Peter Huessy, Warrior Nuclear Weapons Analyst
In the late 1950’s, General Curtis LeMay, the USAF Chief of Staff, argued the US bomber strategic deterrent was vulnerable to a Soviet strike that could eliminate the US ability to retaliate. At issue argued General LeMay were the gravity bombs upon which the strategic nuclear airplanes relied. They were secured at only 14 storage areas on US military reservations. General LeMay feared a Soviet surprise attack on just those storage areas could disarm the United States. As a result, LeMay broached the idea of developing a complimentary survivable nuclear deterrent of either land or sea-based missiles not targetable by Soviet forces.
In October 1957 General LeMay’s concerns were further heightened with the Soviet launch of Sputnik. It was now feared that a series of Soviet satellites might continually orbit the earth and without notice strike the Air Force bomb storage depots, putting the US out of the nuclear deterrent business. Needless to say, sufficiently worried, the US sought to develop two new legs of what has become known as the “Nuclear Triad.” Developed not due to interservice rivalry but to secure our national survival although there was no guarantee that such new technology would be created.
In just five years, in a remarkable technological achievement, USAF General Bernard Shriever and Colonel Edward Hall directed the successful development of a new ICBM that was first deployed in October 1962. President Kennedy would later credit Minuteman for being his “ace in the hole” that peacefully resolved the Cuban missile crisis. And Rear Admiral Roderick Middleton directed the development of the Polaris missile to be deployed on submarines.
The US eventually deployed over 1000 such Minuteman missiles in five western and mid-western states in underground silos. These missiles could be launched to strike at key Soviet targets by Presidential order. One senior Air Force leader explained that such missiles enabled the US the flexibility to avoid what President Kennedy would describe as an “all or nothing posture which led to a choice between inglorious retreat or unlimited retaliation.”
USAF Chief General Nathan Twining shared the President’s concern and had argued as early as 1954 that instead of targeting the Soviets seeking to destroy their society under President Eisenhower’s policy of “massive retaliation”, or “mutual assured destruction,” the US would seek to strike the Soviets nuclear forces and disarm Mocow instead of destroying the entire country. This “counterforce strategy” of holding at risk Soviet military assets gradually replaced the “massive retaliation” strategy developed early in the Eisenhower administration and also became known as “flexible response.”
Critics See First Strikes, Supporters See Stability
The new Minuteman missiles were also solid fueled and thus unlike the liquid fueled Titan and Atlas ICBMS, these missiles did not take hours to fuel and get ready to launch. They were on alert 24/7/365. Thus, in a crisis the President did not have to alter the US strategic posture to sustain deterrence, a highly stabilizing element of the new ICBMs. However, critics of ICBMs saw in the force a threat to the Soviets where the US could in a crisis pre-emptively try and disarm Moscow in a first strike, taking out their nuclear assets.
However, mitigating against the idea that the US ICBM force had to be quickly launched, was the relative inaccuracy of the first Soviet missiles, leaving the US ICBM silos relatively safe from being taken out in a Soviet first strike. Also, the presence of a highly secure retaliatory capability residing in the US submarine force patrolling under the oceans gave the US an even more survivable and stabilizing nuclear force. And when added to the recallable nuclear bombers on alert that were also highly survivable, the US nuclear deterrent was carefully structured to guarantee a US response across the spectrum of conflict but which was highly stabilizing.
Today, while the ICBMs are near 100% on alert, a general rule of thumb is the submarine force is one-third on patrol in the Pacific and Atlantic, one-third in transit from the patrol area and the submarine bases where the submarines were deployed, and one-third in port. Together these long-range strategic forces were the bulwark of US deterrent capability but were postured not to strike first but in an assured retaliatory mode. .
Today’s Program of Record
Today, the United States is acquiring 12 Columbia class submarines to replace the current 14 Ohio class submarines (12 of which are deployed at any one time to keep within the START limits). Although the current Chinese and Russian nuclear buildup may prompt the US to eventually deploy upwards of 16 Columbia class submarines, although they would have to be added to the fleet at the end of the current planned procurement. Each Columbia class submarine will carry 16 Trident missiles and each missile will carry roughly an average of between 4-6 warheads, for a planned total force of roughly 1090 warheads. The program forces are bound by the New START treaty and do not represent the start of some arms race as the planned modernization was designed to fit within the New START limits.
