New Nuclear Weapons Design Budget passes Senate Committee

[Bill Stewart]

http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/news/5830795.htm
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/05/10/1052280479334.html

Now that the Bush Administration has finished the
War On Some People Who Might Have Weapons of Mass Destruction,
they've gotten approval from the Senate Armed Services Committee
for their budget request for about $50M in nuclear weapons design research
and improvement of their testing facilities.

Most of the design half of the budget is for nuclear bunker busters,
but they're also starting some work on new small nukes.
The "small" nukes are "up to 5 kt", so they're probably not the
very small backpack-carriable weapons,
while the bunker busters could be up to a megaton.

This is just one Senate committee, not the full budget or a complete bill,
but it does break the ban on new weapons of mass destruction development
that's been around for ~11 years.