OBAMA PRESSES REVIEW OF NUCLEAR STRATEGY

COMMENTARY ARCHIVES, 9 Jan 2010

Bryan Bender - The Boston Globe

Pentagon is rethinking the unthinkable: Making major changes to Cold War arsenal.

CHARLIE MISSILE ALERT FACILITY, Mont. – After an hourlong ride down a nearly deserted highway covered in ice and snow, the two young officers arrive for their shift at this highly secure outpost deep in the northern Rockies.

Air Force Captain Chris Ferrer and Lieutenant Moses George, carrying a bulky orange briefcase of secret codes, descend some 75 feet underground to a capsule protected by a 4-foot-thick door of steel and concrete. They will spend the next 24 hours ready to receive a presidential command to launch dozens of nuclear missiles from silos buried across north-central Montana.

It is a routine that is virtually unchanged from the 1960s. The targets, most of them in Russia, also remain largely unchanged from the Cold War. And there are few signs that will change anytime soon. “We’re not going anywhere for decades to come,’’ predicted the two officers’ boss, Lieutenant Colonel Pete Bonetti, 41, of Providence.

But top US officials are now questioning why the United States still pursues a strategy based on the ability to annihilate its former foe. In a thorough review expected to be completed early this year, the size, structure, and even the very mission of America’s nuclear arsenal are being reconsidered as part of President Obama’s pledge to reduce the role of the world’s most deadly weapons.

Obama has already reached a tentative agreement with Russia to reduce the number of warheads on both sides from about 2,200 to between 1,500 and 1,675 in the next several years, while also slashing the missiles and submarines designed to carry them to between 500 and 1,000. The so-called Nuclear Posture Review, led by the Pentagon, could recommend going even further, to 1,000 warheads or fewer, top administration officials have told Congress.

The review is shaping up to be a major showdown for Obama this year. It is taking on some of the most sacred cows of the nuclear program. For the first time, influential voices, including a former top nuclear commander and senior Obama advisers, are proposing that one leg of the nuclear arms “triad’’ – a $30 billion-a-year enterprise made up of land-, air-, and sea-based weapons – be eliminated.

Another historic change under consideration is adopting a “no-first-use’’ policy, a public declaration stating the United States would not use nuclear weapons first, a step long advocated by arms control advocates who believe it would reduce the incentive for other nations to develop nuclear weapons.

]Also on the table, the officials say, is explicitly limiting the nuclear arsenal’s mission to deterring other nuclear weapons – not chemical or biological attacks or halting a massive conventional military assault, as current policy stipulates.

“The US-Soviet standoff that gave rise to tens of thousands of nuclear weapons is over, but the policies developed to justify their possession and potential use remain largely the same,’’ said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, a Washington think tank and leading advocate of disarmament. “Unless the United States reduces its reliance and emphasis on nuclear weapons, other states will have a cynical excuse to pursue or to improve the capabilities and size of their nuclear forces.’’
Potential threats studied

The review is assessing the potential threats over the next decade that would require nuclear weapons, seeking to match the arsenal and strategy to emerging dangers like North Korea, a rising China, and nuclear terrorism – and away from the far less likely massive nuclear exchange with Russia, according to several administration officials who are familiar with the review.

Unlike the last nuclear weapons review, conducted in 2001 by the Bush administration, it is intended “to provide a basis’’ for future arms reductions, according to the Pentagon.

Yet as a recent visit to several nuclear bases demonstrated, the nuclear weapons enterprise is one of the most entrenched in the national security bureaucracy. Strong opposition to major changes is building in the Pentagon and Congress as military officers and defense contractors with a major stake prepare to fight deep cuts to land-based nuclear weapons or the fleet of nuclear bombers, the mostly likely targets of reduction, according to interviews with current and former commanders, top officials, and leading specialists.

Many also express fear that reducing the arsenal too much will be destabilizing at a time when Russia, China, and other nations are modernizing their inventories of nuclear weapons and the United States is not.

“There is no broad-based consensus in the policy community on how important US nuclear weapons are to US security in the post-9/11 era,’’ said Clark Murdock, a former strategic planner at the Pentagon who is now a senior adviser at the nonpartisan Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “During the Cold War few disputed that nuclear weapons were a core component of US national security.’’
Submarines favored

The ability of a behemoth submarine like the USS Maryland to disappear beneath the waves makes it and 13 other Navy “boomers,’’ capable of carrying 24 Trident nuclear missiles each, the least likely to be recommended for cuts, military officials and private analysts said.

