a good bridge to the final topic I want to discuss: public and international perceptions. There is a clear military utility to such a weapon, which is why the Defense Department asked for it to be studied. The post Cold War requirement to hold hardened and deeply buried targets at risk has been consistently identified in internal and external studies for several years. Before any decisions are made, however, we need more information—hence, a study. We will move beyond the study stage only if the President approves and funds are authorized and appropriated by the Congress. No decision will—or should--be made until the study is completed. The law is clear: Congressional approval is required to move to engineering development and separate Congressional approval would be required for production if the President were to approve these additional steps.

Specifically, what we are evaluating is an extension of what the United States did last decade. Then we adapted the B61-11 bomb to penetrate a few meters into frozen soil; now we want to do the same thing into rock. So why has this become so contentious? After all, even if deployed, this weapon does not represent a change from our policy goal of deterrence. Deterrence requires we be able to hold at risk that which an adversary values. Since more and more we see potential opponents putting important military facilities underground, our efforts to determine the potential effectiveness of an earth-penetrating weapon reflect a continued emphasis on enhancing deterrence.

So, why is there such confusion on the Administration’s nuclear policy? Some opponents seem to take satisfaction in misstating or misconstruing Administration policies. And admittedly, we could be more aggressive in ensuring these misstatements don’t go unchallenged or uncorrected. Last year, several unrelated things happened:

-- The Administration’s National Security Strategy reaffirmed that in rare circumstances, the United States would not necessarily wait to be attacked with WMD before it could respond to real threats.

-- We sought and gained repeal of the prohibition on low-yield warhead development, which banned research that "could lead to" designs of less than five kilotons. We did so to get the freedom to explore new concepts without the chilling effect on scientific inquiry that the law represented.

--We asked for very modest funding for some advanced concepts work and for the nuclear earth penetrator study.

From this set of circumstances, two misperceptions developed. First, it became part of the conventional wisdom that there were Administration plans to develop new, low yield weapons. There are no such plans. Second, some conncluded these separate things were part of an overall strategy; that we were emphasizing "nuclear preemption" in U.S. military doctrine. I assume you all understand this is nonsense. While no one wants to constrain a future President’s options in advance, I’ve never met anyone in the Administration who can foresee circumstances in which we would consider nuclear preemption to counter rogue state WMD threats. Yet, this misperception continues to exist because we have not aggressively challenged and corrected it. While nuclear preemption with non-existent new weapons was fanciful, there were some more responsible critics who also raised issues. Two are particularly important: whether our efforts lowered the nuclear threshold and whether they hurt nonproliferation.

We have pretty good answers. Even if they were to lead to lower yields, U.S. research programs would not blur the line between conventional and nuclear weapons or make nuclear use more likely. This is not simply an assertion; it is based on history. Starting in the 1950’s and continuing through today, the U.S. nuclear stockpile has always contained warheads capable of producing very low nuclear yields. At the height of the Cold War many thousands of these warheads were deployed, but they were never used—even in regional confrontations where their use would not necessarily have provoked a Soviet response. There is no evidence that the simple possession of these weapons made nuclear use by the United States more likely. No President would be inclined to employ any nuclear weapon, irrespective of its explosive power, in anything but the gravest of circumstances. Simply put, the nuclear threshold for the United States has been, is, and always will be very high.

On nonproliferation, the major U.S. objective is to prevent rogue states and terrorist groups from acquiring weapons of mass destruction and systems for their delivery. Neither advanced concepts efforts nor studies of an earth-penetrating weapon will increase incentives for terrorists to acquire such weapons—those incentives are already high and are unrelated to U.S. nuclear capabilities. Nor are they likely to have any impact on rogue states, whose proliferation activities march forward independently of the U.S. nuclear program.