war2004

web page

BUNKER-BUSTER WIPED OUT

I couldn't quite believe it, when I first got the news over the weekend. But it's true: "Congress, in a surprising blow to the Bush administration's nuclear weapons ambitions, has eliminated web page funding for two major bomb research programs, including a so-called bunker buster that the president had said was essential to the country's security," the San Francisco Chronicle (among others) is reporting.

The bunker-buster – or, more formally, the "Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator" web page – is a weapon that burrows about 10 yards beneath the ground before unleashing hell. And it has been a contentious issue in Congress ever since it was proposed by the Administration in 2002. Last year, legislators cut funds web page for the project in half. Then, in June, a key Republican representative – Ohio's David Hobson, who chairs the House Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee – moved to wipe out web page funds for the program entirely. The money was later restored in the Senate.

Now, Hobson seems to have struck again, fulfilling a pledge John Kerry made in the Presidential debates, to ban the bunker-buster web page .

"The U.S. has about 10,000 warheads in the stockpile already. To him, that number is enough," Hobson's press secretary, Sara Perkins, tells the Chron.

But while Hobson has complained long and loud about America's Cold War-sized atomic stockpile, there's a little more to his bunker-buster web page opposition than that. Hobson has also been a big-time critic of the Energy Department bureaucrats in charge of the country's nuclear weapons programs. And he's not afraid to use issues like the bunker-buster as a club against them. As I wrote back in June:

[In 2003], he pared back proposed funding for some weapons research programs. For others, he withheld funds until the Bush administration came up with a plan to shrink the country's nuclear weapons stockpile. That road map -- to halve the American arsenal by 2012 -- was submitted last week.

"After several years of frustration, we finally put a fence around some of (Energy Department's) advanced concepts funding and said that it would not be available until the department delivered a revised stockpile plan," Hobson said in a statement. "I admit that we held a DOE program hostage until they produced this revised stockpile plan, and you know what? -- the power of the purse does work!"

Asim Aquil

10 meters below the surface is not enough. I think the use of such a weapon would be intended to cause minimal radiation damage. But just create a big shockwave that can mess up infrastructure big time. It has to a lot more deeper, for such goals don't you think? Otherwise its just a nuke.

Franco Lolan

It was designed to burrrow, detonate, destroy subterranean complexes while not destroying civilian centers in the proximity. The inability of advances in bomb burrowing technology has precluded implementation.

Veni Vidi Vici

No where NEAR enough. Ten meters acomplishes absolutly nothing.

__________________
"Our citizenship in the United States is our national character. Our citizenship in any particular state is only our local distinction. By the latter we are known at home, by the former to the world. Our great title is AMERICANS…" -- Thomas Paine

Officer of Engineers

More than enough to smash any hasty bunkers I could build.

__________________
Chimo

Franco Lolan

In 1978, US conducted a to kiloton detonation of a nuke under 900 feet of soil in NM. The cloud still came up.

If one is going to drop a nuke, civilians are not an issue. Nukes are nukes.


I compete in Forensics (speech and debate). I don't do Congress (mock Congress), but this weekend, at a tournament, a bill to ban nuclear bunker busters will be debated.

2DREZQ

I used to be in favor of having micro-nuke bunker busters in the inventory. After researching them, however, I've changed my mind. Now, If you want a few on hand, and don't mind setting up a boring machine on site...

__________________
USS North Dakota