Nearly 600 feet long and four stories high, the “Fighting Mary’’ was impossible to miss when it was docked at the mouth of the St. Mary’s River in southeastern Georgia in late November. But enemies have almost no way of knowing its location after it leaves port, making the sub nearly invulnerable to attack. And it can remain at sea for extended periods: Last year, over several deployments, the Maryland was underway a total of nearly nine months out of the year.

“They get underway and disappear for all intents and purposes,’’ Rear Admiral Barry Bruner, commander of Submarine Group 10, said in a recent interview at his headquarters in Kings Bay, Ga.

At any given time, four of the subs are on patrol, two of them ready in under an hour to launch their missiles at targets as far as 4,000 miles away. Six are stationed in Georgia, eight in Washington State.

Some arms control groups believe US security interests could be met with fewer submarines and various studies have recommended as few as eight or nine, which would save billions of dollars. Already the Navy has plans to reduce the fleet to 12 by 2030 as it replaces the submarines with a new model.

But for war planners, they also bring more bang for the buck. Under the terms of the proposed treaty with Russia, each submarine and its 24 Trident missiles would count as only one “delivery system,’’ unlike the land-based missiles, which each count toward the total allowed.

A recent study by the Air Force Association, the main advocacy group for the Air Force and not traditionally the biggest Navy booster, concluded that if the United States were to choose to deploy its nuclear weapons on only one platform, it should keep the submarines. It was a remarkable statement given the traditional of interservice rivalries in among the branches of the military.

Bombers could go

The Air Force’s 114 long-range nuclear bombers – including the B-52 and B-2 stealth bombers and more than 1,000 nuclear missiles – are believed to be the most vulnerable of the three legs of the triad.

Some former commanders and a growing number of specialists contend they have far less military value now that an all-out nuclear war with Russia is unlikely. Among them is retired General Eugene Habiger, former commander of the US Strategic Command, which oversees all US nuclear weapons, and the man who until 1998 was responsible for America’s nuclear war plan.

“I would recommend giving up the bomber leg,’’ he said in an interview.

The bomber force emerged with the dawn of the nuclear age, when a pair of B-29 bombers dropped the atomic bombs on Japan in the closing days of World War II, destroying Hiroshima and Nagasaki and killing hundreds of thousands of people. After 1945, bombers were the sole element of America’s nuclear deterrent, until intercontinental ballistic missiles and nuclear-armed submarines were introduced in 1959.

Their crews are still ready to be in the air within hours, officials said, though the exact time needed to launch them is classified.

“We still maintain the same capacity we had during the Cold War,’’ said Colonel Steven Basham, commander of the Second Bomb Wing at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana.

But sustaining the bomber leg will require billions of dollars in new investments, according to the Air Force. The B-52s, which make up the majority of the bomber fleet, are more than four decades old. The bombers used by Basham’s Second Bomb Wing were built in 1960 and 1961. The cruise missiles carried by the B-52s first came into service in 1962 and there is no plan for a replacement.

There are other drawbacks. The recent study published by the Air Force Association concluded that land-based missiles and nuclear submarines are more likely to survive a devastating first strike than bombers. The study, to the surprise of many longtime observers, recommended gradually retiring the nuclear bomber force.

Nonetheless, there remains fierce resistance to scrapping the nuclear bombers both inside and outside the Air Force. Supporters assert that, unlike land-based missiles already on alert in fixed locations or nuclear subs that must remain undetected, bombers, by being sent aloft, can signal US intent to use nuclear weapons to help defuse a possible crisis, such as with North Korea or Iran.

In other words, it is the only nuclear saber that can be rattled.

“Rolling the bomber fleet onto the flight line could be the first step in escalation,’’ said Adam B. Lowther, a faculty researcher at the Air Force Research Institute at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama.

There are other military arguments to support maintaining the bomber leg. For example, only bombers are currently outfitted to carry the special version of B61 nuclear bomb designed to strike deeply buried targets, which some assert might be needed to take out the nuclear program of a threatening nation or terrorist group.

“Bombers are and will remain critical components of the strategic nuclear triad because they possess great flexibility and versatility,’’ said General Frank Klotz, commander of the Air Force Global Strike Command at Barksdale Air Force Base.

