Facts Matter, Especially for Nuclear Policy

Among the many defense and national security policy issues the Biden-Harris team will confront when it takes office, the purpose, composition, and size of America's nuclear forces will be near the top of the list.  As it does so, it will have to confront a series of false narratives which Progressives and anti-nuclear lobbies have been promoting for some time but with increased urgency over the last twelve months; among these hardy perennials are: the purported irrelevancy of U.S. nuclear forces in the age of Great Power competition; the lack of a compelling rationale for modernizing those forces; and the unaffordability of modernization – particularly given the large sums needed to combat and offset the effects of the COVID pandemic.  Facts are the enemy of false narratives, however, and it is to those facts we turn to illuminate what is true and what is not.         

A second argument is that U.S. strategic nuclear forces do not really need to be modernized because they continue to be “fit for purpose."  That is completely at odds with what two former Strategic Command leaders have stated quite clearly.  In April 2016, then Admiral Cecil Haney testified to the House Armed Services Committee: "If you don't proceed with strategic modernization, the U.S. will be out of the nuclear deterrence business within the next decade and a half."  His successor at Strategic Command (and now Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff), Air Force General John Hyten said in July 2018 that because new U.S. systems will not begin to be fielded until at least the mid-2020s, given the age of our current forces, it will be "just in time^."   For those who believe commanders of Strategic Command cannot be unbiased, here is what former Obama Defense Secretary Ash Carter wrote in April 2017 (when he was out of office and beholden to no one):

“The Defense Department cannot further defer recapitalizing Cold-War era systems if we are to maintain a safe, secure, and effective nuclear force that will continue to deter potential adversaries that are making improvements in their air defenses and their own nuclear weapons systems. The choice is not between replacing these platforms or keeping them, but rather between replacing them and losing them altogether. The latter outcome would, unfortunately, result in lost confidence in our ability to deter. The United States cannot afford this in today’s security environment or in any reasonably foreseeable future security environment.”

Another article of faith in the Progressive community is that nuclear modernization is too expensive, particularly in light of the increased government spending needed to combat the Coronavirus pandemic and its effects on the U.S. economy.  For the past four years, Progressives have been dramatically inflating the cost of nuclear modernization by characterizing it with imputed 30-year cost streams. The Defense budget will undoubtedly be the target of proposed cuts as the new Administration prepares its budget, and even the most optimistic individuals in the Pentagon are hoping for sustaining no more than a flat budget.  That said, it is important to look at the facts.  The 2018 Nuclear Posture Review, produced by the Defense Department free of White House direction, estimated the annual cost of the modernization program during its peak years at 3-4 percent of the DoD budget (and this before the sequester cap was lifted).   It should be clear, therefore, that proceeding with modernization does not impose a significant burden for either the DoD or Federal budgets.   The "it's too expensive" argument does not comport with reality.

One of the anti-modernization lobby's favorite claims is that modernizing U.S. nuclear forces will inaugurate a nuclear arms race with Russia and China.  That argument is risible.  As noted above, both Russia and China have been building and deploying new nuclear weapons systems for the past ten years; in sharp contrast, the United States has not deployed a single new strategic nuclear system in the 21^st century.  Turning again to former Defense Secretary Ash Carter writing in 2017:

“Those worried about the start of a new arms race miss the lesson of the past two decades: Despite decades of American and allied reserve—for 25 years our nations have refrained from building anything new—many countries, including Russia, North Korea, and more, have been doing just that. And some of these nations are even building some new types of weapons. So those who suggest that the U.S. recapitalization is a major stimulus to other powers to build more do not have the evidence of the past 25 years on their side.”

