Join the Navy and become a nuclear detterant

Speaking this year at the Navy League’s Sea Air Space conference Frank Kendall, undersecretary for acquisition, technology and logistics, said that to replace the country’s aging nuclear-missile submarines, ICBMs, and long-range strategic bombers has become unaffordable without radical policy changes or budget increases.  Given that the latter is unrealistic in the current fiscal environment, there is an undeniable imperative to revisit the triad, a relic of the Cold War and the threat of mutual assured destruction. Today’s threats, while perhaps even greater and more diverse clearly do not warrant maintaining a triad. Maintaining our overwhelming force if anything signals that US has been intransigent in not shifting from a Cold War mindset to a strategy that recognizes today’s threats more appropriately.

Numerous studies have concluded that the U.S. strategic triad could be restructured without sacrificing international security. The Global Zero study which was spearheaded by the former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs Marine General James “Hoss” Cartwright, advocates doing away with the nation’s first-strike capability by cutting the strategic nuclear arsenal to no more than 900 warheads, as well as eliminating U.S. land-based nuclear missiles which could save $100 billion over a decade.  Nuclear-missile submarines alone carry enough nuclear warheads to reach the level determined by the Obama administration for effective deterrence (around 1100 warheads).  Because of their survivability, firepower, and accuracy they are the one component of the nuclear triad that should be maximized. Bombers and missiles are more easily intercepted. Because of its dispersion, mobility, and concealment, an SLBM force is effectively invulnerable while at sea. The solution for maintaining the country’s nuclear deterrence is to discontinue the land based component of the triad, reduce proposed bomber budgets, and put the savings into the SLBM leg.