Introduction

Abstract

The US government is planning to spend an estimated US$1 trillion over 30 years to modernise or replace its triad of air-, land- and sea-based nuclear weapons. These plans have huge implications for the security of the United States and its allies, its public finances and the salience of nuclear weapons in global politics. This Adelphi book argues that the US need not replicate its Cold War triad to achieve credible and reliable deterrence.

It proposes viable alternatives that would allow the US to maintain deterrence at a lower cost, thereby freeing up funds to ease pressing shortfalls in spending on conventional procurement and nuclear security. These alternative structures – which propose a reduction in the size and shape of the arsenal – have distinct advantages over the existing plan in maintaining strategic stability vis-à-vis Russia and China; upholding arms-control treaties; boosting the security of US nuclear forces; and supporting the global non-proliferation regime. They would also endow the US with a nuclear force better suited to the strategic environment of the twenty-first century, and mark an advance on the existing triad in supporting conventional military operations.

Notes

1 See Jon Wolfsthal, Jeffrey Lewis and Marc Quint, The Trillion Dollar Nuclear Triad (Monterey, CA: James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, January 2014), https://www.nonproliferation.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/140107_trillion_dollar_nuclear_triad.pdf.

2 US and Russian strategic aircraft may carry up to 20 nuclear weapons, but for the purposes of the New START Treaty, they are counted as one warhead.

3 For detailed estimates of US and Russian nuclear forces see the FAS Nuclear Notebook, https://fas.org/issues/nuclear-weapons/nuclear-notebook/, particularly Hans M. Kristensen and Robert S. Norris, ‘Russian Nuclear Forces, 2015’, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, vol. 71, no. 3, pp. 84–97; and Hans M. Kristensen and Robert S. Norris, ‘Russian Nuclear Forces, 2015’, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, vol. 71, no. 2, pp. 107–19.

4 See US Congress, House Armed Forces, Strategic Forces, Hearing on the Proposed Fiscal 2014 Defense Authorization as it Relates to Atomic Energy Defense Activities, 113th Congress, 1st session, 9 May 2013; and US Department of Defense, ‘Report on Nuclear Employment Strategy of the United States Specified in Section 491 of 10 U.S.C.’, 2013, http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/policy/dod/us-nuclearemployment-strategy.pdf, p. 5. See also US Department of Defense, ‘2014 Quadrennial Defense Review’, March 2014, http://archive.defense.gov/pubs/2014_Quadrennial_Defense_Review.pdf; and US Department of Defense ‘National Security Strategy’, February 2015, http://nssarchive.us/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/2015.pdf.

5 Congressional Budget Office, ‘Projected Costs of U.S. Nuclear Forces, 2017 to 2026’, February 2017, https://www.cbo.gov/publication/52401.

6 Wolfsthal, Lewis and Quint, The Trillion Dollar Nuclear Triad.

7 Estimates are consistent with Congressional Budget Office, ‘Projected Costs of U.S. Nuclear Forces, 2017 to 2026’, and Department of Energy, National Nuclear Security Administration, ‘FY 2016 Congressional Budget Request’, vol. 1, February 2015, http://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2015/02/f19/FY2016BudgetVolume1_1.pdf. In general, this report relies on data from the annual budget process, supplemented by reports prepared by the Congressional Budget Office, the Government Accountability Office and congressional testimony. In some cases, the compiled estimates are supplemented with historical cost data. Estimates are restricted to costs directly tied to nuclear weapons and their delivery systems. They do not include related programmes such as system dismantlement, nuclearmaterial disposal or environmental remediation, intelligence expenditures related to nuclear missions and targeting, or missile defence.

8 US Department of Defense, ‘Increasing Transparency in the U.S. Nuclear Weapons Stockpile’, 3 May 2010, https://www.defense.gov/Portals/1/features/defenseReviews/NPR/10-05-03_Fact_Sheet_US_Nuclear_Transparency__FINAL_w_Date.pdf.

9 Hans M. Kristensen and Robert S. Norris, ‘United States Nuclear Forces, 2016’, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, vol. 72, no. 2, pp. 63–73.

10 Todd Harrison, ‘Defense Modernization Plans Through the 2020s: Addressing the Bow Wave’, Center for Strategic and International Studies, January 2016, p. 31, http://csis.org/files/publication/160126_Harrison_DefenseModernization_Web.pdf.

11 Remarks by then-president Barack Obama, Hradcany Square, Prague, Czech Republic, 5 April 2009, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/05/obama-prague-speech-on-nu_n_183219.html. See also the Nuclear Security Project launched by Sam Nunn, George Schultz, William Perry and Henry Kissinger, http://www.nti.org/about/projects/nuclear-security-project/.

12 Obama, remarks made in Prague.

13 See Harold A. Feiveson (ed.), The Nuclear Turning Point: A Blueprint for Deep Cuts and De-Alerting of Nuclear Weapons (Washington DC, Brookings Institution Press, 1999); and William J. Perry, My Journey at the Nuclear Brink (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2015).

14 Sustaining nuclear deterrence with the minimum number of warheads in the stockpile is a principle with broad currency in the nuclear-policy world. Some of the advocates of this position include Gen. (Retd) James Cartwright, former commander of US Strategic Command, who in 2012 outlined a proposed nuclear posture consisting of only 450 deployed warheads. See ‘Modernizing U.S. Nuclear Strategy, Force Structure and Posture’, Global Zero U.S. Nuclear Policy Commission Report, May 2012. Likewise, Air University scholars Gary Schaub Jr and James Wood Forsyth Jr have noted, ‘America’s nuclear security can rest easily on a relatively small number of counterforce and countervalue weapons totaling just over 300.’ See James Wood Forsyth Jr, B. Chance Saltzman and Gary Schaub Jr, ‘Remembrance of Things Past: The Enduring Value of Nuclear Weapons’, Strategic Studies Quarterly, Spring 2010, pp. 74–89. Finally, in June 2013, then-president Obama announced his conviction that the United States could reduce its deployed nuclear stockpile by one-third while still maintaining the credibility of US deterrence and ensuring the security of US allies. See ‘Remarks by President Obama at the Brandenburg Gate’, Berlin, Germany, 19 June 2013, https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2013/06/19/remarkspresident-obama-brandenburg-gateberlin-germany.

15 Details of the 3+2 concept are provided in the sections on nuclear warheads in Chapter One.