Citing Chinese ICBMs, Congressional Report Calls For Massive US Nuclear Weapons Increase

by Kris Osborn, President, Center for Military Modernization

(Washington DC) A cutting-edge Congressional report calls for the immediate expansion and acceleration of US nuclear weapons modernization and deterrence, citing what is now understood as a “two-nuclear-peer” environment including both Russia and China.

“A number of commissioners believe it is inevitable that the size of the U.S. nuclear stockpile and the number of delivery systems should increase,” the detailed study, called “The Final Report of the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States,” states.

The Congressional Commission was authored by a bi-partisan committee of experts tasked with analyzing US nuclear weapons plans with a mind to the fast-evolving long-term threat equation.

The goal of the Strategic Posture Commission was to examine the long-term strategic posture of the United States. The results of their report detailed the gravity of the situation we face and emphasized that the current trajectory of the US nuclear deterrent is insufficient to deter the looming Chinese and Russian threat,” U.S. Representative Mike Rogers (R-AL), Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said in a written statement.

While Russia’s nuclear arsenal is both reasonably well known and long-standing, particular their massive arsenal of tactical, low-yield weapons and emerging nuclear-capable hypersonic weapons, the Commission is clear to point out that the People’s Republic of China is by no estimation a “lesser” threat of any kind. As part of this equation, the Congressional report specifically calls for the Pentagon to place nuclear weapons in the Pacific theater. Certainly US Navy nuclear-armed ballistic missile submarines can secretly patrol dark waters of the Pacific within striking range of China, yet land-based ICBMs in Asia might make sense as a way to supplement nuclear-capable B-2s now stationed in Guam.

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