don't bomb iran ban all nuclear weaponshome | resources page | actions page| vicpeace home page Bunker busters"Bunker Buster" has been used loosely to include both conventional and nuclear earth penetrating bombs. The US certainly used the conventional GBU 28 "Bunker Buster" in the Iraq. It also has already has around fifty low earth-penetrating "mininuke" weapons in its stockpile - namely the B61-11. The US introduced an earth-penetrating nuclear weapon in 1997, the B61-11, by putting the nuclear explosive from an earlier bomb design into a hardened steel casing with a new nose cone containing "depleted uranium" to provide ground penetration capability. Their deployment was controversial because of official US policy not todevelop new nuclear weapons. The DOE and the weapons labs have consistently argued, however, that the B61-11 is merely a "modification" of an older delivery system, because it used an existing "physics package." The B61-11 is an earth-penetrating nuclear bomb that can be delivered by variety of U.S. aircraft including F-16 fighter planes, B-1 and B-2 bombers, and possibly the B-52 bomber. As a low yield earth-penetrating "mininuke," The B61-11 can carry a nuclear charge with anywhere between a 1-kiloton (1,000 tons of TNT) and a 300-kiloton yield can be delivered by variety of U.S. aircraft including F-16 fighter planes, B-1 and B-2 bombers, and possibly the B-52 bomber. Early tests show it penetrates only 20 feet or so into dry earth when dropped from an altitude of 40,000 feet which cannot has large fallout. CONVENTIONAL BUNKER BUSTER TEST A huge mushroom cloud of dust is expected to rise over Nevada's desert in June 2006 when the Pentagon plans to detonate a gigantic 700-ton explosive -- the biggest open-air chemical blast ever at the Nevada Test Site -- as part of the research into developing weapons that can destroy deeply buried military targets. The Pentagon for several years has sought funding for research into the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator (RNEP) -- also known as the "bunker buster" -- after the administration's 2001 Nuclear Posture Review stated that no weapon in the U.S. arsenal could threaten a growing number of buried targets. Congress, however, has repeatedly refused to grant funding for a study on a nuclear bunker buster, instead directing money toward conventional alternatives. In 2004, the US Defense Department awarded a contract to Boeing to design and test a huge conventional bomb, to be known as the Massive Ordnance Penetrator. However the prospect of using Depleted Uranium (DU) in the penetrator's head is still disturbing for large scale radio active fallout. See also |