The Eroding Nuclear Deterrent

The Pentagon’s new Missile Defense Review has some good news, but re-states a commitment to nuclear deterrence – not missile defense – to thwart China and Russia.

The report acknowledges changes to the threat environment and aims to upgrade U.S. missile defense capabilities to protect against threats from rogue states such as Iran and North Korea. The review suggests greater cooperation with allies, deployment of more THADD, Patriot and Aegis systems, increasing receptors in Alaska, and improvements in the early warning systems.

However, none of the these upgrades are designed to counter ICBMs from Russia and China. Indeed, the current missile defense technology is not capable of intercepting the advanced weapons Russia and China have. For this reason, since U.S. policy to defend against Russian and Chinese ICBMs remains traditional nuclear deterrence – mutual assured destruction (MAD), the U.S. nuclear arsenal and infrastructure must be modernized to remain effective.

Nuclear deterrence depends on U.S. technological parity with – and ideally, superiority over, – Russia and China. “The U.S. nuclear deterrent has become seriously eroded,” Dr. Mark Schneider stated in a December 2017 Center for Security Policy report. “America’s nuclear forces are very old and will get significantly older before they are replaced.”

It may surprise many Americans that the last comprehensive nuclear modernization of the nuclear deterrent began 37 years ago, at the beginning of the Reagan administration. When this last big upgrade took place, today’s lieutenant colonels were toddlers.

Peter Huessy, President of Geostrategic Analysis, explains, “America’s nuclear force is aging: U.S. land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles are now 47 years old, the B-52 strategic bomber is approaching 50 years, and the submarines are approaching 40 years – the longest any U.S. submarine has even been at sea.” Most of our B-52 bombers and most of our Ohio– or Trident-class ballistic missile submarines are older than their commanding officers.

“The estimated life span of a pit [the fissile material component of a nuclear weapon] is 45 to 60 years. The current average age of America’s nuclear weapons is 35 years. This means that in as little as 10 years we could see a collapse of the U.S. nuclear deterrent” Schneider said.

Not only are U.S. weapons rapidly aging, but the ability to produce new warheads is compromised since the majority of people with that specific, highly-specialized design and testing experience have retired.

“Leaps in technology also mean that the process of safely resuming nuclear weapons test would have to be reinvented as opposed to replicated” Michaela Dodge wrote in a 2018 Heritage Foundation report.

“Due to decades of neglect, the U.S. is the only nuclear weapon state without a fully functional nuclear weapons production complex,” Schneider said, “The U.S. lacks the ability to produce tritium, a vital nuclear weapons ingredient.”

Furthermore, while the U.S. nuclear arsenal has eroded, Russia and China, who both see America as their main adversary, have modernized and expanded their nuclear triads.

“Russia has achieved many significant advantages over the aged U.S. nuclear deterrent, including at least 10-to-1 superiority in tactical nuclear weapons, a largely modernized force of long-range strategic nuclear missiles, submarines, and bombers; and perhaps most significantly, a new generation of advanced nuclear warheads that have no U.S. equivalents,” Dr. Peter Pry, executive director of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security recently wrote.

A recent report from the Defense Intelligence Agency states that China is “on the verge of fielding some of the most modern weapons systems in the world.” Moreover, China has likely surpassed America in hypersonic weaponry and is a leader in precision-strike capabilities, according to the assessment.

If America continues to rely on a nuclear deterrence strategy, as the latest Missile Defense Review states, it is imperative that the U.S. nuclear arsenal and infrastructure are modernized to effectively fulfill that role.