National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2006
NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT FOR FISCAL YEAR 2006 -- (Senate - July 22, 2005)
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Mr. REED. Mr. President, I rise in support of the Kennedy amendment dealing with the robust nuclear earth penetrator, or RNEP. This issue has been discussed and debated at length many times. In fact, my impression was that we had come at least legislatively to a conclusion. The conclusion was that this was not a weapons system that would materially aid our ability to advance national security purposes of the United States.
In the fiscal year 2003 budget request, the Department of Energy sought $15 million to fund the first year of what was to be a 3-year, $45 million study to determine the feasibility of using one of two existing large nuclear weapons as a robust nuclear earth penetrator.
They couched it in terms of a study. There is some discussion about requirements and studies. My impression is that a requirement is a formal decision made by the Department of Defense through elaborate procedures. With respect to the particular nuclear penetrator to attack deeply buried targets, I do not believe there is a formal requirement. There is a general requirement to hold at risk hard, deeply buried targets, but there are many different variations that could be applied to that, and I do not believe the Department of Defense has yet come to a conclusion, a requirement, that this mission can only be undertaken by a robust nuclear penetrator.
Nevertheless, early on, several years ago the Department of Energy's budget called for studies. Congress authorized and appropriated the $15 million for the first phase of this study by the Department of Energy, but DOE was not to begin this work until it submitted a report setting forth requirements for an RNEP and the target types that RNEP was designed to hold at risk. DOE proposed their response in April of 2003, and the funds were released to begin again this study. Once again, DOE insisted that this was just a study. There was no decision to begin the process of development and production that would lead to a weapon.
The following fiscal year 2004, DOE again sought $15 million for the RNEP, but now Congress had become, I think rightfully, a little skeptical of the technology, of the efficacy of this proposed weapon, to do what it was intended to do, and as a result, only $7.5 million was appropriated. DOE took the reduced funding and said: Still, this is just a study. We just want to look at this concept. We study lots of concepts. We certainly cannot inhibit the intellectual inquiry when it comes to an issue of so much importance to our national security.
Now, in the 2005 budget request, after 2 years of various requests, the true nature of the RNEP proposal is becoming much clearer. It does not appear today to be just a study. DOE sought $27.5 million for RNEP in the 2005 budget request. In addition, DOE included the RNEP in its 5-year budget report demonstrating that the real plan was to continue with the RNEP project through the next 5 years through the development stage and just up to the point at which production would begin.
Now it is no longer just a study. In fact, DOE is talking about almost $500 million over the next several years to get ready to build an RNEP. The cost of the feasibility study has also increased dramatically from the initial $45 million--$15 million a year for 3 years--to now $145 million. If the study is increasing from $45 million to $145 million, if that same progression is applied to development, then right now we are talking about almost a billion dollars to get to the point of development and production for this RNEP.
Finally, though, I think Congress had its fill with the study that turned out to be a stalking horse for a production program, and in the fiscal year 2005 budget cycle denied funding. I applaud particularly our colleagues in the other body who were very much involved in this decision on a bipartisan basis and decided that this program was not worth the investment; that it was not a study; that if it was a true study it could have been concluded and the results could have been provided to decisionmakers for a more thoughtful review of this aspect of national security.
The administration just did not get the message. So in 2006, this budget request, DOE requested $4 million to start the RNEP feasibility study again, and $14 million will be needed in fiscal year 2007 to finish the study.
It should be apparent right now, this is not about a study. This is about developing a weapons system to hold hard and deeply buried targets at risk. The National Academy of Sciences conducted their own study to look at the feasibility of doing this and the usefulness of this type of weapons system, at the request of the Armed Services Committee. Their study sheds a great deal of light on the practical implications of this weapons system.
DOE says the RNEP project is to look at the feasibility of using a bomb with a small nuclear yield to target hard and deeply buried targets with minimal collateral damage on the surface and minimal fallout. That would be a very important development, if it were feasible. But the Academy points out in their study, and makes it clear, that to really hold hard and deeply buried targets at risk the RNEP would have to be very large and would not be contained. This is about physics, I think, more than it is about wishful thinking. The physics of the problem suggests if you really want to destroy that target you can't use a small nuclear charge. You would have to use a rather considerable one.
