Rethinking Nuclear Policy

Taking Stock of the Stockpile

By Fred Kaplan
September/October 2016 Issue

Four months into his presidency, at a summit in Prague, Barack

Obama pledged to take concrete steps toward a world without nuclear
weapons. Yet nearly eight years later, he presides over a program to
modernize the entire U.S. nuclear arsenal at a cost of $35 billion a year
through the next decade and beyond. To those who accuse him of
hypocrisy, Obama has said that he always regarded a nuclear-free world as
a long-term goal, unlikely to be met in his lifetime, much less his time in
officeand that his modernization program is designed not to build more
or more deadly nuclear weapons but rather to maintain and secure the
arsenal the United States has now.
This claim is true, by and large, but it leaves open a bigger question: Does
the United States need the arsenal it has now? Obama seems to be mulling
this very question as his tenure winds down. In a June 6 speech to the Arms
Control Association, his deputy national security adviser, Ben Rhodes,
noted that the modernization plan was put together in a different budget
environment, with a different Congress, and that the president will
continue to review these plans as he considers how to hand the baton off to
his successor. In one sense, Rhodes was merely repeating the concern that
Robert Work, the deputy secretary of defense, had expressed back in
Februarythat the nuclear plans price tag would force tradeoffs in an era
of budget constraints and that if this meant cuts in conventional forces,
then that would be very, very, very problematic. But other officials have
said that the review Rhodes mentioned is propelled not only by budgetary
dilemmas but by questions of strategy and history, too.
Rhodes statement set off alarm bells in certain corridors of Congress. In a
June 16 letter, Senators John McCain and Bob Corker, both Republicans,
reminded Obama that during the debate over the New Strategic Arms
Reduction Treaty (New START) in 2010, he had promised to modernize or
replace all three legs of the nuclear triadthe land-based intercontinental
ballistic missiles ICBMs), the submarine-launched ballistic missiles
(SLBMs), and the long-range bombersin exchange for Senate ratification.
They warned him not to backpedal on this commitment.

And so a quarter century after the end of the Cold War, the United States
stands on the precipice of another nuclear debate. In the 1980s, nuclear
weapons dominated discussions of national security affairs to a degree that
specialists under the age of, say, 50 would find baffling. The arsenals of
both sides had grown to such staggering levels, and the chance of a real war
between the two superpowers had so diminished, that the nuclear arms
race entered a realm of almost pure abstraction, in which such recondite
(and substantively meaningless) measures as missile throw-weight ratios
became tokens of competition and conflict.
Notwithstanding the tensions between the United States and Russia in the
era of Vladimir Putin, this sort of contest has long been abandoned.
Tabulations of each sides nuclear arsenal, which were once parsed with
scholastic flair, are now hard to come by. No one serious would dream of
presenting such statistics as a measure of the balance of power, however
that phrase might be defined. So its an ideal timebefore the renewed
debate is taken over by baroque abstractioniststo ask some basic
questions. What does the United States need nuclear weapons for? And
how many, of what sort, are enough?
THE DETAILS OF DOOMSDAY
Public discussion of these questions has always been disingenuous.
President John F. Kennedys defense secretary, Robert McNamara, devised
a formula for finite deterrence, a concept popularized as mutual assured
destruction, or MAD: if, after a Soviet first strike, enough U.S. weapons
survived to destroy the Soviet Unions 200 largest cities in a retaliatory
blow, then that would be enough to deter the Russians from contemplating
a first strike to begin with. The damage done by any additional weapons,
McNamara argued, would be so marginal as to be superfluous. In fact, this
formula was only the secretarys way of capping the militarys appetite.
(The Joint Chiefs of Staff wanted 10,000 ICBMs; McNamara held them to
1,000.) Even in McNamaras day, the U.S. missiles were never aimed at
Soviet cities or population centers per se; they were always aimed mainly at
Soviet military targets. Still, the warheads and bombs were so enormous at
the timemany delivering an explosive punch of well over a megatonthat
tens or hundreds of millions of people would have been killed anyway, not
to mention the millions more around the world who would have died from
radioactive fallout.
The first coordinated U.S. nuclear war plan, known as the SIOP (for Single
Integrated Operational Plan), was drawn up at the Strategic Air Command
(SAC) in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1960, just before Kennedy was elected. It
supplied a rationale for as many bombs and missiles as the military desired.
Every remotely valuable facility in the Soviet Union (and in communist

