WASHINGTON (AP) _ The United States has no plans to arm anti-missile interceptors with nuclear explosives, a defense official told Congress on Wednesday, but he acknowledged that ``some people are thinking about it.''
A top science adviser to the Pentagon has said scientists are studying the idea of using nuclear explosions to wipe out incoming missiles.
The Pentagon's current missile defense programs rely on systems that smash into incoming warheads at high speeds or incinerate them with lasers, not on nuclear explosions.
Air Force Lt. Gen. Ronald Kadish, director of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency, said his agency has no current plans to use nuclear weapons.
``We have no part of our program that involves nuclear-tipped interceptors,'' Kadish told a committee of Congress. He acknowledged that ``some people are thinking about it,'' however.
Two senators on the panel _ California Democrat Dianne Feinstein and Alaska Republican Ted Stevens _ said using nuclear explosives in anti-missile systems would be unacceptable.
``I find it absolutely inexplicable how we might explore the use of nuclear-tipped missiles, given what they could do with radiological fallout,'' Feinstein said.
U.S. President George W. Bush announced last year he was pulling the United States out of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, which bans anti-missile systems.
Russia and other countries have criticized the move.
William Schneider Jr., a top science adviser to the Pentagon as chairman of the Defense Science Board, told the Washington Post last week that U.S. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld had approved studies of nuclear-tipped missile interceptors.
Using nuclear explosives would make destroying enemy missiles easier, since the blast would obliterate everything within a wide area.
Using interceptors to smash into missiles is a huge technological challenge, requiring extremely accurate sensors to find the missile and distinguish it from harmless decoys.
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