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bananas

(27,509 posts)
Thu Apr 25, 2013, 06:15 AM Apr 2013

If B61 nuclear bombs' strategic purpose is unclear, why spend more on them?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/24/b61-nuclear-bombs-strategic-purpose

If B61 nuclear bombs' strategic purpose is unclear, why spend more on them?

The controversy about upgrading US tactical weapons is a microcosm of unresolved issues over Pentagon budget cuts

Heather Hurlburt
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 24 April 2013

The Obama administration's 2014 defense budget, with its proposal to cut $460m from nuclear non-proliferation activities and use that money to pay for new features on its B61 tactical nuclear bombs, has sparked heated debate. Is the modernization desperately needed or irrelevant goldplating? Is the administration undercutting its own non-proliferation agenda for domestic politics, or making a smart investment in the deterrent of the future?

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B61 bombs sit at the airbases of five Nato allies, where analyst Jeffrey Lewis quotes a senior Nato official saying of the weapons, "they have no military value." Yet, they do fulfil what Lewis calls "political needs", demonstrating European allies' commitment to remaining a nuclear alliance, providing all allies nuclear deterrence, and sharing the cost with the United States. For some allies – those with a border with Russia or historical anxieties about Moscow's intentions and its own large tactical nuclear arsenal – those political needs are very real.

Outside Europe, where all four nuclear powers are downsizing, the picture on tactical weapons looks different. India is moving to develop a full nuclear "triad" of bombers, missiles and submarines. Pakistan is aggressively developing new tactical weapons and will soon pass France in the total size of its arsenal. China, too, seems to be working to modernize and develop its arsenal; so, as we all know, is North Korea. In response, public support for nuclear weapons development is rising in South Korea.

Russia, which, with the US, still possesses 90% of all nuclear weapons, maintains a stock of tactical weapons almost three times as large as the US. It is believed by some observers to have developed lower-yield tactical weapons (less fallout and collateral damage) and to be changing its doctrine to be more willing to use them.

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