Clock is ticking on aging B61 bomb, StratCom chief says
September 23, 2013
By Steve Leiwer
The oldest atomic bomb in the U.S. arsenal desperately needs to be upgraded before its aging electronics go bad early in the next decade, the head of the Offutt-based U.S. Strategic Command says.
Gen. C. Robert Kehler has been telling anyone who will listen that the clock is ticking on the B61 bomb. It was designed in the 1960s to be dropped from NATO’s strategic bombers and tactical fighters, thwarting a Soviet invasion of Western Europe.
“The B61 life-extension program is absolutely necessary,” Kehler said in an interview with The World-Herald. “Much has been deferred. Now we don’t have the luxury of waiting.”
But congressional opponents on the right and left are lining up against the program, citing cost estimates that have doubled in just two years to more than $28 million per bomb. As anti-nuclear activists are fond of pointing out, that’s about twice what it would cost if the B61 were made of solid gold.
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