Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
Omaha World-Herald
March 13, 2008 By Joseph Morton, World-Herald Bureau
WASHINGTON — The United States needs to take a hard look at replacing its aging nuclear warheads with new and improved models, Air Force Gen. Kevin Chilton said Wednesday.
Chilton is commander of the U.S. Strategic Command. Headquartered at Offutt Air Force Base, StratCom is responsible for certifying that the country's nuclear stockpiles are reliable and secure.
But those stockpiles, estimated to include 6,000 warheads, are getting older and weren't designed to last forever.
That situation is making him nervous, Chilton told a hearing of the Senate Armed Services subcommittee on strategic forces.
"I liken it to approaching a cliff — and I don't know how far away from that cliff I am," Chilton said.
He called for continuing a stalled feasibility study that would explore a replacement for aging warheads in the U.S. stockpile. Congress put the brakes on that study last year by cutting its funding.
Chilton said newer warheads would be safer, more reliable and easier to maintain.
Opponents of modernizing warheads have called it nuclear proliferation, arguing that it would send the wrong message to nations that the United States is trying to dissuade from building new nuclear weapons.
After the hearing, Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., said he supports providing funding to complete the warhead study and expects Congress to approve it this year.
Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., also supports modernizing the nation's nuclear warheads, an aide said.
During Wednesday's hearing, senators also asked the StratCom commander about the shooting down of a spy satellite last month. StratCom coordinated the many agencies involved in the operation to destroy the failing satellite and its tank of toxic fuel.
Chilton told the lawmakers that the operation was much different from China's downing of one of its defunct weather satellite last year.
He said the United States was transparent about what it was doing and why, in contrast to the Chinese.
Chilton said that while China hit its satellite so high up that pieces could be floating around for decades, the United States took pains to blast its satellite at as low an altitude as possible.
That means the larger pieces will be down within the next couple of months and the rest by the end of the year, he said.
"We took this intercept at an altitude that would ensure that that problem would go away in short order," Chilton said.
March 13, 2008 By Joseph Morton, World-Herald Bureau
WASHINGTON — The United States needs to take a hard look at replacing its aging nuclear warheads with new and improved models, Air Force Gen. Kevin Chilton said Wednesday.
Chilton is commander of the U.S. Strategic Command. Headquartered at Offutt Air Force Base, StratCom is responsible for certifying that the country's nuclear stockpiles are reliable and secure.
But those stockpiles, estimated to include 6,000 warheads, are getting older and weren't designed to last forever.
That situation is making him nervous, Chilton told a hearing of the Senate Armed Services subcommittee on strategic forces.
"I liken it to approaching a cliff — and I don't know how far away from that cliff I am," Chilton said.
He called for continuing a stalled feasibility study that would explore a replacement for aging warheads in the U.S. stockpile. Congress put the brakes on that study last year by cutting its funding.
Chilton said newer warheads would be safer, more reliable and easier to maintain.
Opponents of modernizing warheads have called it nuclear proliferation, arguing that it would send the wrong message to nations that the United States is trying to dissuade from building new nuclear weapons.
After the hearing, Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., said he supports providing funding to complete the warhead study and expects Congress to approve it this year.
Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., also supports modernizing the nation's nuclear warheads, an aide said.
During Wednesday's hearing, senators also asked the StratCom commander about the shooting down of a spy satellite last month. StratCom coordinated the many agencies involved in the operation to destroy the failing satellite and its tank of toxic fuel.
Chilton told the lawmakers that the operation was much different from China's downing of one of its defunct weather satellite last year.
He said the United States was transparent about what it was doing and why, in contrast to the Chinese.
Chilton said that while China hit its satellite so high up that pieces could be floating around for decades, the United States took pains to blast its satellite at as low an altitude as possible.
That means the larger pieces will be down within the next couple of months and the rest by the end of the year, he said.
"We took this intercept at an altitude that would ensure that that problem would go away in short order," Chilton said.