Washington, May 25: The US strategic air command maintains a 'target list' for nuclear strikes in contingency planning against several countries, including Russia, China and North Korea, a defence expert has claimed. Iran, Syria, Sudan, Libya and Algeria also figure among the countries, Bruce G Blair, president of Centre for Defence Information, a Washington-based non-governmental think tank, said. He links contingency planning against deeply buried targets, especially those in Russia, with recent interest in developing "mini-nukes," with explosive power of below five kilotons. Congress has authorised research in these weapons but development and production would need their approval. President George W Bush has "a notion that US nuclear weapons can, and should, be adapted for use against a growing list of enemy weapons in a widening array of circumstances," Blair said adding the "top two candidates" for inclusion in the nuclear target list are located inside the Yamantau and Kosvinsky mountains in the central and southern Urals. Blair said the Yamantau command centre is a wartime relocation facility for the top Russian leadership while Kosvinsky is a wartime nuclear command system, that can communicate through the granite mountain to far-flung Russian strategic forces using very-low-frequency radio signals which can burn through a nuclear war environment.

Kosvinsky came on line recently, "which could be one explanation for the US interest in a new nuclear bunker buster," he said adding, though logical in the cold war-era nuclear planning, building a new weapon to threaten these mountain redoubts would not increase US security.

Bureau Report