China and Eastern Europe) was designated a target, and officers in SACs
Joint Strategic Target Planning Staff decreed that several particularly
valuable targets had to be destroyed with a 90 percent probability, others
with a 98 percent probability. Under these rules, several weapons would
have to be fired at those targetsand thus the military would have to buy
several times as many weapons as might seem reasonable at first glance.
What does the United States need nuclear weapons for? And how many,
of what sort, are enough?
In 1961, just after the start of Kennedys term, McNamara revised the SIOP
to give the president an option to launch limited strikes, just against
Soviet strategic military targets (ICBMs, submarine pens, and bomber
bases), avoiding cities. Still, SACs requirements remained enormous. And
as the Soviets built up their nuclear arsenal through the 1960s, largely in
response to the U.S. buildup, the requirements grew proportionately.
McNamaras 1,000-ICBM limit remained in place, so the U.S. military
developed missiles tipped with several warheads, each of which could be
flung at a separate target. These were known as MIRVs, for multiple
independently targetable reentry vehicles. When Soviet and American
ICBMs were MIRVed, they became at once the most lethal weapons and,
because of that, the most vulnerable. The sheer existence of these weapons
created a new sort of instability: in a crisis, each side might have an incentive to launch a first strike with its ICBMs, if just to preempt the other sides
launching a first strike with its ICBMs.
This situation, which theorists dubbed crisis instability, spawned a small
library of nuclear-exchange scenarios, replete with deceptively precise
calculations. They all envisioned a U.S. president and a Soviet premier
firing hundreds or thousands of nuclear warheads at each others country,
killing tens or hundreds of millions of citizens, all while maintaining the
perspicacity to lob missiles back and forth (assuming, absurdly, that
surveillance satellites and data-processing computers would still function
well enough to assess the damage)and that, through this curious chess
match, one side or the other would achieve some sort of victory. In
retrospect, these books and articles (many of them reviewed and published
in journals such as this one) seem bizarre, if not insane.
When the Cold War ended, so did this strange discourse. And so did the
nuclear arms race. The U.S. nuclear stockpile, which had peaked in 1967 at
an astounding 31,255 weapons, had already been wound down to 19,008 by
1991, mainly due to the dismantlement of tactical nukes in Western Europe
and South Korea. This number was cut by half over the next decade and by
half again in the decade after. Some of these cuts stemmed from nuclear
arms control accords beginning in the early 1970s. But to a much larger

extent, they occurred because, starting under President George H. W. Bush

and continuing with President Bill Clinton, civilian analysts in the Pentagon
wrested control of the SIOP for the first time since McNamaras revision in
1961.

ROIDAN CARLSON / U.S. AIR FORCE

A cruise missile maneuvers during a Nuclear Weapons System Evaluation Program in
Utah, September 2014.

Taking a close look at SACs beyond-top-secret list of targets and how many
weapons were aimed at each, the civilian analysts concluded that it was all
wildly inflated: many facilities on the list didnt need to be targets, and
many of the targets didnt need to be hit with so many weapons. As a result,
according to Uncommon Cause, a new book by retired General George Lee
Butler, former SAC commander, the nuclear requirements were slashed
from 10,000 weapons to 5,888. (The civilians regarded even this many as
excessive, but political compromise prevailed.) The actual number of
weapons came down almost proportionately and has continued to slide
since, although much less steeply.
The most recent (and fairly modest) reductions were the result of the New
START treaty. Obama hoped to reach a follow-on accord but never did, a
failure that he has attributed to Putins return to the Russian presidency.
Yet even if Obamas negotiating partner, the more moderate Dmitry

