According to the philosophy of the USAF, there is a great need to possess all kinds of weapons and as large variety of means as possible. Still, using a nuclear warhead in a small scale conflict would be impossible due to both political and psychological reasons.
The modernization is to include fitting the B-2 Spirit bombers with the nuclear warheads in the form of cruise missiles. The extraterrestrial looking bat-plane so far had no ability to carry nuke cruise missiles.
For legal reasons, USAF is unable to develop new nuclear warheads, hence the old weapons (as B61-7, B61-11 and B83-1 gliding bombs) have to undergo refurbishment and maintenance, and the new weapons will have to use the old type of warhead. The same thing applies to any new missile — it has to use a warhead based on old technology.
The proposed new missile is called LRSO — Long Range Stand-Off. It is to replace the ALCM and ACM weapons that are currently the basic strategic weapon in the USAF arsenal..."
at http://theaviationist.com/2013/11/03/us-new-bombs/#.Une4_ZTk-8U#ixzz2jnlipd1k
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