How Many Nuclear Options Does the US President Need?

Last week, Air Force Maj. Gen. Garrett Harencak, assistant chief of staff for strategic deterrence, told a Congressional committee that the Air Force needs both penetrating bomber capability to drop gravity bombs on nuclear targets and a long-range cruise missile so that bombers can fire nuclear weapons at targets from distances of 1,500 to 3,000 miles away, well outside of enemy airspace. He argued that having both capabilities “vastly, vastly complicates a potential enemy’s defenses and most importantly gives options that we would perhaps someday wish we had if we don’t pursue this.”

The problem with all of this, Washington Post veteran national security columnist Walter Pincus points out in a column Sunday, is that it will cost an enormous amount of money to achieve, and it won’t even all be available until the mid-2030’s. That’s not even counting all of the missiles in silos and on submarines, all of which also need to be recapitalized for hugely more amounts of money. What’s driving the bomber side of this, though, as Pincus points out, is a loop hole in the New START treaty: air-launched weapons are not counted separately under the treaty, only the bombers are. The US has roughly 90 B-52’s and B-2’s that are counted under the treaty, but the up-to-a-dozen nuclear bombs and missiles that each can carry are not. This is also true for the Russian side, but Pincus’s point is, that, despite Obama’s pledge to work for a nuclear-free world in his 2009 Prague speech, the US is getting no closer to that goal.

Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics Frank Kendall, also testifying before a Congressional committee, last week, provided some details as to just what the costs of nuclear force modernization will be. Even without sequestration, the Pentagon will need an additional $10 billion per year for modernization of all of those bombs, missiles, submarines, and bombers.

“I frankly think the only way we can address it and keep the force structure in the Department of Defense that we would like to have is higher budgets,” he said. “I really don’t right now see any management solutions that will help us.” Secretary of Defense Ash Carter has put together a Pentagon group, the Strategic Portfolio Review, to look at ways to address the funding shortfall and nuclear modernization, reported Defense One last week. Total cost of the program that the Pentagon wants could add up to as much as $1 trillion over the next two decades.

That cost, Pincus suggests, of providing some future US president with the option of attacking some future enemy with either gravity bombs or air-launched cruise missiles, may be just a bit too much.