Follow-up: What are we to make of this?

I wondered how Vladimir Putin's announcement that Russia was soon going to deploy "new form of nuclear missile unlike those held by other countries" would play out. I couldn't help but notice that the next day, Netscape's news poll as asking people if the development of Russian military forces should be regarded as a threat to the US. A majority said yes. (Although I will note that Netscape doesn't say how many people responded.)

But taking a side road here, I remember that during the 80s, when nuclear war and nuclear weapons were on most all our minds, I at one point felt constrained to remind some folks that they were not the only issue.

And it's not just nuclear arms: Conventional arms are becoming more powerful, more destructive, every day: The power of some is now measured in kilotons. We can't let ourselves fall into the trap of opposing the threat of mass annihilation with unthinkable weapons by proposing the threat of mass destruction with thinkable ones.

We have to say "no more" to the B1s, and "no more" to the M1s and "no more" to the next ones.

Now, in some ways the situation feels reversed and with the carnage in Iraq occupying our attention and with the risk of sudden death arising from suicide bombers and hijacked airliners, with Uzis and AK-47s and their brethren the weapon of choice to bring horror and bloodshed in a score or more of "minor" wars around the world, we have to remind ourselves that nuclear weapons still skulk in their silos and submarines, waiting only for the command.

And yet - still its the "conventional" arsenal that is in daily use, bringing daily death. So even as I want to point up the continued existence of the means of annihilation, I don't want us to forget such as this:

Eglin Air Force Base, FL (AP, November 8) - The Air Force built a weapon so big it was nicknamed "Mother of All Bombs" on the eve of the war with Iraq, but MOAB would be dwarfed by a much larger munition now under study.

The proposed Massive Ordnance Penetrator, or MOP, would weigh 30,000 pounds, nearly 40 percent more than the 21,000 pound MOAB - officially Massive Ordnance Air Blast - that never saw combat.

MOAB is like a super-sized "Daisy Cutter" bomb used during Vietnam. It was so named because, used for low-altitude air burst, it would blast clear an area so effectively it was like it even sheared off the daisies. MOAB, of the same type as the Daisy Cutter but 50% more massive, was intended as a "shock and awe" weapon.

MOP, on the other hand, is intended to penetrate underground so that even tunnels would not be safe from the blast. Unlike its predecessors, it would have a shape that would allow it to be dropped from high-altitude by a B-52 or B-2 Stealth bomber rather than being pushed out of a cargo plane.

It just keeps getting better and better.