By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, March 28, 2004; Page A04

A prestigious Defense Department panel has recommended major changes to the United States' nuclear arsenal, saying the current plans to refurbish the existing weapons stockpile will not protect the nation from new threats from rogue states and terrorist groups.

A task force of the Defense Science Board said it is "most urgent" to create strong defenses against these new threats. In a report distributed inside the Pentagon last month, it said U.S. strategic forces should emphasize smaller nuclear warheads and should arm the nation's 50 giant Peacekeeper intercontinental ballistic missiles with conventional warheads to allow a wide variety of options for targeting hostile forces.

"The nuclear weapons program as currently conceived -- a program focused primarily on refurbishing the [current] stockpile -- will not meet the country's future needs," the DSB group said in its study, made public last week by Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists. "Nuclear weapons are needed that produce much lower collateral damage," the panel said, indicating the need for greater precision, reduced radioactivity and the ability to dig deep into the ground to get hard targets.

The DSB recommendations come at a time when the Bush administration is struggling to determine the future size and makeup of the current U.S. nuclear stockpile of about 6,000 warheads, an issue that has been pending for more than two years. At a Senate Armed Services subcommittee meeting this past Tuesday, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said he hoped the plan, which was due to be sent to Congress last month, would be submitted soon.

The DSB study recommended that the United States' high-yield nuclear warheads, now being refurbished to last another two decades, be reduced. It said the nation should procure special-purpose nonnuclear weapons; develop a new, submarine-launched nonnuclear missile; and study development of new sensors that could find small, moving and hidden targets.

The DSB report also sharply criticized current U.S. intelligence capabilities. It said intelligence agencies have "not developed the resources to adequately understand the leadership culture and values of its potential adversaries, particularly rogue states and terrorist organizations." It cited specifically the erosion of "our understanding of North Korean goals and tactics under Kim Jong Il" and "distinctions among the diverse elements of al Qaeda," Osama bin Laden's terrorist network.

The DSB is highly influential within the Pentagon, and many of its past recommendations have been the basis for changes in U.S. military policies. This study's critique of intelligence carries additional weight, because one of the task force's co-chairmen was retired Adm. Dennis Blair, who worked at the CIA during the Clinton administration and retired in 2002 after serving as commander in chief of U.S. forces in the Pacific. The other co-chairmen were retired Gen. Michael Carns, a former Air Force vice chief of staff, and Vincent Vitto, president of the Draper Laboratory, a nonprofit research institution that has played a significant role in defense activities.

William Schneider Jr., the DSB chairman, wrote that the task force recommendations to senior Defense Department officials are "fully justified and actionable," and that the potential threat "demands that we consider solutions that go beyond 'improvements on the margin.' "

The DSB task force said that while it could take decades to build defenses against all weapons of mass destruction, it is more practical and "most urgent to create strong defenses against rogue states and terrorist organizations."

Central to that approach is attacking and killing leaders of those groups. That is a different strategy than when dealing with an enemy with an established government, where the primary mission is "to disable the adversary leadership's ability to carry out its responsibilities," the report said.

In Iraq, the task force said the "deck of cards" leaders, including former president Saddam Hussein, could not be found during the fighting and that weapons of mass destruction have not been discovered. "These physically small entities are essentially impossible to find without in situ [on site], intrusive sensors and probably HUMINT [human intelligence] as well," the panel said. "There has not been enough progress to date given the post-September 11 need for such systems."

To find such future targets, the panel said new technology is required that would feature sensors that could be placed on the ground, including devices to be installed by spies that would tag vehicles electronically to allow for tracking, locating and targeting weapons at far distances.

Because the targets would have to be able to be struck within a short time frame, the panel said the United States needs to develop a new cruise missile that could be launched from an offshore submarine and hit a target 1,500 miles away in 15 minutes.

In addition, it proposed that the Air Force keep the 50 Peacekeeper ICBMs now set for deactivation and redeploy them to Vandenberg Air Force Base in California and Cape Canaveral in Florida for use with conventional warheads. "These weapons would give the U.S. a 30-minute response capability for strategic strike worldwide," the panel said, noting it would cost less than $1 billion for development and deployment and could be ready by 2010.

"Future presidents should have strategic strike choices between massive conventional strikes and today's relatively large, high-fallout weapons delivered primarily by ballistic missiles," the study said.

"While we could previously execute some military operations only with nuclear weapons," the panel wrote, "we can now execute many of these with highly precise conventional weaponry." Among its recommendations in the nonnuclear area is development of so-called "interrogation rounds" or warheads filled with sensors that penetrate hidden bunkers and stay in place where they land, sending back information to guide in more powerful missiles.