The US government is promoting the development of a new specialized nuclear bomb designed to destroy well-protected and deeply buried targets, writes The War Zone.
According to the publication, the budget request of the Department of Energy for the fiscal year 2027 includes a new spending item in the section “Weapons work for future programs“. The agency is seeking nearly $100 million for initial work on launching a new program called NDS-A (Nuclear Deterrence System, Air-Delivered).
It is not yet officially known whether NDS-A will be a modernized version of existing nuclear weapons or an entirely new system.
“The Nuclear Deterrence System, Air-Delivered will provide the president with additional nuclear capabilities to strike hardened and deeply buried targets, ensuring that adversaries cannot hide their most valuable assets beyond the reach of America's nuclear forces“, an unnamed official from the US National Nuclear Security Administration told the publication.
Currently, the main American weapon of this type remains the B61-11 - a modification of the older B61-7 with a reinforced casing and elements that allow the bomb to penetrate deep underground before detonating. According to various estimates, the power of the B61-11 ranges from 340 to almost 400 kilotons.
The authors of the article recall that at the beginning of the century the United States worked on the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator (RNEP) program, which envisaged the creation of a powerful nuclear bomb to destroy underground facilities. However, in 2005, the US Congress practically blocked the project due to concerns about the possible reaction of other countries.
According to the publication, the current interest in the new nuclear bomb is associated with the rapid expansion of the network of underground military facilities in Russia and China. The United States is paying particular attention to the Russian bunker Kosvinsky Kamen in the Urals, considered one of the key command centers of the Russian nuclear forces.
In addition, China, Iran and North Korea have also been actively building fortified underground facilities in recent years. The article notes that the question of the effectiveness of strikes against such targets has become particularly urgent after the US attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities in 2025.
The War Zone notes that the ultimate fate of the project remains unknown. The United States is already spending hundreds of billions of dollars to modernize its entire nuclear triad, so the issue of financing another new nuclear system could become the subject of heated political debate.
As UNIAN reported, the US Department of Defense has authorized the use of agent-based artificial intelligence (AI) to work with classified documentation and secret tasks, although previously such systems had access only to unclassified materials.
We also reported that the American company AeroVironment presented the Halo_Shield system - an intelligent AI-based countermeasure system against drones and low-flying cruise missiles. The developers claim that Halo_Shield allows for the rapid deployment of an adaptive “dynamic shield“ to protect critical infrastructure without complex reconfiguration or additional staff training.