An Emerging Quandary
However, it is the 2030-35 planned acquisition of 400 new ICBMs, the Sentinel, which will replace the Minuteman III missiles, which has been the subject of numerous efforts by disarmament groups to delay, reduce and eliminate the US ICBM force. Recently, the estimated cost of the ICBM infrastructure—cables, silos, communications systems—have according to a new DoD report significantly risen to where the Nunn-McCurdy legal requirement of a full-up examination of the program is now required.
Interestingly, the Sentinel missile is not the issue. Thus is a critically important factor. Opponents of the Sentinel have claimed the Air Force need only extend the life of the current Minuteman III missile and avoid the costs of the new missile. However, irrespective of whether the Air Force builds a new missile or extends the life of the legacy Minuteman, the related infrastructure has to be replaced in any case, including the silos, national command and control system, and the launch control centers, especially having to negotiate land leases for the 450 silos, lay hundreds of miles of new cable, and fully modernize all other related infrastructure for 400 deployed missiles..
Disarmament supporters initially sought to kill the new Sentinel and instead support a life-extension of the 54-year-old Minuteman III. But now the disarmament community faces a quandary. Having failed to substitute a SLEP for the new missiles, their supposed cheaper option is now far more expensive, not the least due to the legacy missile getting more expensive to sustain each year than the Sentinel. The infrastructure has to be replaced irrespective of whether the missile is a new Sentinel or a legacy Minuteman. So now the argument may be shifting to not modestly upgrading the Minuteman missile but getting rid of ICBMs altogether.
One recent documentary from Netflix features the late Daniel Ellsberg describing ICBMs as the most dangerous weapon in the world that should be eliminated from the US arsenal along with fifty percent of the US defense budget. Other analysts such as Princeton’s Frank von Hippel said MMIII ICBMs were a wasting asset but nonetheless could be traded away for all of Russia’s new multi-warhead ICBMs.
The founder the Global Zero, the late Dr. Bruce Blair, also argued that all ICBMs were destabilizing and could also safely be unilaterally eliminated, with the US needing only a few hundred retaliatory weapons on submarines to s
ustain deterrence. The media have been giving extensive news coverage to these global zero efforts, bringing to mind President Reagan’s complaint that “The ^%$& media has propagandized our people against our defense plans more than the Russians have.”
Survivability of ICBMs
What is the issue that so alarms the nuclear disarmament advocates? The survivability of the ICBM force and its ability to ride out an initial Russian or Chinese strike. And whether being vulnerable to a first strike makes it more likely that in a crisis an American President would feel pressure to quickly launch the ICBM missiles to avoid losing them to an enemy attack.
Despite the fact that over the past 75 years no ICBM has been launched at the United States and no President has ever contemplated the launch of our own ICBMs, there is a long record of critics describing ICBMs as “on hair trigger” and ready to be launched in any crisis. Annie Jacobsen’s new book “Nuclear War: A Scenario” asserts that a US President has to respond to a warning of attack within a 6-minute window and with massive numbers of ICBMs as US retaliatory strategy is somehow fixed and automatic. In her book, a North Koran attack of two nuclear warheads generates a retaliatory strike by the United States of over 80 ICBMs.
It is true that over time, as Soviet nuclear warhead guidance accuracy improved, it became possible to target the ICBM silos in which the US Minuteman missiles were deployed. To do so would probably require the Soviets to target each silo with two incoming and attacking warheads just to make sure the silos were destroyed. When the US had over 1000 silos, such a Soviet attack would require the use of 2000 or so warheads, an attack which would be suicidal as any US President would be able to retaliate with an equally destructive response. Why would any Russian leader take such a path and invite the very possible Armageddon their own deterrent was designed to prevent? ?
Complicating the disarmament arguments are United States deterrent strategy. Although some elements within the US military argued for a minimum deployment of a few hundred nuclear armed missiles with which to destroy Soviet population centers, the US Strategic Air Command adopted a policy of “flexible response” that sought to avoid the dead-end choice described by President Kennedy.
