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The BIRCH BARK BBS / 414-242-5070
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Washington Inquirer
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August 12, 1994
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Russia's Pocket Nukes 
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by ALBERT L. WEEKS

     Russian Federation military R&D is on the rise and an array
of new 21st century weapons is under development. One of the most
intriguing of the innovations is a "pocket-sized" neutron-type
nuclear warhead no bigger than a baseball. Such devices, it is
said, could destroy people located within a 1,000 feet of their
explosion. 

     Such weapons, said to be of 10-megaton power, are not
covered by present arms-control treaties. It is suspected that
the Russians already have the know-how to mass produce such
devices, despite U.S. State Department denials that they do.      

     According to Hudson Institute Russian military specialist,
Mary C. FitzGerald, who closely tracks the Russian military press
and recently interviewed Russian senior military officers in
Moscow, RF military planners have been working on mini-nukes for
several years. One Russian military scientist, Gen.-Lt. Yevgeny
Negin, writing in the defense daily "Red Star," claims that they
are a mere one-hundredth the size of the former warheads but have
an explosive yield that is double the older models.             

     Miniaturization of nuclear charges and devices is a
perennial prospective nightmare for the security forces of the
Western democracies. Terrorists presumably could smuggle such
portable "nuclear baseballs" into other countries, including the
U.S., and plant them near or in such U.S. strategic locations as,
say, Fort Knox or Washington, D.C. 

     The worry is that such mini-nuke technology might "leak" to
the outside world and fall into the hands of terrorists or
terrorist-states such as Iran or Libya. With Russian security
having become lax in some instances in recent years, this danger
has grown. Indeed, some "leakage" of nuclear material out of the
RF has already occurred. "US News & World Report" (Aug. 1), for
example, stated that the Pentagon had reached the conclusion that
the 6 grams of weapons-grade plutonium, discovered by chance and
seized by German police last May, actually came from the weapons
production complex operated by the RF Ministry of Atomic Energy.
The Russians had previously denied that the plutonium had been
theirs. 

     Moreover, the Russian press itself periodically reports that
RF security forces have caught foreign spies attempting to steal
or having actually stolen nuclear-related technology.           
Sometimes investigation reveals that Russian officials or
scientists have cooperated in such thefts. Obviously, some
criminals may get away with their thefts and escape detection and
apprehension.

     The apparent principal military purpose behind developing
mini-nukes, according to Russian Army defense writers, was
explained recently, notes FitzGerald, by the RF Minister of
Atomic Energy himself, Vladimir N. Mikhailov. "You can drop a
couple of hundred little bombs on foreign territory, the enemy is
devastated, but for the aggressor there are no consequences." 
Individual smugglers of such devices, too, might well escape
detection.  

     Some estimate that the price tag on such a device is $25,000
per copy. If the mini-nukes were ever to be mass produced and
permitted by a Russian regime to be sold abroad, they could bring
in a sizable profit. Some countries might claim that they need
such devices for putatively legitimate defensive purposes.
However, it is feared the mini-nukes sooner or later would fall
into the wrong hands.

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