Eric Schlosser - Command and Control

IN MARCH 1991, three months after the Drell panel submitted its report to Congress, Bob Peurifoy retired from Sandia. He had no more tolerance for the bureaucratic warfare and petty slights, the disrespect from Sandia’s upper management. More important, his goals had been achieved. Congress, the weapons laboratories, the Pentagon, and the Department of Energy all agreed that the safety of America’s nuclear weapons had to be improved. Weak link/strong link devices were put into every nuclear weapon. And other safety technologies — insensitive high explosives, nuclear cores encased in a fire-resistant shell — were to be included in every new design. The changes in the stockpile that Peurifoy had sought for decades, once dismissed as costly and unnecessary, were now considered essential. Building a nuclear weapon without these safety features had become inconceivable.

Sidney Drell regards Bob Peurifoy as one of the leading, though largely unacknowledged, figures in the history of nuclear technology. He thinks that Peurifoy’s achievements rank alongside those of Admiral Hyman G. Rickover, who pioneered the safe use of nuclear propulsion for the U.S. Navy. And yet Peurifoy told me, on many occasions, that he regrets not having been braver, especially about the safety problems with the Mark 28 bomb. He’d chosen to work within the system, despite his strong opposition to many of its practices. Although he was critical of the way in which official secrecy has been used to cover up mistakes, he’d honorably obeyed its code. As we sat in the sunroom of Peurifoy’s modest home, with a lovely view of the Texas hill country, talking for hours about his work to improve nuclear weapon safety, his wife, Barbara, listened attentively. Despite a close, loving marriage that had lasted for sixty years, he’d kept these details to himself, never sharing the weight of that dark knowledge with Barbara or their children.

Within a year of Peurifoy’s retirement, the nuclear weapon community that had long ignored, dismissed, and opposed him became outspoken in defense of his cause. The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty was being discussed at the United Nations. The treaty prohibited the sort of underground nuclear detonations that the United States and other countries needed to develop new weapons. A ban on these tests was, in many respects, a ban on new weapons — since no military would place its faith in a warhead or bomb that had never been proven to work. During a Senate debate on the treaty in August 1992, the opponents of a test ban came up with a novel rationale for continuing to detonate nuclear weapons.

“Why is testing of nuclear weapons so important?” asked one senator, a close ally of the Pentagon and the weapons laboratories. “It is so important because nuclear weapons, even today’s nuclear weapons, represent a great danger to the American public and to the world because of the lack of safety of their devices.” He then put a list of Broken Arrows into the Congressional Record. Another senator opposing the treaty claimed that “we already know that science and technology cries out for safety modifications.” A third attacked the Department of Energy for its negligence on safety issues over the years, warning: “A vote to halt nuclear testing today is a vote to condemn the American people to live with unsafe nuclear weapons in their midst for years and years — indeed, until nuclear weapons are eliminated.”

In 1996 the United States became the first country to sign the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, and since then more than 180 other nations have signed it, too. But the U.S. Senate voted against ratifying the treaty in 1999. Once again, the treaty’s opponents argued that nuclear tests might be necessary to ensure that the American stockpile remains safe and reliable. During the administration of President George W. Bush, the Pentagon and the weapons laboratories supported the development of a new nuclear weapon, the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW). It would be safer, more secure, and more reliable than current weapons, the administration promised. The RRW would also be the first “green” nuclear weapon — designed to avoid the use of beryllium, a toxic environmental contaminant.

Bob Peurifoy has been bemused by the newfound passion for nuclear weapon safety and security among his former critics. He sees no need for more weapon tests, supports the test ban treaty, and thinks it would be highly irresponsible to add a new weapon like the RRW to the stockpile without having detonated it first. The plans to develop new warheads and bombs, Peurifoy says, are just “a money grab” by the Pentagon and the weapons laboratories. The yield-to-weight ratio of America’s nuclear weapons became asymptotic — approached their mathematical upper limit — around 1963. New designs won’t make detonations any more efficient. And a study by JASON scientists concluded that the cores of existing weapons will be good for at least another hundred years. Although the boosting gas and neutron generators within the weapons deteriorate with age, they can be replaced through programs currently managed by the Department of Energy. Harold Agnew, the former head of Los Alamos who championed one-point safety and permissive action links, agrees with Peurifoy. Agnew says that the idea of introducing a new weapon without testing it is “nonsense.” And he opposes any additional tests.

The only weapons in today’s stockpile that trouble Peurifoy are the W-76 and W-88 warheads carried by submarine-launched Trident II missiles. The Drell panel expressed concern about these warheads more than twenty years ago. Both of them rely on conventional high explosives, instead of insensitive high explosives. The Navy had insisted upon use of the more dangerous explosive to reduce the weight of the warheads, increase their range, and slightly increase their yield. The decision was unfortunate from a safety perspective, because the multiple warheads of a Trident II don’t sit on top of the missile. They surround the rocket motor of its third stage, as a space-saving measure. And the Navy chose a high-energy propellant for the rocket motor that’s much more likely to explode in an accident — simply by being dropped or struck by a bullet — than other solid fuels. A Trident submarine has as many as twenty-four of these missiles, each carrying between four to five warheads. An accident with one missile could detonate the third-stage propellant, set off the high explosives of the warheads, and spread a good deal of plutonium around the ports in Georgia and Washington State where Trident submarines are based.

For years the Navy has resisted changing the third-stage rocket propellant of the Trident II missile or using the W-87 warhead — which is almost identical to the W-88 but employs a safer insensitive high explosive. Using a less energetic propellant would decrease the missile’s range by perhaps 4 percent, and the W-87 warhead has a slightly lower yield. Parochial concerns may also be a factor in the Navy’s attachment to the W-88. That warhead was designed for the Navy by Los Alamos; the W-87, by Lawrence Livermore for the Air Force.

The best way to load a Trident II missile onto a submarine is one of the few areas of disagreement between Sidney Drell and Bob Peurifoy. Drell endorses the Navy’s current method: load the missile first, then attach the warheads. Peurifoy prefers another method: put fully assembled missiles into the launch tubes. The difference between the two opinions may seem esoteric, and yet the potential consequences of an accident are beyond dispute: a missile explosion inside a submarine with as many as 144 nuclear warheads.

TODAY’S UNITED STATES AIR FORCE bears little resemblance to the Air Force of the 1970s. The arms buildup during the Reagan administration greatly increased spending on new aircraft, new weapons, spare parts, and better training. Morale improved and illegal drug use plummeted, thanks to widespread testing. A cultural shift occurred, as well. While serving as head of the Tactical Air Command from 1978 until 1984, General Wilbur L. Creech had the same sort of lasting influence on the Air Force that Curtis LeMay once exerted. But Creech promoted a fundamentally different type of leadership — the adaptive, decentralized, independent thinking of the fighter pilot. By the early 1980s the bomber generals had been driven from power, and the leading staff positions at the Air Force were filled with fighter generals. The new tactics, equipment, and esprit de corps transformed its performance in battle. During the Vietnam War, 1,737 Air Force planes were shot down. During the past quarter century of air campaigns over Iraq, Kuwait, Kosovo, Libya, and Afghanistan, the Air Force has lost fewer than 30 planes to enemy fire.