Medvedev, had remained Russias president, its doubtful the two could
have concluded a New START II. Obama said at the time that a second
treaty should impose cuts not just on long-range missiles but also on shortand medium-range weapons. Yet given the United States superiority in
conventional arms, no Russian leader would likely have gone down that
path. When the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies outgunned NATO
along the border between East and West Germany, U.S. presidents saw
nuclear weaponsincluding missiles, tactical bombs, and even nuclear
artilleryas an offset to the military imbalance. Russian leaders similarly
see nuclear weapons as offsets today. (The United States maintains just 184
nuclear bombs in Europe, kept in storage and capable of being loaded onto
tactical fighter jets, but Russia is estimated to have more than 2,000, many
of them deployed.)
Even if Obamas negotiating partner, the more moderate Dmitry
Medvedev, had remained Russias president, its doubtful the two could
have concluded a New START II.
Once the nuclear talks hit a dead end, should Obama have proceeded with
unilateral reductions? In the realm of nuclear weapons, there is no need,
after all, to match an adversary missile for missile, warhead for warhead, or
kiloton for kiloton. Presidents must determine what missions they want the
nuclear arsenal to accomplish and ensure that, even under pessimistic
assumptions, the military has enough weapons to do so. If the calculations
indicate that they need, say, 1,000 nuclear weapons, it shouldnt matter
whether Russia or some other hostile country has two, three, or ten times
as many. But thats not how the question has ever played out politically.
SYSTEM UPGRADE
Today, the United States has 440 ICBMs, 288 SLBMs (on 14 submarines),
and 113 strategic bombersloaded, all told, with 2,070 nuclear bombs and
warheads, with another 2,508 held in storage as a hedge against a total
breakdown in international relations and a resumption of a serious arms
race. Russia has 307 ICBMs, 176 SLBMs (on 11 submarines), and 70
bomberswith an estimated total of 2,600 bombs and warheads and about
2,400 more in storage. China has 143 ICBMs, 48 SLBMs (on four
submarines), and three bombers with the range to hit the western United
Stateswith a total of roughly 180 bombs and warheads. (These figures
come from Hans Kristensen and Robert Norris, who have compiled the
most completeand, sources tell me, most reliableunclassified tabulation
of the worlds nuclear arsenals.)
The Chinese have never played the nuclear arms race game; they follow a
policy of minimum deterrence, holding just enough to keep two enemies

at bay, Russia and the United States. (There are, however, reports of a
modest recent buildup, perhaps in response to U.S. progress on a missile
defense system.) The Russians, on the other hand, are in the midst of an
active modernization program. They have retained 46 of their old MIRVed
ICBMs and are developing a replacement for two-thirds of those.
Compared with the Russians, the Americans arent doing much beyond
replacing old missiles and bombers with new onesalmost none of which
will have greater destructive power than the old onesand Washington
isnt in a rush to do even that. The United States got rid of its MIRVed
ICBMs long ago, and a new model (armed with just one warhead each),
called the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent, is not expected to debut until
2028. A new submarine, the SSBN-X, wont undergo sea trials until 2031. A
new aircraft called the Long-Range Strike Bomber is scheduled for the late
2020s, as is the Long-Range Stand-Off weapon, an upgrade of the current
air-launched cruise missile.

