Is the US nuclear arsenal sufficient to address today's security challenges? The Pentagon apparently thinks not. A new report from its Defense Science Board (DSB) argues that "nuclear weapons are needed that produce much lower collateral damage". It lends support to proposals to build new nuclear weapons for attacking underground facilities. To a point, such 'bunker busters' are nothing new ― the B-53 bomb, first deployed in the early 1960s, can destroy underground targets, although it creates lethal radioactive fallout that covers hundreds of thousands of square kilometres. The new proposals promise more effective weapons with reduced fallout. But the DSB overstates the extent to which that is possible, and gives the comparative potential of conventional weapons short shrift.
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