Therefore, the DOE is considering modifying an existing large-yield nuclear weapon, the B-83, to be a nuclear penetrator. The B-83 nuclear bomb has a 1-megaton yield. That is explosive power equivalent to 1 million tons of TNT, hardly a small, discrete weapon. The full megaton yield of the B-83 would be needed to hold at risk a target buried 900 feet below the surface--because of engineering progress, you effectively can burrow that far down and put facilities or intelligence centers or other critical military installations at that depth. But not only would the fallout not be contained after the detonation of this large a weapon, the resulting radioactive debris that the B-83 would put in the atmosphere would make the fallout worse. You would be sending a charge down into the earth, exploding the earth, blowing it up into the atmosphere and spreading the fallout. There would be substantial casualties if it were used, and the fallout would spread for hundreds of miles.
The National Academy of Sciences study makes it clear that in a populated area, millions of people would be killed and injured.
Let me give sort of a rough comparison of the effects of the B-83 system. It has yields ranging up to 1 megaton; that is 1 million tons of TNT. The bomb we dropped on Hiroshima was 14 kilotons. It resulted in the death of 140,000 people. The Nagasaki bomb was 21 kilotons; 73,000 people died. The yield of the B-83 bomb is 71 times larger than that used at Hiroshima and 47 times larger than Nagasaki. That would cause incredible damage and casualties.
In a practical sense, if you are striking a critical installation, most likely that installation is close enough to either an urban area or close enough to other key terrain that a military commander would have to think twice about dropping a nuclear bomb on such a target. The reality is we could not operate in that area for years, because of fallout, because of damage. If your goal were to ultimately destroy and occupy an opposing foe, why would you essentially create a situation where you could not even operate in the area?
The other thing about this whole approach to the RNEP is it fails to recognize that we have precision conventional weapons that may not be able to reach down 900 feet, but certainly these weapons can be used to deal devastating blows to the communication networks that serve these facilities and to the entrances. Eventually there has to be someplace where you go into these tunnels. Those facilities, if they can be identified, can be shut off by conventional munitions. The goal is to neutralize the target, and that can be done, I think, more readily by conventional weapons, particularly conventional precision weapons. So the need for this system on a practical basis is not at all compelling to me, and I do not believe it is compelling to the more thoughtful people in the military, those who are thinking about these types of situations.
There is another factor, too. Again, the presumption is that we are going to have a nuclear device that we are going to use to take out a deeply buried target, which could be in a circumstance where we would be contemplating the first use of a nuclear weapon against one of these targets. We have to be very sure that we have the kind of intelligence that will support such extraordinary use of military power. If we reflect back on Operation Iraqi Freedom, we thought there were nuclear weapons--some people did. We thought there were chemical weapons and thought there were biological weapons. Secretary Powell was before the United Nations talking about these mobile biological vans.
The reality is our intelligence was very poor; certainly not sufficient, in my view, to justify the use of a nuclear weapon like this. So there is a further complication about ever using one of these weapons; and that is, would we have the intelligence to support, particularly, the first use of a nuclear weapon to take out a target like this?
We do not need to spend $1 billion to develop to the point of production an RNEP. I think our colleagues in the House, on a bipartisan basis, figured this out last year. We should be equally astute and adroit. We have conventional precision weapons that can deal lethal blows to these types of installations. I think we should not contemplate using nuclear weapons, such weapons as the B-83, which would yield vast areas of a particular country literally uninhabitable for months if not years. Also, by the way--which we found from our adversaries, particularly from our adversaries in Iraq--they are fairly astute about trying to counteract our weapons with their tactics. If you were someone who was afraid that the United States might have such a weapon like an RNEP and use it against you, I think there would be a strong temptation to put that deeply buried target underneath a city, underneath a historic or religious site, so that our choices would be further complicated by the fact that we would be delivering a nuclear device in an area where there could be significant population or significant reasons to avoid the detonation of a nuclear bomb.
I think this funding is not appropriate. I join Senator Kennedy in urging that we move to drop it. I urge my colleagues to vote for the Kennedy amendment, and I yield the floor.
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