JAMES KIMBER / REUTERS

Ballistic missile submarine USS Tennessee returns to base in Georgia,
February 2013.
Even so, the U.S. modernization plan, if carried out in full, will be very
expensive: according to the Congressional Budget Office, it will cost about
$60 billion for 642 new ICBMs (400 of which will be deployed in silos),
$100 billion for 12 new nuclear-missile-carrying submarines, $55 billion for
100 new bombers, $30 billion for 1,000 new cruise missiles, and $50
billion for faster, more flexible, and more secure command-and-control
systemsto say nothing of the roughly $80 billion over the next decade to
maintain the nuclear laboratories.
The original reason for the nuclear triad was entirely bureaucratic. The
army was building ICBMs, the navy was building submarines, and the air
force was building bombers. (Eventually, the air force won the contract for
ICBMs, leaving the army to field short- and medium-range nukes in
Western Europe and South Korea, as well as conduct R & D on antiballistic
missiles to defend the continental United States. These army projects have
since largely evaporated.) Yet as the arms race took off in the 1960s, the
triad took on a strategic rationale. ICBMs were the most powerful and
accurate of the three legs, the ideal tool for promptly attacking blasthardened Soviet missile silos. SLBMs were much less powerful and less
accurate, but they were the most secure, since they were loaded onto
submarines, which prowled the oceans undetected. If deterrence was
defined as the survivability of a second-strike force, SLBMs were crucial.
Bombers were slower, taking hours, not minutes, to reach their targets, but
because of that, their pilots could linger outside Soviet borders awaiting
instructions or even be called back to base if a crisis was resolved.
The case for land-based ICBMs today is extremely weak and has been since
1990, when the U.S. Navy started deploying Trident II missiles on
submarines. Unlike earlier SLBMs, the Trident II is accurate enough to
destroy blast-hardened missile silos. In other words, one of the ICBMs
unique propertiesits ability to hit blast-hardened targets quicklyis no
longer unique. Meanwhile, its other unique propertyits vulnerability to an
adversarys first strikeis all too enduring. Even by the esoteric logic of
nuclear strategists, then, ICBMs make the United States less secure, with
no compensating advantages.
During the Cold War, a case was made for ICBMs on the grounds that the
United States needed to keep up with whatever the Soviets were doing, if
just to demonstrate resolve and credibility. A dubious notion at the
time, it makes no sense whatever today. So what is the rationale for

preserving, much less modernizing, land-based ICBMs? If they are

inherently destabilizing, why shouldnt they be dismantled?
There is no need to match an adversary missile for missile, warhead for
warhead, or kiloton for kiloton.
The air force and some civilian strategists do have a new rationale. They call
it the sponge theory. Without land-based ICBMs to soak up Russian
missiles, the logic goes, there would be only six strategic targets in the
continental United States: the three bomber bases (in Louisiana, Missouri,
and North Dakota), two submarine ports (in Bangor, Washington, and
Kings Bay, Georgia), and the National Command Authority (otherwise
known as Washington, D.C.). The Russians could launch an attack on those
six targets with just two MIRVed missiles, or possibly even one. An
American president might not strike back, knowing that the Russians had
thousands of warheads remaining and that, therefore, if the United States
retaliated, Russia would retaliate further. (In the 1970s, some hawkish
strategists outlined a similar scenario, which they called deterring our
deterrent.) On the other hand, if the United States maintained its 400
ICBMs, so the theory goes, the Russians would have to fire at least 400
warheads to destroy them. By any definition, this would constitute a major
attack, thus prompting certain, massive retaliationthe prospect of which
would deter them from launching an attack in the first place.
LANCE CHEUNG / REUTERSA USAF B2 Spirit Bomber taxis before
take-off from Whiteman Airforce Base, Missouri, October 2001.
This is a strange theory. It assumes that a U.S. president would tolerate a
nuclear attack that, despite its supposedly limited scope, would kill
hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, of civilians and not strike back
with any of the hundreds of missiles poised on invulnerable submarines.
But lets posit that the theory has some validitythat the military needs to
have more than six targets on U.S. soil to act as sponges to absorb a Russian
nuclear attack. Even so, its a huge stretch to contend that the United States
needs 400 ICBMs400 spongesfor that purpose. How many would be
needed? A dozen? Two dozen? Almost certainly no more than that. Nor
would those missiles (again, assuming the theory makes a lick of sense)
have to be up-to-date models. In other words, a strong case can be made
that the United States does not need a new land-based ICBM at all.
Does it need a new long-range manned bomber that can penetrate Russian
air defenses? The case for this, too, is far from persuasive. With a range of
1,500 miles, air-launched cruise missiles can be fired from bombers
loitering well outside the reach of Russian air defenses. Does this mean a

