US ‘considering making smaller nuclear weapons’

THE US government is considering making new, smaller nuclear weapons that could be used to hit hard-to-reach targets like underground bunkers, according to a nuclear disarmament group.

The Los Alamos Study Group has published the minutes from a January 10 Pentagon meeting it said was called to plan a secret conference "to discuss what new nuclear weapons to build, how they might be tested... and how to sell the ideas to Congress and the American public".

According to the leaked documents, the summit of military officials and nuclear scientists would be held at US Strategic Command headquarters in Omaha, Nebraska, possibly in early August.