"We really, really, really need new nuclear weapons."
"Ask for new nukes? Who, us?"
That was the crux of the Republicans' double-headed argument yesterday as the Senate debated whether or not to fund the research and development of atomic "bunker busters" and low-yield "mini-nukes." The GOP won out, 55-42, and the plans will go forward.
"We know our adversaries are building hardened bunkers, deeply buried," Allard warned.
America's current nuclear arsenal can't take out these underground chambers. So the country needs to start working on the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator a bunker-busting atomic bomb.
But when Democrats started arguing against the $500 million in projected funds for the project, Allard shifted gears. Suddenly, the bunker-buster wasn't an urgent need. It was a research project.
"What we're looking at is a study," he said. The $500 million that was just a placeholder figure, in case Congress might, some day, wish to get serious about the weapon.
Then, just as quickly, Allard pivoted yet again. Democrats, he warned, "shouldn't bury their heads in the sand." Voting against the new nuclear research, that would be like "ignor[ing] that the world is changing."
A mile a minute, it would seem.
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