We invade Iran under the false pretense of them having a nuclear weapon while we, the most imperialistic nation of our time, are doing this....

US nuclear engineers have purchased spare parts for refurbishing American aging B61 nuclear bombs using an internet shopping website.

“We bought three of four [circuit-manufacturing machines] on eBay… for $100,000 apiece,” said Gilbert Herrera, a manager at Sandia National Laboratories in the US state of New Mexico engaged in a major effort to refurbish America’s oldest atomic weapon, quoted in a The Washington Post article on Monday. 

According to the report, a team of engineers at the US laboratory “cannibalize” unused B61 bombs for parts, such as the vacuum tubes needed to keep the radars working on active bombs and if they don’t find required spares, “they track down outdated machines to manufacture the components themselves, as they did when they bought a machine (on the web) to produce integrated circuits.”

The B61, which can be delivered by a variety of war planes, including NATO aircraft, is undergoing a costly refurbishment plan to extend its life span. 

The atomic bomb, manufactured in 1945 and then called ‘Little Boy,’ was dropped on August 6, 1945 on Japanese city of Hiroshima, killing 70,000 civilians instantly and at least the same number due to radiation exposure and injuries over the next five years. 

The US government and Congress have pressed for the B61 renovation plan despite the massive expense of such complex project over major objections of a number of nuclear strategists who have argued that the threat the B61 was designed to counter vanished with the Soviet-era’s Cold War. 

Five versions of the atomic bomb, according to the report, are still in service. The latest is the B61-11, which was activated in the 1990s as the only ground-penetrating nuclear weapon, known as the “bunker buster.” 

The report further underlines that a US Air Force team with a $340 million budget is trying to find ways to mount the B61 onto its new F-35 fighter jet, expected to be the most expensive war plane in US history. 

And when the renovation of the B61 bomb is done, “the nation’s vast nuclear weapons complex will turn its attention to the next major weapons renovations: The W78 and W88, a pair of thermonuclear warheads whose redo is already predicted to cost at least $5 billion more,” the Post article states.