It's begun to occur to some folks that we might have a bit of a deterrence problem: over the past couple of decades, our nuclear arsenal has simply been slowly rusting away. And the 4800 or so warheads that we still have really aren't particularly compatible with today's requirements; they were designed and deployed with one thing in mind: blowing Russia off the map.
John S. Foster Jr., former director of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and chief of Pentagon research during the Cold War, said the labs should design, develop and build prototype weapons that may be needed by the military in the future, including a very low-yield nuclear weapon that could be used with precision delivery systems, an electromagnetic pulse weapon that could destroy an enemy's communications systems and a penetrating weapon to destroy deeply buried targets.
There are just a few problems that would have to be addressed in order to accomplish those goals, such as the fact that production infrastructure has been degraded over time. In addition, most of our nuclear scientists are in their 50s; younger ones have no experience in design and construction of weapons. Really, we need to get cracking on this before we fall off the edge completely.
In a rare nod to reality, even Barky's on board:
The Obama administration has a $60-billion plan to modernize the Energy Department complex and update weapons, including a new type of warhead that cannibalizes components from older weapons.
That's a start of sorts, but it doesn't really address new design requirements, and a number of folks are less than thrilled with the "mix and mash" approach - not a good idea, they say. On the other hand, Barky's recent firing of Hagel could well mean he's suddenly found something else to do with that $60 billion.
It'd sure be nice if we had somebody with a brain at the White House.
