The Last Word
By William M. Arkin
It is hard to kill the nuclear vampire. Consider a navy memo dated January 31, 1994, which attempts to justify spending $13 million between 199597 for an "Advanced Technology Demonstration" of a new reentry vehicle-dubbed "minibus." The minibus, according to the memo, could carry either a conventional or a nuclear payload. The scene-setting sentence, written in Pentagonese, goes like this: "There is a need for a low cost highly accurate payload delivery system, with the capability of performing ballistic nuclear and non-nuclear missions to improve precision strike capability from secure platforms, and to minimize collateral damage."
The wished-for minibus is part of the fledgling conventional submarine-launched ballistic missile (CSLBM) program "sponsored" by the navy's strategic submarine branch. The submariners, according to the memo, wish to "leverage the significant investment already made" in submarines and Trident I missiles that are slated for elimination under arms reduction agreements. It is their belief that America needs an "extremely flexible" deterrent for regional warfare.
In a $250 billion defense budget, $13 million for such an "advanced" effort is chicken feed. Nevertheless, something is amiss. Although the original minibus idea envisioned solely conventional explosives, a nuclear option was added-according to a navy source- simply because staffers thought it made sense to take full advantage of the precision capability.
Perhaps the navy men were not aware that their minibus, a mini-nuke, would violate U.S. law.
After the Gulf War, the air force wanted to develop a nuclear bomb similar to minibus. It was widely dubbed the "mini-nuke"; officially, it was called the "precision low-yield weapon design" (PLYWD). When the Bulletin revealed the PLYWD program (see April 1992, July/August 1993), Congress jumped in. It immediately understood how such a war-fighting weapon would undermine U.S. nonproliferation and arms control efforts.
When the Energy Department was called on the carpet to explain the PLYWD venture, it deflected criticism by saying that the Office of the Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Atomic Energy ("the Office") had "endorsed" the air force request. Congress was not impressed. Its defense authorization bill for fiscal 1994 prohibited any "research and development which could lead to the production by the United States of a low-yield nuclear weapon." That is, weapons with a yield of less than five kilotons.
End of story? Not quite. In response to my Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request about PLYWD, asking for any correspondence between the Office and Energy or the air force (or anyone) regarding pursuit of the PLYWD study, or for "any recent studies undertaken for the DOD substantiating the need for low-yield nuclear weapons for precision strikes that would produce low collateral damage," the Defense Department said in a letter dated June 8, 1994, that it was unable to locate "any record of documents responsive to your request." The navy also responded to my FOIA, writing on June 28 that the requisite navy staff expert "had never heard of a 'PLYWOOD' study and was not involved and did not possess any other studies on low-yield nuclear weapons." Meanwhile, Energy also assured me in a letter dated June 21 that its labs had "discontinued" efforts to develop low-yield nuclear weapons.
Can we believe the Office, the navy, or the Energy Department? In March, John Fleck of the Albuquerque Journal obtained a full list of warheads on the drawing boards. It was newsworthy because it included work on a "High Power Radio Frequency" (HPRF) nuclear warhead, a warhead that the Energy Department conveniently omitted from its budget submitted to Congress for fiscal 1995. After Fleck's story, Victor Reis, assistant secretary of Energy, was asked by the House Appropriations Committee about HPRF. The Nuclear Weapons Council Standing Committee "approved" the HPRF project, Reis said, based on an air force request.
The Standing Committee of the Nuclear Weapons Council, the joint Defense and Energy body coordinating nuclear stockpile research and management, is chaired by Dr. Harold E. Smith, who is also the head of the Office, who never corresponded with Energy or the air force about mini-nukes. The very author of the navy memo on the minibus, Rear Adm. Rick Buchanan, was a member of the Standing Committee (he has since been promoted); again we are to believe that he was unaware that a navy mini-nuke was against the law.
Is this any way to run a railroad, let alone the nation's nuclear weapons program? The Defense Department's Nuclear Posture Review, released in September, categorically states that "no new-design nuclear warhead production" is required. The wording, pure Pentagonese, reveals more about what is allowed than what isn't. Research is not restricted, and those who sit on the Standing Committee know that they can continue to "sponsor" minibus and HPRF believing that a new administration or a reversal in U.S.-Russian relations will create the right conditions for a nuclear renaissance.
The nuclear patrons agitate and conspire to create their own nuclear reality, requisitioning chickens for the fox to consume, in cynical hope that those at the top, and the Congress and the public, won't notice or care.
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