The US would base deterrence on holding at risk the Soviet leadership, it security forces and its military assets, without which the power of the state would be eliminated. Given the current US ICBMs have only one warhead per missile, and our bombers are not even on alert, and many of our submarines are not on patrol, the US deterrent force is best characterized as both stabilizing and in a retaliatory posture, hardly the hair trigger alert status postulated by disarmament fans.
The Correlation of Forces: Window of Vulnerability:
However, over time the huge buildup of Soviet warheads in the 1970’s made such an attack more plausible. At the beginning of the 1991 START I nuclear arms reduction treaty debate in the Senate, Senator Dan Coats explained the Soviets had at that time deployed over 13,000 long range strategic nuclear warheads, the predominate number of warheads being on multiple warhead land-based ICBMs such as the ten warhead SS-18.
By 1980, a decade prior, when President Reagan was elected, the Soviets believed their huge nuclear and conventional buildup—the nuclear growth given the green light by the SALT I (1972) and the SALT II (1979) arms accords between the United States and the Soviet Union—in addition to their wars of national liberation, were all sufficiently strong to bend the correlation of forces toward Moscow and away from Washington, eventually leading to a Soviet win in the Cold War.
One key fear of US nuclear specialists was that the Soviets could destroy the 1000+ US ICBMS, the most accurate of US nuclear missiles, but still leave Moscow with as many as 10,000 remaining nuclear bombs with which to hold at risk the remainder of US nuclear and conventional forces and US cities.
Losing the ICBMs was one thing, but seeing major American cities burned to the ground was another. An American President might be sufficiently coerced into standing down in a crisis or conflict, especially in light of the formidable Soviet led Warsaw Pact conventional forces aimed at the Fulda Gap in Western Europe, an attack force the US extended nuclear deterrent over Europe was designed to keep at bay.
Given the additional Soviet efforts to strike at US security interests throughout Latin America, Asia and the Middle East, the growing Soviet power was described as an overall “window of vulnerability” by then candidate Ronald Reagan and described at the time in detail by the Committee on the Present Danger, Robert Conquest, Jeanne Kirkpatrick and other serious scholars and analysts.
Peace Through Strength
What was the remedy that President Reagan proposed? A six-part “peace through strength” agenda that would: (1) modernize all US nuclear forces; (2) turn around the current “hollow” US conventional forces; (3) end the Soviet empire and the Warsaw Pact through a coordinated economic, political and military attack on the centers of Soviet power; (4) secure major nuclear arms reductions, and reject agreed upon buildups or a foolish nuclear freeze; (5) deploy two INF missiles– the Pershing’s and Ground Launched Cruise Missiles (GLCM)– in five European NATO allies to counter the Soviets massive SS-20 deployments; and (6) begin a research program to eventually secure a missile defense of the United States and its allies, to significantly blunt coercive Soviet nuclear missile strikes.
The outline of these proposals was first formally presented by President Reagan at a November 1981 speech at the National Press Club, and culminated in March 1983 when the administration: (1) secured approval of the MX missile with the Congressional adoption of the Scowcroft Commission agenda; (2) announced the beginning of the Strategic Defense Initiative (with the full support of the Joint Chiefs); (3) initially deployed the INF missiles in Europe; and (4) most importantly, when the President on March 8th vividly portrayed the Soviets as astride an ”evil empire” without moral standing in the world in a speech to the National Association of Evangelicals.
A modernized nuclear force was the most controversial of the President’s arms proposals. Especially in light of the previous near decade long fight by Congress to repeatedly delay or cut nuclear force modernization, growing out of a growing post-Vietnam disenchantment of Congress with all things military.
On the conventional forces side of the equation things were not any better. When taking office, President Reagan found the US military was in a general state of disrepair, what was characterized as a “hollow military.” A group of military experts toured US military bases at the request of the White House and found a disquieting but general level of disrepair and neglect within our military forces.
But while Reagan pushed for nuclear modernization, the disarmament crowd pushed for what was termed a “nuclear freeze” which would have terminated the new land-based MX missile that became known as the Peacekeeper, the B-1 and B-2 strategic bombers, and the Ohio class SSBN submarine, as well as the INF missile deployments in Europe.
