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DEVELOPMENT
OF NEW LOW-
YIELD NUCLEAR WEAPONS
by Sam Cohen and Joe
Douglass
March 9, 2003
This struck us as curious because we thought that all the tactical nuclear weapons, including the small batch of neutron bombs, had been destroyed many years ago. This evidently is the case, which explains recent news articles on a reviving interest in developing low-yield nuclear “devices,” which we assume is a nice way of saying “warheads.” If we still had a stockpile of low-yield warheads, people would not be talking about developing new ones because the need is now, not five years from now.
A recent article by Walter Pincus in the Washington Post [i] presents some of the background behind the revival of interest in low-yield warheads. The motivation is the operational need for a low-yield weapon that could be used to attack and totally destroy chemical and biological stockpiles, many of which are underground, without the massive damage associated with the high-yield strategic warheads that constitute the working stockpile.
This article states: “Low-yield nuclear weapons have been controversial since the late 1970s, when the Army tried to introduce neutron artillery shells and warheads with its forces in Europe.”
This controversy is important to understand. Its roots go deep and are still very much alive.
The controversy began, in effect, in the early 1960s. At the time, there was great concern over nuclear war, witness the Berlin Wall and Cuban Missile Crises. Nuclear war was largely viewed, and still is, as unthinkable. Thus, major efforts were undertaken early in the Kennedy Administration to put the brakes on the U.S. nuclear weapons programs and on planning for nuclear war. The number of Minuteman Missiles scheduled for production was cut back to 1000. Special locks, called permissive action links or PALs, were incorporated into nuclear warhead designs.
Above all, the decision was made to denuclearize Europe by withdrawing all forward-based nuclear warheads, especially the few low-yield warheads we had deployed, and by shifting military planning to a conventional response. The idea was to create a “firebreak,” as it became called, between conventional war and full-scale nuclear war by eliminating “tactical” nuclear weapons. The argument was that we did not want tactical nuclear weapons because to be effective they would need to be used early in a conflict and this use would rapidly escalate to the unthinkable.
In addition to withdrawing forward based tactical nuclear weapons, which were not very tactical because of their high (multi-kiloton) warheads, development of low-yield tactical warheads also was gradually halted. This low-yield technology was in the process of exploding. The first low-yield warheads were developed in the early 1950s (the Davy Crocket nuclear bazooka and small atomic demolition munitions or SADAMs). An entire family of low-yield warheads (sub to few kiloton range) was on the drawing boards by the late 1950s in an effort to have a stockpile of truly “tactical” nuclear weapons.
Most of these low-yield weapons, however, still caused considerable damage. In an effort to resolve this disadvantage, the idea for a neutron bomb was conceived. The idea was to design a warhead in which the energy that went into neutron production was maximized while that which caused physical damage, blast, was minimized. By properly selecting the height of burst, the blast wave could be reduced to the point where it was an ineffective damage-producing mechanism. The neutrons remained. Because these neutrons were the principle human killing mechanism anyway, the result was a weapon that could be used against enemy ground forces, including those in tanks, without the usual accompanying physical damage.
But, the timing was very bad. The neutron bomb was not only squelched, but all development stopped as a matter of policy because it was even worse than low-yield nuclear warheads in eroding the nuclear firebreak. It was revived in the 1970s in an effort to bolster NATO defense forces. Neutron warheads were produced and deployed during the Reagan Administration, then eliminated by President Bush the elder upon General Colin Powell’s recommendation. This brought an end to the last of the tactical nuclear weapons.
As indicated in the Pincus article, the problem in attacking Iraq today has given rise to new interest in both low-yield nuclear warheads and neutron warheads. However, the firebreak mentality still exists. It may be even worse today because of the concern for suitcase nuclear warheads or “devices.”
To understand the reasons behind this concern, consider the small sizes into which very respectable yields can be packaged. Warheads whose weight lies in the 30 to 150 pound range can “have yields as low as 50 tons (high explosive equivalent) to tens of kilotons, several times the size of the first nuclear weapons that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The most available warheads and easiest to manage would be in the 100 ton to 1 or 2 kiloton range. Insofar as size is concerned, an implosion nuclear warhead could be as small as a soccer ball and weigh less than 50 pounds. The "Davy Crockett" warhead was developed in the early 1950s as the warhead for an Army bazooka. It had yields in the tens to hundreds of tons and weighed only 40 pounds. A good warhead design team such as the Soviets undoubtedly have at their Arzamov-16 laboratory could probably pack ten kilotons or more into an even smaller package.” [ii] This also applies to the Chinese who are very capable. Iraq, Iran, or North Korea might do just about as well, considering the open revelations on nuclear warhead design.
In other words, here is your suitcase bomb: easily man portable, put it in a suitcase or backpack, tens of kilotons of explosive potential, and technology that is 1950s vintage.
Thus, a careful review of low-yield and neutron bomb warheads would be most timely. The non-governmental studies, such as those by Los Alamos and Livermore National Laboratories mentioned in the Pincus article, should be undertaken – not just because of the relevance to the Iraq targeting problem but also, if not more important, because of their relevance to our understanding of the potential terrorist suitcase nuclear warhead. As indicated in the new National Strategy for Combating Terrorism, there are different a variety of different “terrorists” – state-supported terrorists, rogue nation terrorists, and independent terrorists – and the various ways each might obtain a suitcase nuclear warhead needs to be fully understood.
The formation of the design teams may cause concern that this is just a first step in a progression whose logical end is the acquisition of new families of “usable” low-yield nuclear warheads. This, however, is not the case. First, Congressional restrictions against the development of low-yield warheads were enacted several years ago. Second, the so-called “revival” in U.S. interest, to the extent it really exists, will pass. It has come and gone before. The technology is not new; adequate designs that have already been tested have existed for 40 years. The same reasons that defeated the ideas in the early 1960s and every decade thereafter in addition to the shut-down of the production capabilities almost certainly guarantee that even if those at the top wanted to revive the capability, this is unlikely to happen. That is, the environment ensures that low-yield warheads will not be available when we need it and that we will adapt to this condition as we have done before.
Unfortunately, this can not be said of the other nuclear powers and the recommended studies will serve to heighten our awareness of the potentials and consequent problems.
© 2003 Sam Cohen and Joe Douglass
March 9, 2003
Sam Cohen, a retired nuclear weapons analyst, chaired the first committee formed to investigate very low-yield, highly discriminate tactical nuclear weapons in 1964. His memoirs are SHAME: Confessions of the Father of the Neutron Bomb (2000).
Joe Douglass, a national security analyst, is the author of the Soviet Theater Nuclear Offensive (1976), The Conflict Over Tactical Nuclear Weapons Policy in Europe (1968), and Betrayed (2002).
Both authors were members of the Los Alamos Tactical Nuclear Weapons Panel in the early 1970s.
[i]
“U.S. Explores Developing Low-Yield Nuclear Weapons,” February 20,
2003.
[ii] http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=25248
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