There is also likely to be significant political opposition. Like the land-based missile and submarine forces, the bombers have strong political backers in the states where they are located, including Louisiana, Missouri, and North Dakota.

Missiles under review

Even if it moves to eliminate the bomber leg of the triad, the Obama administration, is almost certainly going to have cut some of 450 intercontinental ballistic missiles, or ICBMs, now spread across Montana, North Dakota, and Wyoming if it wants to bring the US arsenal down to 1,000 warheads or less.

But even members of his own party – including senators he will need to pass his proposed arms control treaty with Russia – could stand in his way.

“While we may not oppose modifications or some reductions to our nuclear force, we are certain that the ICBM force as currently constituted provides an extraordinary benefit to our national security while delivering high value to the taxpayer,’’ six Democratic and five Republicans senators told Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates in a letter last fall.

The Minuteman III missiles, which can travel more than 6,000 miles and hit their targets in 30 minutes, are considered the most reliable of all three legs of the triad. The missile crews have the most reliable communications with the president – the only person who can order a nuclear launch – and 99 percent of the missiles are traditionally on alert ready to launch within minutes.

The silos and launch centers, meanwhile, are disbursed and hardened against attack, requiring a large-scale first strike by Russia to take them out.

An adversary “would have to expend everything they have,’’ said Colonel Michael Fortney, commander of the 341st Missile Wing at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana.

The missile wing, which maintains and operates 150 missile silos spread across 14,000 square miles of rolling hills and steep plateaus, is responsible for 15 missile alert centers, each ready to launch at least 10 missiles.

Fortney, like many senior military officers interviewed for this story, said he is prepared to work under a new nuclear policy regime, but warned that as the United States goes to lower numbers of warheads it means that every weapon left becomes more important to ensure that the nuclear arsenal maintains its capability and credibility to deter potential enemies. That is likely to require new investments in missiles and warheads, he suggested.

“There is somewhat of a greater sense of urgency,’’ he said, “to make sure that the systems stay on alert.’’

Threats variable

The nuclear review is taking place as threats against the United States, from former enemies, rogue nations, and potential terrorists, remain in flux. Even the vestiges of the old Soviet Army seemed to stir recently, giving ammunition to those who want to keep the nuclear force closer to its current levels.

In a November exercise code-named “West,’’ 13,000 Russian and Belorussian troops practiced putting down a popular uprising and storming a beachhead. Then, according to local media reports, the Russian Air Force simulated a nuclear attack on Poland.

Word of the exercise immediately set off alarm bells in Warsaw, which had been under Soviet domination for 40 years but is now a member of the US-led NATO military alliance. It also underscored that Obama’s plans to deemphasize nuclear weapons are not necessarily held by other nuclear powers.

“The Russian leadership is absolutely committed to their nuclear weapons,’’ said C. Franklin Miller, a former National Security Council official who is now an unpaid adviser to the US Strategic Command, the military headquarters based in Nebraska that oversees all US nuclear weapons. “The Chinese certainly believe in their arsenal.’’

Miller and others also point out that Russia also has a 10-to-1 advantage over the United States in so-called “tactical’’ nuclear weapons, smaller bombs that could be used on the battlefield to take out large formations of troops. Those weapons are not covered in the proposed arms reduction treaty with Russia, although senior administration officials have said they intend to include them in future negotiations.

Indeed, the actions of other nuclear weapons states have some concerned that the United States could set off a new nuclear arms race if it cuts its arsenal to 1,000 weapons or fewer.

Henry Sokolski, director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center and a member of a high-level commission that advises the government on weapons of mass destruction, has argued that reducing the US arsenal dramatically could lead China or other powers that now have hundreds of nuclear weapons to try to reach parity by building up their arsenals – what he calls the destabilizing prospect of a “packed nuclear crowd.’’
But others, like Kimball, note that Russia and the United States have 95 percent of the world’s nuclear arms and that there would be plenty of warning if a country like China, which is estimated to have 350 weapons, tried to catch up.

“The United States and Russia each deploy more than 2,000 strategic warheads, most of which exist only to deter a massive nuclear attack by the other,’’ he said. “No other country possesses more than 300 nuclear warheads, and China currently has fewer than 30 nuclear-armed missiles capable of striking the continental United States.’’

Bryan Bender can be reached at bender@globe.com.   

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