"Nuclear weapons will remain a critical element in U.S. national security," U.S. National Nuclear Security Administrator Linton Brooks said Tuesday at the conservative Heritage Foundation.

The Bush administration has operated under that premise, working to expand research on new kinds of nuclear bombs.

"While we will reduce the number of deployed (nuclear) forces, we have to plan against an uncertain future," Brooks said.

The first step of the new plan came with the Nuclear Posture Review submitted to Congress by the Bush Pentagon in December 2001.

The review states: "Terrorists or rogue states armed with weapons of mass destruction will likely test America's security commitments to its allies and friends. In response, we will need a range of capabilities to assure friend and foe alike of U.S. resolve. A broader array of capability is needed to dissuade states from undertaking political, military or technical courses of action that would threaten U.S. and allied security."

That broader array of capability was described to include both smaller nuclear weapons that could be deployed with less collateral damage and nuclear bombs capable of penetrating deep into the earth to destroy buried targets.

Last year Congress made research into the smaller bombs possible by repealing a 10-year-old ban on researching the so-called low-yield warheads intended to minimize collateral damage. The legislation authorizing the research stipulated that any move to go beyond research to development would require explicit congressional authorization.

Research programs into both smaller nuclear bombs and deep-penetrating "bunker buster" nuclear weapons were approved by Congress and are under way.

The administration's 2005 budget would step up both programs.

Its bunker-buster provisions have drawn some attention for their ambitious nature -- the National Nuclear Security Administration has requested $27 million for 2005 and just less than $485 million over five years for what it says is a purely research project.

However, a report on the budget request by the Congressional Research Service, the non-partisan public policy research arm of Congress, raises questions about the nature of the request.

The report says the request "seems to cast serious doubt on assertions that (the bunker-buster program) is only a study." It goes on to quote an unnamed NNSA manager who said the funding requested after 2005 is just a "placeholder" to reserve money in case the project does move beyond the research phase.

The administration's proposed 2005 budget also contains $9 million to investigate new nuclear weapons concepts, including smaller nuclear bombs.

The budget proposals were discussed in the Senate Armed Services Committee last week and are before the House Armed Services Committee this week. Both are expected to spark considerable debate.

Brooks blamed much of the controversy surrounding the plans on what he said was misinformation.

He said research into new kinds of smaller nuclear weapons does not indicate an effort to lower the threshold for a nuclear attack or make possible pre-emptive nuclear action.

"I've never met anybody who would consider nuclear pre-emption with regard to rogue states," Brooks said.

He characterized the easing of research restrictions as a way of freeing weapons researchers to think more freely about nuclear threats and possibilities. He said of work under the prohibition on researching smaller nuclear weapons, "We were in a situation where all thinking had to be done by two physicists, an engineer and a lawyer."

Brooks added that research into smaller nuclear weapons is purely theoretical and has no physical development component.

Keith Payne, who was deputy assistant secretary of defense for forces and policy until June 2003 and played a major role in developing the Bush administration's nuclear policies, stressed the importance of U.S. nuclear might as a deterrent at the Heritage event.

He said having state-of-the-art nuclear weapons and being ready to use them allows the United States to convince its allies they don't need to develop their own nuclear capabilities and keeps U.S. enemies from attempting attacks with any kind of weapons of mass destruction, including chemical and biological weapons.

Indeed, one of the arguments often made for developing nuclear bunker busters is that they could be used to wipe out buried stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons.

However, Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, said that developing new nuclear weapons would be more likely to spur other countries to greater nuclear proliferation than deter them.

"By trying to carve out new missions for new types of nuclear weapons, we're tempting fate, we're inviting other states to emulate that behavior," Kimball said.

Nuclear weapons are unlikely to upstage the war on terror in the U.S. public consciousness any time soon, but debates brewing in Congress seem likely to increase their profile significantly. Indeed, the current focus on defense might make the arguments that much more contentious.

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