The US Department of Defence has announced plans for a nuclear bomb which will be 24 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima during World War Two.
The Pentagon is seeking approval and funding from congress to produce a modern version of the B61 nuclear gravity bomb.
The new gravity bomb, the B61-13, would deliver a yield of 360 kilotons.
It would be dropped from aircraft including the $692 million B-21 Raider stealth bomber.
The new bomb would be 24 times more powerful than the bombs that struck Japan
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“Today's announcement is reflective of a changing security environment and growing threats from potential adversaries," Assistant Secretary of Defence for Space Policy John Plumb said.
“The United States has a responsibility to continue to assess and field the capabilities we need to credibly deter and, if necessary, respond to strategic attacks, and assure our allies.”
The powerful new explosive will also “include the modern safety, security, and accuracy features of the B61-12.”
It has been met with immediate signs of approval from Republicans.
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The development of a suspected limited number of the B61-13s will not increase the overall number of nuclear weapons in America, as older explosives will be retired.
The US currently has around 3,700 nuclear warheads, of which 1,419 are deployed.
During the 2020 election campaign Biden vowed to “bring us closer to a world without nuclear weapons so that the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are never repeated.”
However, the US is now involved in its most ambitious nuclear weapons effort since World War Two.
Hiroshima after the bomb
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Hans Kristensen and Matt Korda, of the Federation of American Scientists’ Nuclear Information Project, said there were a limited number of targets that would need such a high-yield gravity bomb.
They therefore think that only about 50 of the weapons will be produced.
They wrote: “Although government officials insist that the B61-13 plan is not driven by new developments in adversarial countries, or a new military targeting requirement, increasing the accuracy of a high-yield bomb obviously has targeting implications.
“Detonating the weapon closer to the target will increase the probably that the target is destroyed, and a very hard facility could hypothetically be destroyed.”
The Pentagon has not given an estimated cost of the project.
