Nukes: The Next Generation

jonerik writes: "Following up on the weekend's posting on the revision of American nuclear war-fighting plans, the New York Times has this article on the difficulties in building a new generation of nukes. The American nuclear arms industry is much smaller now than it was ten years ago, testing the new, smaller "bunker busters" would be problematic, and no one's certain that a nuclear weapon with a tiny explosive yield that's capable of penetrating yards of reinforced concrete could actually be built."

Comments

Why do they need this?

[PD]

Are there bunkers in existence that are not vulnerable to the conventional bunker busters? Might those bunkers be in Iraq? I am mighty skeptical that there's a bunker in existence that can't be destroyed by a large precisely targeted conventional bomb. The only exception to this would be a bunker that's extremely deep, but a small nuke would also have trouble with this. Probably nothing that can't be solved with a larger nuke. Funny (not funny haha) how we all thought 5 years ago that since the Russians are our friends we didn't have to worry about nuclear war, and now our President might actually use nukes in an upcoming war.