The FY2005 National Defense Authorization Act contained the full RNEP request, $27.6 million. The five-year figure sparked congressional debate.

RNEP requests are, of course, subject to congressional approval, rejection, or modification. NNSA stated that no decision had been made to proceed with RNEP and that out-year figures were shown to meet congressionally-mandated budgeting requirements and were not a request. While Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld said in 2003 that RNEP was a study, NNSA's FY2005 budget document showed a five-year total of $484.7 million if RNEP were to proceed beyond the study phase. nuclear earth penetrator, the B61-11 bomb, cannot penetrate certain types of terrain in which hardened underground facilities may be located, so the Air Force and the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) are studying a more effective penetrator, the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator (RNEP).

The United States has several types of conventional earth penetrators. Earth penetrator weapons, often called 'bunker busters,' burrow into the ground some tens of feet before detonating, greatly increasing their ability to destroy buried targets.

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