NUCLEAR bombs that can burrow into bunkers could be developed following
approval of a new US defence bill this week. Congress banned studies into
battlefield nuclear weapons in 1993, amid fears that they would be used in
combat.
But the Defense Appropriations Bill overturns that ban by ordering a
feasibility study on these “mini-nukes”. Stephen Younger, head of nuclear
weapons research at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, relaunched
the debate in June with a discussion paper noting that a 5-kiloton nuclear
device, with precision targeting, could destroy a hardened missile silo or
bunker. A conventional warhead is…