A nuclear freeze was supported by Moscow. If adopted in 1981, it would have frozen in US nuclear obsolescence, while freezing in place a Soviet force nearly 100% modernized, a status not unlike what the US faces today—we have not deployed a new nuclear platform since 1997 while Russia has completed over 90+% of its planned strategic nuclear modernization.
The On-Going Campaign to Kill ICBMs
Throughout the past 45 years, the disarmament community and others have repeatedly sought to kill the US land-base
d missiles. In 1984, all ICBM funds were fenced pending the outcome of the upcoming Presidential election, with an elaborate ten-part Congressional action required to free up the funds. In May 1985, by a vote of 55-45, the Senate unfenced the funding, but only after a 28-27 supportive vote in the House Appropriations Committee.
Bu even with the Senate ratification of the INF (1987), the CFE (1989), the START I (1991) and START II (1993), arms treaties, which eventually included a ban on multiple warhead ICBMs and a cut down nuclear forces to 3500 strategic warheads, the disarmament groups still wanted to kill ICBMs.
After START I and II, the US eventually kept 400 Minuteman missiles, each a highly unattractive target with only one warhead on each missile, making for the very stable deployment envisioned by President Reagan. Nonetheless, even with the end of the Cold War, and the dissolution of the Soviet empire and Warsaw Pact, the Clinton administration sought in its 1994 Nuclear Posture Review process to eliminate all ICBMs.
One draft report reached the US Senate and members of the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC). Coincidentally, the SASC was in the midst of oversight hearings on the nuclear posture of the United States during which Chairman Senator Strom Thurmond asked senior members of the Joint Chiefs whether they knew anything about the plans to kill ICBMs and would they support such an effort.
The Chiefs clearly and unanimously opposed any such move against ICBMs. The leaking of the administration’s ICBM notion was enough to kill the idea.
Unfortunately, the disarmament folks were not done. Early in the Bush (43) administration, the Under Secretary of the USAF sought to “divest the USAF” of the ICBM force, placing in the budget submitted to Congress a fuzzy worded “efficiency proposal” that when examined sought to eliminate all operations and maintenance funding for the Minuteman base in Minot, North Dakota.
The Counter Campaign
To counter such effort, North Dakota Senator Kent Conrad secured a law that required the USAF to keep no less than 400 ICBMs missiles “through 2030,” which is now when the new Sentinel ICBM is planned to be first acquired. Additional measures are now law of the land, including the requirement the US maintain no less than 450 ICBM silos and 400 deployed ICBMs and that defense funds cannot be used to reduce the ICBM force.
For the past half century, each of the nine administrations have come down squarely on the side of ICBMs, including some five major nuclear posture reviews and nearly another twenty revisions. And Congress has repeatedly rejected—by overwhelming margins—legislative attempts to kill ICBMs.
With the 2002 Moscow Treaty and the 2010 New START agreement, limiting US and Russian deployed systems to 1700-2200 and then 1550 accountable warheads, respectively, the strategic window of vulnerability was firmly closed as President Reagan had sought to do.
With that background, it is surprising that the disarmament community wants again to kill all ICBMs. Despite the dramatic reduction by nearly 90% of deployed strategic nuclear weapons in the US arsenal, the disarmers want to unilaterally cut fully roughly another one third of the US nuclear arsenal, despite a now growing Russin arsenal and an even more breathtaking growth in China’s strategic nuclear force. And unfortunately, at the same time as a new theater window of vulnerability is opening, specifically identified by the October 1983 Strategic Posture Commission.
While the current effort to kill ICBMs will probably fail, it nonetheless underscores the disarmament communities serious misunderstanding of history and careless notions about US strategic deterrence. The most recent Congressional vote was in 2022 and was 310-108 against a Representative Garamendi amendment to kill the Sentinel. During the Committee consideration of the amendment, Congresswoman Liz Cheney of Wyoming stacked up the dozens of major studies over twenty years that examined the ICBM force. The pile of studies stacked a number of feet tall, as the representative piled them on her HASC committee desk, and as she explained, every one of them concluded the ICBM force was a unique contributor to deterrence and needed to remain in the force.[A life extension of Minuteman even if possible, would be very limited in duration, as the MM III old technology would lead to a quick phasing out the force.]
