US to build N-bomb to penetrate earth

March 7, 2003

Washington, March 7: Pentagon is preparing to build a controversial earth-penetrating nuclear weapon five times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb, which could be aimed at North Korea’s underground nuclear and missile facilities, as also a low-yield nuclear warhead, senior US administration officials said on Friday.

The preliminary tests for the new generation nuclear weapons will soon begin, the officials said.

Pentagon will recommend to Congress the building of the ‘earth penetrator’ and has sent this week documents that, if approved, could lift an eight-year-old Congressional restriction on development of a “low-yield nuclear warhead”, which is a warhead below five kilotonne.

An Air Force report, to be delivered to the House and Senate Armed Services Committees, said the Washington Post, will state the military requirements for the “robust nuclear earth penetrator”, a device designed to dig into the ground before it explodes and crushes any facility buried beneath it.

The bomb would have a greater impact than the Hiroshima bomb because a nuclear weapon’s force is multiplied when its shock wave penetrates the rocky crust of the earth.

Everet Beckner, deputy head of the National Nuclear Security Administration, told Congress on Thursday that an estimated $21 million is expected to be spent in 2004 for these weapons.

He told the House Strategic Forces Subcommittee that the administration was certain to continue theoretical and design work on one or more of such new-age weapons.

The low-yield nuclear warhead would be used to attack facilities holding chemical or biological weapons. In principle, the heat or radiation of the low-yield nuclear weapon would destroy the toxicity of the agents before they spread by the force of the blast.

The low-yield nuclear weapon would be aimed at targets in Iraq while the earth penetrator is intended to destroy facilities in North Korea.