WASHINGTON, April 5 (Xinhuanet) -- The US agency overseeing the country's nuclear weapons programs has asked Congress to approve funds to study the feasibility of building a new, more reliable nuclear warhead that could be deployed in less than 10 years without nuclear testing, The Washington Post reported Tuesday.

    Linton F. Brooks, administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration, was quoted as telling the Senate Armed Services subcommittee on strategic forces on Monday that the current Cold War stockpile of nuclear warheads is inadequate technically and militarily.

    "We want to explore whether there is a better way to sustain existing military capabilities in our stockpile without nuclear testing," Brooks said.

    The yields of most nuclear warheads in the current stockpiles "are probably too high" and as their casings are not designed to penetrate earth, "we have no capability against hardened, deeply buried targets," he said.

    The new warheads would be designed to be less sensitive to ageing and would be easier to certify as safe and reliable, Brookssaid.

    "This would reduce the possibility that the United States wouldever need to conduct a nuclear test in order to diagnose or remedya reliability problem," he said.

    If concept and studies on replacement warheads or warhead components produced a feasible program, he said, "we should be able to demonstrate through a small build of warheads that a reliable replacement warhead can be manufactured and certified without nuclear testing" by 2012 to 2015.

    The new warheads would reduce the need to keep non-deployed warheads from the Cold War stockpiled to cover ageing problems with deployed weapons, he said. Enditem