US moves closer to building first nuke warhead in 20 Years  
'Pakistan Times' Monitoring Desk

WASHINGTON (US): The United States is going ahead with its plan to build the country's first nuclear warheads in nearly 20 years and will announce a hybrid design for the new weapon next week, The New York Times reported on its website Sunday.

The design, to be unveiled by the interagency Nuclear Weapons Council, will combine elements of competing designs from two weapons laboratories in an approach that some experts argue is untested and risky, according to the report.

But government officials said the new weapon, namelythe Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW), won't add tobut replace the nation's existing arsenal of aging warheads, with a new generation meant to be sturdier, more reliable, safer from accidental detonation and more secure from theft by terrorists.

The effort, if approved by U.S. President George W. Bush and financed by the U.S. Congress, will require a huge refurbishment of the nation's complex for nuclear design and manufacturing, with the overall bill estimated at over 100 billion U.S. dollars.

However, the council's decision to seek a hybrid design, combining well-tested elements from an older design with new safety and security elements from amore novel approach, could delay the weapon's production.

It also raises the question of whether the United States will ultimately be forced to end its moratorium on underground nuclear testing to make sure the new design works.

On Friday, a spokesman for the National Nuclear Security Administration said the government won't proceed with the RRW if it is determined that testing is needed.

But other officials in the administration, including Robert Joseph, undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, have said that the White House should make no commitment on testing.

The Congress authorized exploratory research for the weapon three years ago, and has financed it at relatively low levels since. But now the costs will begin to increase.

Advocates say a generation of more reliable arms would give military commanders the confidence to abandon the current philosophy of holding onto huge inventories of old weapons, and could speed a shrinkage of the American arsenal from some 6,000 warheads to perhaps2,000 or less.

Critics said a main justification for the programme vanished in November when a secretive federal panel known as Jason found that the plutonium "pits" at the heart of many nuclear warheads aged far better than expected, with most able to work reliably for a century or more.●