There is a saying in Washington that despite the facts, bad ideas never go away. Eliminating nuclear weapons entirely, including ICBMs, is now being pushed in various forms by a well-financed campaign that has started with the Oppenheimer movie, includes a NY Times series of essays entitled “At the Brink; a new book on the immorality of nuclear deterrence; a Netflix series on the harmful role of nuclear weapons in the Cold War; and a various proposal to kill all ICBMs and eliminate all nuclear weapons.
On the heart of the campaign is the same historical worry that in a crisis each nuclear power will be tempted to go first to use their on alert nuclear forces because if they wait, the other nation could go first and take out the nuclear forces of the other nation before they can be used. This then might lead to pressures in a crisis for what former SASC Chairman Sam Nunn referenced as “prompt launch.” This issue of stability has often been described as a “use it or lose it” dilemma.
However, it has little to do with the world today. The US nuclear forces of 400 MM missiles on alert and 50 launch control centers; some 4-6 submarines at sea, and 6 additional submarines in transit or at two bases in Georgia and Washington; and 60 bombers on 3 bomber bases in North Dakota, Missouri and Louisiana, is highly survivable and currently impossible to fully target. Even though US bombers are not on alert or on a day-to-day basis or loaded with cruise missiles or gravity bombs.
The total force structure the Russians, for example, would have to take out in a first strike is more than 500 American nuclear related targets, not even including US leadership, critical command centers and most US conventional forces.
To just eliminate our ICBMs would require Russia to use roughly two-thirds of its New START accountable strategic nuclear force, but with a certainty of multiple hundreds or even a thousand American nuclear warheads coming back at Russia. The retaliatory strike could be over one thousand if bombers were placed on day-to-day alert and more submarines were out to sea.
And certainly, in response to a crisis, an American President would markedly increase the alert posture of the country to allow an even greater retaliatory response if needed. This American capability sends a clear message to Russia and China—any use of nuclear weapons would likely end up very badly for them, including the end of their power.
What purpose would be served for Moscow or Beijing to make such a reckless Armageddon type decision? To achieve what aim? Especially if the United States implemented the current hedge capability to acquire a greater force in response to the projected China buildup. The US could add roughly another 1000 warheads to its current strategic long-range force of submarines and ICBMs, making a hypothetical retaliatory strike available to a US President in the 1000-2000 strategic warhead range even if the US optional response is only after it is confirmed that enemy nuclear warheads have struck the United States.
Moscow and China both know this. As does Congress and the US military leadership. That is why for 75 years the US has maintained an ICBM force within a nuclear Triad. .
Mobile ICBMs?
The recently published report of the Posture Commission also supports the Sentinel ICBM force and the TRIAD. What is new is the Commission have also unanimously recommended that the US could examine making some portion of the ICBM force mobile, as both China and Russia have done so with their ICB
M forces.
Now the two ICBMs–the Peacekeeper and mobile small ICBM–were both recommended by the 1983 US Congressional mandated Scowcroft Commission. But with the subsequent end of the Cold War and agreement on START I and II, the mobile small ICBM and the additional Peacekeeper rail garrison missiles were both terminated by the Bush 41 administration, due to the START II treaty banning all multiple warhead ICBMs. [A treaty eventually rejected by Moscow due to the US not agreeing to jettison all our missile defense work.]
Now ICBM mobility has been the subject of dozens of DoD studies. Previous administrations back to the Nixon administration, have previously tried to find a mobile basing mode for the 10-warhead Peacekeeper, but notably failed to do so because of opposition from environmental, civic and disarmament groups.
In 1980, during a hearing of the SASC, two Democrat senators—Mr. Howard Cannon and Mr. Wayne Moss—proposed to the committee that their states—Utah and Nevada—would be happy to deploy 100 mobile ICBMs just as long as the other 100 needed missiles would be accepted by other states. Needless-to-say, the transparent effort to kick a decision on ICBM modernization down the road again didn’t find any additional state sponsors for deployment.
The reason the 1983 Scowcroft Commission recommended the US deploy the Peacekeeper ICBM in silos and deploy as well the SICBM in a mobile mode was to solve this part of the window of vulnerability in two stages. As Senator Malcolm Wallop of Wyoming said, you cannot make an elephant (a 10 warhead Peacekeeper) a rabbit (a single warhead mobile SICBM) and neither can you make a rabbit an elephant!