new air-launched cruise missile is a good idea? It might be, except that the
air forces Long-Range Stand-Off missile is not simply a replacement. This
is the one new weapon in the U.S. modernization plan that is a completely
new design. It has a longer range and better accuracy, neither of which is
controversial, but its also built to carry either a conventional or a nuclear
warhead, and that feature has raised concerns. Former Defense Secretary
William Perry has argued that if the Long-Range Stand-Off weapon were
launched, the leader of the country being attacked would have no way of
knowing which kind of warhead the missile was carrying. Assuming the
worst (as leaders tend to do in wartime), he or she might assume it was
carrying a nuke and respond accordingly.
Deterrence doesnt require a lot of nuclear weapons: in some cases, a
mere handful; in others, a couple of hundred.
As for a new class of nuclear-missile-carrying submarines, objections here
are hard to muster. The current Ohio-class submarines are between 20 and
40 years old. At some point, subs get too old to risk plunging them into the
ocean for another voyage. Does the navy need 12 new submarines? Would,
as some suggest, eight to ten be enough? Any calculus has to take into
account that some subs have to be in the Pacific Ocean, some have to be in
the Atlantic Ocean, and some have to be in port for refueling and repairs. If
one can safely assume that three are enough for each location, then nine
should be fine. If thats considered excessive, then eight would do; if thats
deemed too risky, then ten would do. The rationale for 12 is hard to parse.
Finally, the program for more rugged command-and-control systems is
unassailable, given the growing vulnerability of satellite communications,
either to a direct attack or to hacking. If the United States is stuck with
nuclear weapons, the president should at least appear to have the ability to
launch them, or withhold them, preferably in a controlled way.
THE NUKES WE NEED
The fact is that short of a transformation in world politics, which doesnt
seem remotely in the offing, we areall of usstuck with nuclear weapons.
They do serve a function: they tend to deter aggression, not just nuclear
attacks but conventional invasions, as well. During a mid-1960s border
dispute, the Kremlin considered invading a patch of China but held back
because China had a handful of nuclear weapons. Israelis fear an Iranian
bomb not so much because they think the supreme leader might suddenly
launch nuclear missiles at Tel Aviv (Israel is estimated to have roughly 200
nuclear weapons and could easily incinerate Tehran in response) but
because a pocketful of nukes could provide cover to other forms of Iranian
aggression.

A possible parallel: if Israel hadnt destroyed Iraqs Osirak nuclear reactor

in 1981, and if Saddam Hussein had gone on to build a few atomic or
hydrogen bombs, its hard to imagine so many Western and Arab nations
joining the coalition to oust the Iraqi army from Kuwait a decade later. The
United States might have offered to extend its nuclear umbrella to the
coalition partners, pledging to retaliate against an Iraqi nuclear attack, but
the Arab countries, in particular, might not have trusted it. In the 1960s,
British and French leaders, questioning the credibility of NATO, asked
whether the United States would risk New York to protect London or Paris;
Egyptian and Saudi rulers would rightly have doubted whether it would do
the same for Cairo or Riyadh.
But as these scenarios illustrate, deterrence doesnt require a lot of nuclear
weapons: in some cases, a mere handful; in others, a couple of hundred. If
Obama is serious about reassessing the nuclear-modernization plan, he
should start by reassessing the requirements of deterrence. No civilian
officials have scrutinized the U.S. nuclear war planthe list of targets and
the number of weapons aimed at each onesince the review of a quarter
century ago, under Bush and Clinton. Given that the U.S. and Russian
stockpiles have shrunk since then, the requirements could certainly be
reduced with no change in the underlying logic, and they could probably be
slashed if the logic were questioned, as well.
Its long past time for the government to conduct a zero-based budget
review of the SIOPscouring the war plan clean, as if there were no nuclear
weapons at all, then building it up from scratch, based on a rational
assessment of how many are needed, to do what. The reason this hasnt
happened already is simple: the military, powerful factions of which are
wedded to nuclear weapons, and Congress, powerful members of which
have nuclear manufacturers or labs in their districts, wont allow it. Every
time a president has signed a nuclear arms control treaty, the Senate has
demanded an increase in spendingor, at times, the approval of new, more
lethal nuclear weaponsin exchange for its ratification. Its unlikely that
the military or Congress would tolerate unilateral reductions, however
sensible they may be.
Even if the politics were more amenable, Obama probably couldnt, in the
time he has left, so much as set the stage for such a calculation. But it would
be a worthy task for his successorand for other world leaders, too.