NeoCon Nukes
Will they or won't they?
Some people have contacted me in response to my prediction that the US would not attempt to use nuclear weapons against Iranian underground bases and facilities. Their thinking is that the NeoCons cannot bear defeat and will do whatever they can to deliver a win.
There is a real basis for this argument.
The Bush administration’s 2001 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) re-engineered American defense policy.. It typified moral dualism, technocratic abstraction, and above all the need to dominate that typifies the NeoCon mind, naming seven countries as targets for U.S. nuclear weapons—Russia, China, North Korea, Iraq, Iran, Libya, and Syria.
Suddenly non-nuclear “rogue states” were on the same level as peer nuclear competitors, punished for non-compliance, usually with the excuse of seeking WMDs like the US’s. .
Neocons like Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith under Donald Rumsfeld, fashioned a new Nuclear Triad
THE NEW TRIAD
Offensive
Strike /Nuclear/Conventional
Defensive
Systems /Missile Defense
Responsive
Infrastructure / Rapid Lab Testing
By blending nuclear and conventional strike capabilities into a single “offensive strike” category, the administration sought to remove the taboos against using nuclear weapons, stripping away their apocalyptic aura and unfortunately increasing the risk of nuclear war. The whole point of MAD was people were supposed to be afraid.
The document authorized nuclear attacks not just against an adversary with chemical/biological weapons but also in the event of “surprising military developments” in conventional warfare, as is now the case with Iran.
One rational for use was the need to destroy underground bunkers that conventional airpower could not breach. This resulted in research into the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator (RNEP) and other low-yield nukes on the theory that a smaller, cleaner nuke exploded underground is a usable weapon.
Moral “dualism” = moral duplicity.
This policy shift was the culmination of years of neoconservative effort.
During the late 1970s, neoconservative intellectuals formed the Committee on the Present Danger (CPD which critiqued Henry Kissinger’s policy of détente (peaceful coexistence) with the Soviet Union, arguing that assuming the Soviets shared a desire for mutual stability was a psychological delusion. They instead wanted dominance. They argued that a nuclear war could be fought and won— if the US had escalation dominance as seemed to be the case with the fall of the Soviet Union.
Thank Francis Fukuyama for that .
However, the United States has not been able to create a nuclear bunker buster capable of boring through hundreds of meters of solid mountain rock before detonating as it would have to do if attacking Iran’s missile bases and other facilities
The U.S. military’s primary nuclear earth penetrators are the B61 Mod 11, and newer B61 Mod 13 variant.
Despite their hardened steel casing and nose cones, these bombs can only penetrate 2 to 6 meters (6 to 20 feet) into solid stone or frozen soil before exploding. They do not “drill” through mountains.
By detonating just a few meters beneath the surface, the bomb’s up to 340 kilotons of energy was supposed to send a massive seismic shockwave that would collapse internal tunnels, sever ventilation, and crush and bury the facility.
Sadly for the US, Iran has some of the world’s best engineers and strategic infrastructure such as the Fordow uranium enrichment plant and newer underground missile bases, is designed to nullify shockwaves
Key Iranian facilities are buried 100 to over 500 meters deep beneath solid, but highly resilient granite. would resist anything but a massive megaton detonation, which would release large amounts of subsurface burst radiation spreading across the entire region.
Cracking a facility protected by 300+ meters of granite would require a massive strategic-scale megaton detonation releasing clouds of radioactive dust from the destroyed mountain over the entirety of West Asia and also nuclear-armed Pakistan and India . And since there are a lot of bases under mountains, that would mean a lot of bombs and environmental disaster of epic proportions.
Because of the extreme political and environmental consequences of using multiple megaton bombs, and no doubt to prevent a revolt in its own military, U.S. planning now heavily favors the GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP).
GBU-57 MOP (Conventional) B61 Mod 11/13 (Nuclear)
• Weighs 30,000 lbs • Hardened Nose Cone
• Penetrates ~60 meters • Penetrates 2-6 meters
• Requires B-2/B-21 Jets • Relies on Seismic Shock
The GBU-57 is a conventional, 30,000-pound monster weapon that can punch through roughly 60 meters (200 feet) of reinforced concrete or rock. U.S. military strategy relies on dropping multiple MOPs consecutively in the exact same crater to systematically hollow out the mountain’s roof, or targeting entry portals and ventilation networks to effectively seal the adversary inside.
That assumes a high level of accuracy that would require B2s or B21s in large numbers loitering right over the target and vulnerable to Iran’s newest weapon systems using electro-optical heat sinking missiles.
Yes, stealth can limit visibility – but when you know that the aircraft are in the air and approximate arrival time over targets, you can have nasty surprises waiting.
Since forcing a multi-billion dollar stealth bomber to fly over integrated air defense systems is highly risky, the Pentagon’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) began developing a powered standoff successor to the MOP, which will not be available until 2028 at the earliest or maybe 2029, with a new President in office.
So NeoCons (who include Trump) may talk about nuclear strikes but it’s not going to happen. They don’t actually care about Iran as much as they care about losing —it is all about pride.
How will they deal with the humiliation? To understand that we have to understand NeoCon psychology, what makes them what they are, what drives them.
That’s a post for another time.
Cat’s care!
Ichi had a companion, Jet, who sadly passed away. Ichi grieved for a long time, searching for his friend. He began sleeping in Jet’s bed, hoping he would come back. He was truly sad. That was one thing which persuaded me to adopt Chappy.
Ichi also knows my footsteps coming up the stairs and is always waiting for me. Chappy does, too.
Love is remembering.
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Ever since it has had the ability to deliver nuclear bombs, the US government has targeted China - long before it acquired nuclear weapons - and would have used them if war had broken out with the USSR.
Back in the 1960s, as a whizz-kid consultant to the Pentagon, Daniel Ellsberg had a tour of top-level US ships and bases in the Pacific. He saw things that even generals and admirals weren't allowed to.
"Many operations and plan centers and command posts in Okinawa, Formosa, Guam, and Tokyo, and on several carriers and command ships in the Pacific that I visited, had a large map showing nuclear targets. It was their most secret map, usually covered by a screen or curtain when people who lacked authorization (unlike me) were being briefed in the room. These maps, typically, did not demarcate at all between China and Russia. The Sino-Soviet bloc appeared as one giant landmass, with arrows and pins indicating the various targets...
All these factors combined to create a situation in which, if we were under attack, it would be simply physically impossible to retaliate against Russian or Chinese targets alone, even if the president ordered his forces to do so...
"I never found anyone in Washington who had any idea that there was this kind of problem".
Ellsberg, Daniel (2017). The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner
"... arguing that assuming the Soviets shared a desire for mutual stability was a psychological delusion".
Nothing "psychological" about it, but it was a delusion. The Soviets wanted mutual stability, but they couldn't have shared that desire as the USA didn't have it.