Useful Fools

In 1994, a law severely restricting US nuclear capabilities was passed. This Spratt-Furse law prohibits the design, development or deployment of nuclear weapons with explosive power of less that five kilotons. This law is up for repeal, and all of the usual Useful Fools are mobilizing their forces to maintain this dangerous limit.

The current law intentionally requires that all nuclear weapons possessed by the US be large enough to cause huge amounts of damage, probably to civilians.

The reasoning harks from earlier days of anti-nuclear movement, which has a religious belief that any use of nuclear weapons is worse than any consequence of not using them. It is put forth by members of that same movement.

The opponents do not want the US to have the option to use low yield nuclear weapons, even though the most likely use in today’s environment would be against nuclear proliferators. By not allowing low yield weapons, they seek to assure that our use of necessary weapons will be deterred by the horrible collateral damage that could occur from the larger yield weapons we do have.

This is akin to banning Tasers while allowing 12 gauge shotguns!

Today more than ever we find situations in which nuclear weapons may be a necessary last resort. The most likely situation is one in which rogue nation underground nuclear weapons facilities and stockpiles must be destroyed. The anti-nuke movement puts us in a situation of using a relatively high yield (and corresponding high radiation release) weapon or no weapon at all.
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An example of apparently careful and authoritative, but really specious reasoning against the law issued from the Union of confused Concerned Scientists.

For example:

However, even low-yield nuclear weapons are very powerful and destructive. The nuclear weapon that destroyed Hiroshima had a yield of 10-15 kilotons, so weapons of up to five kilotons are still quite large.

But the whole purpose it to use small weapons. In the past, we have had weapons with yields of under 100 tons! This paragraph would lead one to believe that the military wants to build 4.99 kiloton bombs, which is absurd.

or this…

However, the distance a nuclear warhead can penetrate into the ground is small—roughly 10 meters for penetration into rock or concrete. This fact has two important consequences. First, it means that even low-yield explosions will not be contained underground; instead, the blast will create a crater and eject large amounts of radioactive debris into the air (even a one kiloton weapon would have to penetrate 60 meters for the explosion to be contained.) As a result, EPWs can cause significant collateral damage. Second, since the warhead will explode near the surface of the ground, it means that low-yield weapons will not be powerful enough to destroy deep, hardened targets such as bunkers. Instead, penetrators for this purpose require high-yield warheads. Indeed, one nuclear weapon reportedly under consideration to be used as an earth penetrator, the B83, is the largest weapon in the U.S. arsenal, with a reported yield of one to two megatons. Using a high-yield penetrator would dig a very large crater and create enormous amounts of fallout.

If a weapon is needed, and it’s fallout will not be contained, the smallest weapon possible should be used. The UCS wants to make sure that it cannot be smaller than 5kT! Bringing in the B83 is a diversion… since the law doesn’t prevent that.

The containment issue is real, but if the choice is between lots of fallout or a little fallout, we should have the latter option. Furthermore, the paragraph presupposes the lack of engineering techniques which may provide much deeper penetration (this is a common characteristic of “anti’s”, especially physicists).

The weapons designers are clever folks and may very well have methods for going much deeper, methods that they are not about to reveal. A simple example might be firing a high speed penetrator into the hole made milliseconds befoer by a previous one. We don’t know, and the public shouldn’t know! One should not assume that all weapons capabilities are known to the public. Revealing an artificially low penetration depth has obvious advantages such as encouraging the enemy to dig too shallow a shelter.

Moreover, the United States has conventional penetrators that can be used to attack near-surface features of underground facilities, such as communications equipment, etc.

This is contradictory to the former excerpt. It implies that there are no targets which require more than a conventional penetrator but less than a large nuclear weapon, which is obviously false.

While this is certainly true, a push by the U.S. administration and a decision by Congress to overturn a ban that has existed for a decade would send a strong signal about U.S. intentions with respect to nuclear weapons.

Yes, a rather useful message! It would say that we are willing to target our enemies with effective weapons when necessary. The UCS reasoning is a result of the classic arms control fallacy - that countries developing nuclear weapons would be more motivated to do so by development of a few more weapons by a country that already has vast numbers!

And yet, in today’s world, that logic applies only to large nuclear powers which (China and Russia), not the rogue nations that are developing nuclear weapons for their own purposes. There is no increased danger to the US if China and Russia develop low yield nuclear penetrators. After all, they already have very high yield ones!

But the rogue countries may be deterred, or in the worst case, stopped by force, in their efforts to build and stockpile dangerous weapons. And it is those countries which have the potential to either indirectly cause a nuclear attack on the US through providing weapons to terrorists, or to directly attack us with nuclear tipped ICBM’s in some accidental or suicidal spasm.

It is too bad that the anti-nuclear crowd learned nothing from 9-11. They still fear our own government more than the actions of the truly dangerous. They still imagine they can put the nuclear genie back in the bottle by constraining our ability to develop and field weapons, irregardless of the reckless or deliberate behavior of rogue regimes. They still want to hobble our ability to pre-emptively stop mass attacks on our civilians.

The repeal of this dangerous law is currently before committees of Congress. When Congress returns from recess, expect to hear slanted news stories and a campaign against the very weapons we may need most to protect ourselves