I'm back & Nuclear Concerns

I'm back at my computer. Had an outstanding trip to the SouthWest of the US, the so-called 4 corners region, where Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona meet. I visited numerous National Parks, including Arches, the Grand Canyon, Petrified Forest, and Mesa Verde. Check out some of the hundreds of photos. 

As I traveled around I kept in touch with the news. Here's something that grabbed my attention.

Congress approved Bush's $417 bn defense bill last week. The Senate approved the Pentagon spending bill 96-0 and the House followed suit by 410-12. The legislation included

• $25 billion for the next few months of military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and a 7 percent boost for other defense programs.
• + 3.5% pay increase for the troops, but it should be noted the Senate rejected a proposal by Tom Daschle, the minority leader from South Dakota, to guarantee annual increases in veterans' health benefits. The vote was 49 to 48 in favor of Daschle's proposal, but it needed 60 votes to pass because it violated budget limits. The bill increases veterans health care to $30.3 billion — still $1.3 billion less than veterans' groups wanted.
• $70 bn for development of an array of planes, ships and weapons, surpassing even the buildup of the 1980s. These include the Air Force unmanned Predator aerial attack vehicles, Stryker combat vehicles for the Army and a DD(X) destroyer, the purchase of 39 more Army Black Hawk helicopters and a Virginia-class attack submarine.
• $10 bn for continued work on a national missile defense system
• $36.6 million from two Energy Department programs: a study of the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator, a weapon capable of destroying underground bunkers, and the Advanced Concepts Initiative, which includes research into smaller or "low yield" nuclear warheads (those less than kilotons). Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass) and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif) sponsored an amendment to but these programs, but the amendment was rejected 55-42.

The latter two points are particularly disconcerting. Both are based on bad science and will lead to an escalation of global nuclear threat. The missile defense system is plagued with technical limits, problems that future research cannot solve. Objects in space, such as a missile warhead, are nearly weightless. Therefore there is no way to distinguish between a warhead and well designed decoys.  Bottom line: a multi-billion dollar 'defense' system could be bypassed by a few creative balloons. Most test conducted by the Pentagon failed to destroy the missiles, and this was when they knew the location and time of missile launch.  For additional reasons why the missile defense system isn't feasible, check out the work of Theodore Postol.

The development of new forms of nuclear weapons constitutes a clear violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. These weapons will dissolve the distinction between conventional weapons and weapons of mass destruction, and are understood by the Pentagon as 'usable' nuclear weapons. This has already sent other countries, such as India, the go-ahead to  develop of their own low-yield nuclear weapons. And its argued these smaller weapons could be obtained and transported by terrorists. The 'bunker-busters' are plagued with their own collection of technical problems. They are promoted as necessary to destroy deep, underground bunkers, which could store WMDs. The limiting factor in destroying these bunkers is the resistance of missile warheads, which must penetrate hundreds of feet into the ground before detonating (one of Saddam's bunkers  was 300 ft underground ). However, this limitation is common to both conventional and nuclear weapons. According to Princeton University physicist Rob Nelson, even a very small nuclear bunker-buster with a yield of about 0.1 kiloton (1/200 the energy of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima), must penetrate approximately 230 feet underground for the explosion to be fully contained. Currently, the Pentagon’s only nuclear earth penetrator, the B61-11, can achieve a depth of only 20 feet in dry earth. At this depth, a 0.1-kiloton nuclear weapon would blow out a huge crater and eject a massive cloud of radioactive dust and debris into the atmosphere. For more information on the new nuclear weapons visit the Council for a Livable World

These projects must be abandoned. They are a waste of money that should be employed in more constructive projects. In the same Senate bill $95 million was allocated to support the victims in Sudan. This falls short of the $200 million needed by United Nations agencies for the urgently needed humanitarian aid in western Sudan's Darfur, but it a better use of money than the  $99.4 million secured by Sen Susan Collins (R-ME), member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, for detail design work the DD(X) destroyer,  the next generation of destroyers.