OPINION:
Do you remember the presidential debate when Barack Obama advocated and brilliantly defended the idea of unilateral nuclear disarmament? Neither do we.
For decades, America’s nuclear deterrent has been based on the concept of the “triad,” with operational nuclear forces on land, at sea and in the air. That redundancy is meant to ensure survival in the most dire circumstances.
The most secure of these has long been the sea leg, composed of U.S. Navy Trident submarines, each with 24 ballistic missiles. Each of those missiles carry 12 Multiple, Independent, Reentry Vehicle (MIRV) warheads, that can each be targeted separately. For many years, the U.S. had 41 such underwater fortresses.
Now we have built down to 14. The current plan is to go to 12 by 2031, with 6 at sea at any one time. But our enemies have not been stagnant.
Those 6 Tridents at sea will be facing 100 Russian and Chinese killer subs. Our submarines can be more easily identified through space surveillance and Russian non-acoustic tracking through upwelling surface signs. But our Tridents can be rotated to hide under the Arctic Ice Cap for months at a time, where they are invulnerable for now.
America’s land leg is composed of hundreds of archaic, fixed site, missile silos built mostly in the 1950s, which in their current form are only a danger to their nearby communities, enticing a first strike. Soon our enemies will be able to take them out with conventional weapons, without even resorting to nuclear attack.
Russia and China have superior land-based nuclear arsenals, road mobile to avoid a first strike. Russia’s missiles can be moved quickly by rail. China has nuclear missiles in 3,000 miles of tunnels under mountains, which also leaves the number uncountable. Even North Korea has mobile nuclear missiles, as Iran inevitably will also on current course.
America’s air leg relies mostly on ancient, outdated bombers and cruise missiles, which cannot reliably penetrate modern Russian and Chinese air defenses. B-52s were flying fortresses in their day. But that was decades ago. They belong today in history museums, not in America’s nuclear deterrent.
Only about 20 B-2 bombers can penetrate the air defenses of our enemies today, especially the Russian S-300 and S-400. But America’s entire air leg is exposed on only a handful of bases as sitting ducks for a first strike.
It all adds up under Barack Obama’s strategic vision to 1,590 U.S. nuclear warheads facing off against 2,600 Russian strategic warheads. At best. Not counting certain Russian violations of arms control treaties. Not counting Russia’s known 10 to 1 advantage in “tactical” nuke warheads. Not counting unknown numbers of hidden Chinese warheads. Not counting Russian programs building toward a nuclear “breakout,” such as the announced new, still unseen, stealth, undersea nuclear vehicle capable of targeting the high percentage of America’s population and industry on its blissfully progressive coasts.
What else can you call this openly disintegrating nuclear deterrent other than naive, unilateral, nuclear disarmament?
Only a tiny fraction of our GDP can fully redress these nuclear gaps and lapses, much bigger than the nuclear missile gap on which John Kennedy campaigned for president. We need to replace all B-52s with F-22 Raptors and B-2 stealth bombers. We need to resume testing of our deteriorating land based warheads, and replace them with rail mobile missiles, and new, modern warheads stationed in tunnels under the Rocky Mountains. We need to build 25 new Tridents, each with their own defensive, protective, submarine fleets countering the killer subs of our enemies, analogous to the defensive fleets for our aircraft carriers.
We need to replace Mr. Obama’s shameful Russian launching of America’s military satellites with renewed American space dominance, involving interplanetary exploration, orbiting laser beam weapons, and defensive countermeasures for the anti-satellite weapons of our enemies. We need to fully build out our missile defenses, to protect our West Coast and East Coast metropolitan areas and military bases, and provide defenses for the first time for attacks coming from the south and from the north. We need to harden our energy grid to survive EMP attacks.
The recently announced new U.S. nuclear weapon options, including a low yield warhead for Trident subs, and a new nuclear tipped sea launched cruise missile, recognize the problem, and offer new flexible options for the U.S. to deal with rogue states like North Korea and Iran, without launching a global nuclear war. But this is just a start.
This is why within a few weeks, the London Center will be announcing the re-formation of the Committee on the Present Danger at a conference in Washington.
• Herbert London is president of the London Center for Policy Research. Peter Ferrara is a senior fellow at the Heartland Institute, and served in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations.
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