The New Nuclear Era: Escalate to Win
With the 90% reduction in strategic nuclear warheads since the 1991 START I agreement, the threat of a massive Russian strike on the United States has receded. But what the global zero advocates have missed is a new threat–under what conditions would Russia or China use nuclear weapons against the United States but in a limited strike fashion using short-range and low-yield battlefield type weapons?
Unfortunately, what is emerging is a new yet more dangerous era. The most likely use of nuclear weapons is not a massive bolt-out-of-the blue strike feared during the Cold War but a very limited coercive nuclear strike as the recent Strategic Posture Commission report unanimously envisioned.
Such limited and regional strike threats under a Russian and Chinese strategy popularly known as “escalate to win,” would not even strike any of the ICBM force in the United States but most likely a few key economic or military targets in Europe or the Western Pacific or the Middle East critical to the defense the US provides.
Unilaterally removing the US ICBM force from the US nuclear Triad would tip over the stabilizing three-legged Triad stool and makes strategic nuclear strikes more likely but do nothing to deter an escalate to win adversary.
And without ICBMs, the US nuclear force structure would be reduced to 3 bomber bases, 2 submarine bases, plus whatever number of submarines we have at sea and our three command and control centers.
Now the submarine fleet is fully survivable at sea, but can we place all our future technological marbles on that one factor? What if there is a revolution in undersea warfare and technological development and an adversary finds the oceans transparent? The very bolt out of the blue at the heart of the window of vulnerability would be recreated but with the potential US force structure no more than 2% of the size of the current US arsenal.
As General Larry Welch, the former USAF Chief of Staff argued, an adversary could attrite the submarine force over time. And as former SASC Chairman Senator John Warner reminded his colleagues, his top fear when he was Secretary of the Navy was what would happen if indeed one of his “boomers” did not come home or back to port. Who would we assume had attacked our submarines at sea?
Reducing the US target set to roughly a dozen aim points is to invite cooperative adversaries to hide their intentions, promise a “peaceful rise” and strike when ready to do so. That a general nuclear exchange would probably come close to ending civilization as we know it is obvious, but that fact does not recommend itself to what the disarmers want. The absence of current nuclear deterrence won’t magically improve deterrence, it will make it less viable. If our adversaries actually believe that nuclear war can be waged and would serve their purposes, we have no choice but to deter that.
America’s current deterrent says to our adversaries no such limited use of nuclear weapons will work. In fact, our military leaders have repeatedly explained the use of nuclear weapons in a conventional conflict results in “nothing holds” as our positive conventional conflict scenarios don’t materialize. In light of that reality, the US has no choice but to add deterrent capability to close the deterrent gap Putin and Xi are seeking to exploit.
Indeed, most nuclear analysts believe that at the strategic level, any exchange of nuclear weapons could lead to general nuclear war and the extinction of most life on earth. Our deterrent is designed to make that obvious to our adversaries as the best means of making sure no use of such long-range weapons ever occurs.
But Mr. Putin and Mr. Xi from their pronouncements and military actions believe in bullying their neighbors and committing serial military aggression, backed up by short-range, theater and accurate nuclear forces under, as noted earlier, an overall strategy of “escalate to win.’
Whether Russia and China will be so reckless as to actually use theater nuclear forces under circumstances involving Ukraine or Taiwan, for example, is not fully known. Certainly, the United States government does not have such an aggressive escalatory strategy in its security policy.
But our deterrent strategy must take this into account in the other guy’s strategy and thus across the full spectrum of possible conflict, the US forces must signal to our adversaries that they cannot get away with the free use of nuclear weapons.
Remember, in April 1999, Russian President Yeltsin called for the development of highly accurate, low-yield battlefield nuclear weapons, a task now nearly fully implemented by his successor Valdimir Putin.
Unfortunately, in the face of such developments, the disarmament community proposes dangerous unilateral measures that like the nuclear freeze rejected nearly half a century ago would make more likely the nuclear war we all seek to prevent, vitiate the deterrent we now have, and make more unstable an already deteriorating world order.
