Department of Energy has completed the first B61-13 gravity bomb

By Kris Osborn President, Warrior

Many nuclear nations have likely built and buried heavily fortified bunkers, weapons, living areas and command and control centers beneath the surface of the earth, for the specific purpose of enabling a certain population to "survive" a massive global nuclear war. How fortified are these bunkers and, are there weapons which could now hold them at risk. The answer is likely unavailable for security reasons, yet the Department of Energy and Pentagon do continue to modernize nuclear weapons for the purpose of strengthening the United States' overall deterrence posture.

Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (DOE/NNSA) has completed the manufacture of the first B61-13 gravity bomb, a major technological, tactical and strategic step forward for the Pentagon's strategic deterrence posture. An interesting essay earlier this year from the DOE's NNSA explains how the development and production was successfully completed ahead of schedule to ensure the nuclear arsenal remains as technological advanced and capable as possible.

As a classic air-dropped nuclear bomb, the B-61 has existed for decades, as a weapon that can arm the B-52 and B-2 air platforms; the B-61 Mod 12 is also slated to arm the Air Force's F-35A as well, a move which brings strategic and tactical nuclear deterrence posture. The B61-13 is especially configured to destroy deeply buried and hardened targets, a capability which can hold additional, previously unreachable targets at risk.

"The B61-13 modification involved the use of proven production capabilities that supported the B61-12, which completed its last production unit just five months ago. The B61-13 incorporates the same modern safety, security, and accuracy features as the B61-12 but features a yield oriented to the defeat of certain harder and large-area military targets," A DOE essay on the B61-13 states.

Certainly the premise of the Pentagon's strategic deterrence posture is to build weapons for the specific purpose of "not" having to use them, yet added nuclear attack flexibility does provide a wider range of options for commanders hoping to solidify deterrence against an entire range of threat contingencies.

The B61-mod 13 builds upon the successful engineering and testing of the B-61 Mod 12, a previous DOE-DOD effort to consolidate many variants of the classic B-61 into a single munition. This massively increases flexibility and bomb capacity for nuclear-armed aircraft operating as a critical portion of the air leg of the nuclear triad. The B-61 has been in existence for many years, and the Mod 12 integrates proximity fuse, air burst, point detonation, low altitude "area" attack into a single weapon. Still other variants utilize a "delayed" fuse detonation wherein the weapon could penetrate rock, concrete and earth before detonating upon or near a buried or underground facility.

While technical specifics related to the B61-13 are not available for security reasons, an ability to penetrate deeply into the earth before detonating gives commanders an ability to hold senior level command and control bunkers buried deep below the surface of the earth. Such as weapon could potentially change the deterrence equation by holding senior leaders at risk in a way that might not have been possible previously. Naturally this impacts and greatly strengthens the strategic deterrence posture for the DOE, DOD, NNSA and White House. It would make sense if this weapon were quickly produced at scale.

Kris Osborn is the President of Warrior Maven – Center for Military Modernization. Osborn previously served at the Pentagon as a highly qualified expert in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army—Acquisition, Logistics & Technology. Osborn has also worked as an anchor and on-air military specialist at national TV networks. He has appeared as a guest military expert on Fox News, MSNBC, The Military Channel, and The History Channel. He also has a Masters Degree in Comparative Literature from Columbia University