A hardy and longstanding belief among progressives is that the strategic nuclear Triad of ICBMs, SSBNs/SLBMs, and bombers is redundant, no longer relevant, and should be abandoned.  The Triad indeed has overlapping capabilities: it was part of the Triad’s design.   Its combination of three different basing modes, each with unique strengths and different but offsetting vulnerabilities, separate attack azimuths, and complementary alert postures, presented potential enemy offenses and defenses with insurmountable obstacles.   It is precisely that combination that provides for deterrent stability because an aggressor cannot pre-emptively destroy the Triad or prevent the retaliation it could impose.   All of that said, it is important to understand that today – reflecting the current state of the world and the comparative reduction in international tensions – the United States, on a day-to-day basis, is only protected by the ICBM and SSBN/SLBM legs:  the bomber force is not on alert and would require a minimum of several days and perhaps more to return to alert status.  This means that should an unexpected technical issue force a temporary stand-down of either the ICBMs or the sea-based force, the U.S. nuclear deterrent would be reduced to a single leg.  The Biden Administration would then face the difficult decision to re-alert a portion of the bomber force or rely on the single leg until the technical problem was resolved.  For the longer term, a decision to forego the Triad – and the current intent of the Progressives is to eliminate the ICBM force – would introduce new instabilities should technical problems arise with the sea-based leg.  Furthermore, eliminating the ICBM force would allow Moscow and Beijing to invest more heavily in anti-submarine warfare in attempts, however unlikely to be successful, to threaten the SSBN force.

There are three modernization programs, two in advanced R&D and one deployed, which Progressives are seeking to eliminate: the replacement for the Minuteman ICBM (known as the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent or GBSD); the replacement for the air-launched cruise missile (known as the Long-Range Stand-Off weapon or LRSO); and the deployed low-yield variant of the Trident II/D-5 SLBM (known as the W 76-2).

“Let me be very clear, you cannot life extend Minuteman III. It is getting past the point of “it’s not cost-effective” to life extend Minuteman III. You’re quickly getting to the point you can’t do it at all. That [missile] is so old that in some cases, the drawings don't exist anymore, or where we do have drawings, they're like six generations behind the industry standard. There’s not only anybody that’s not working that can understand them, they’re not alive anymore.”

Richard continued by pointing out other advantages of replacing the Minuteman III, first deployed in the 1970s, with modern systems: “One of the biggest pieces is in its cyber resilience. We will replace a 60 year old, basically a circuit switch system with a modern cyber defendable up to current standards command and control system. So to pace the cyber threat alone, GBSD is a necessary step forward. But it is also far more flexible and resilient against any number of other threats that are presented.”

The last system which the Progressives seek to block is the W 76-2, a low yield variant of the standard Trident II/D-5 W 76-1 warhead.  The        W 76-2 was conceived during the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review as a measured response to Russian development and deployment over the past decade of a variety of low-yield nuclear weapons systems.  That the Russian government embarked upon this effort, in the full face of existing U.S. nuclear forces, suggests strongly that the Russian leadership believes the U.S. and NATO lacked an appropriate counter.   The deployment of an extremely limited number of W 76-2s, whose ability to penetrate to their targets is assured, enhances the U.S. ability to deter Russian decisions to use the low yield weapons they possess.  In doing so, it raises the nuclear threshold.  Progressives have attacked the W 76-2 on several different grounds and are calling for the incoming Biden Administration to remove it from service.    One particularly pernicious allegation is that the weapon is designed to lower the nuclear threshold. This has been unambiguously refuted in official U.S. policy, which states:

“To be clear, [deployment of W 76-2s] is not intended to, nor does it enable, "nuclear war-fighting." Expanding flexible U.S. nuclear options now, including low-yield options, is important for preserving credible deterrence against regional aggression. It will raise the nuclear threshold and help ensure that potential adversaries perceive no possible advantage in limited nuclear escalation, making nuclear employment less likely."

To the degree that Progressives feared that President Trump would be tempted by the W 76-2’s deployment to actually use the weapon, they surely cannot share the same concern about President-elect Biden. 

One last bad idea which is now being placed in front of the new team is that the idea that the U.S. should pre-emptively and immediately announce that it will reduce its New START force by several hundred weapons to demonstrate good faith and “prime the pump” for a new round of arms control talks.   Doing this would undercut severely the legitimacy of the nuclear review which the Biden Administration intends to undertake.  The whole purpose of the review is to determine the adequacy of the size and composition of the nuclear arsenal; announcing a reduction before the review even begins will cast a shadow over the entire effort and will assuredly have negative consequences at home, on the Hill and abroad with both allies and potential enemies.

Every new Administration since Dwight Eisenhower's has undertaken a new look at U.S. nuclear policy.  As the Biden Administration follows in its predecessors' footsteps, it must distinguish between fact and false narratives.  Understanding the false narratives and why their arguments don’t bear scrutiny is an important initial step.

Franklin C. Miller served as a senior nuclear policy official in the Department of Defense and on the NSC Staff for over a quarter of a century.