Army Delivers New High-Speed Attack Networking Technology to Active Units By Kris Osborn, President, Center for Military Modernization The US Navy’s Trident II D 5 submarine-launched nuclear missile is a weapon built upon a pure paradox, a contradiction in terms or something which arguably undermines its own existence, as it is a weapon capable of massive destruction built ….to ensure peace. Indeed, lurking secretly and ever so quietly from dark unknown depths in the world’s ocean, Trident II D5 weapons remain strategically positioned to incinerate cites or even entire countries from distances greater than 4,000 miles. The "guarantee" of a massive second nuclear strike ... prevents war. Now the Pentagon, Navy and Lockheed Martin [https://news.lockheedmartin.com/2025-01-31-U-S-Navy-Awards-Lockheed-Martin-383-Million-for-Next-Generation-of-U-S-Deterrence-at-Sea]have chosen to “extend” this contradiction by engineering yet another “life-extension” for the famous nuclear-capable, sea-launched Trident II D 5 missile. Lockheed and the Navy have just signed a $383 million deal to design a Trident II D5 Life Extension 2 program for the missile, a development which further fortifies and advances the conceptual pillars and the primary tenets critical to strategic deterrence. The idea rests upon what could be described as a philosophical predicament, or quandary, beginning at the dawn of the nuclear age. A famous 1960s Yale Scholar and RAND Corporation strategist known as Bernard Brodie captured and articulated the philosophical paradox fundamental to deterrence years ago … suggesting that the promise of annihilation and destruction, prevents war. This supposition advances a certain irony, something which Brodie saw as a seismic conceptual transformation within the broader trajectory of warfare and human history. Weapons had always been envisioned, engineered and built for the specific purpose of “killing,” or “being used” in warfare, until the dawn of the nuclear age. In a post-nuclear world, there is a need for the ultimate paradox…creating a weapon with the intention of “never being used.” "Thus far the chief purpose of our military establishment has been to win wars. From now on its chief purpose must be to avert them. It can have almost no other useful purpose,” Bernard Brodie, The Absolute Weapon: Atomic Power and World Order, 1946. Trident II D5 The Trident II D5 nuclear weapon, which emerged 30 years ago in the 1990s, arms the US Navy’s Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines and the U.K.’s Vanguard-class. This most recent development is the “second” life extension program for the missile, which has already been massively improved, upgraded and extended through a Trident II D 5 Life Extension program put in place years ago. The life-extended variant of the weapon, called the Trident II D5LE, was first installed in 2017, arming the fleet with an upgraded weapon slated to serve well into the 2040s and beyond. Now the Pentagon has not only built a low-yield variant of the Trident II D5 but also plans to arm its Columbia-class nuclear-armed ballistic missile submarines with the Trident into the 2080s. The basic aim of both the first and second Trident II D5 Life Extension Programs is to address obsolescence and add new circuitry, electronics, wiring and guidance technology to the weapon to ensure it remains accurate, effective and relevant in a modern threat environment. Retaliatory Strike Later in his career, Brodie further refined his nuclear deterrence theory in a manner that full aligns with the continued existence of the Trident II D5, a weapon based entirely upon the assurance of “retaliation.” Simply put, a first strike from a determined enemy can be prevented by the promise of a massive, catastrophic retaliatory attack. “We must remember that the enemy has a very great incentive to secure our destruction. That incentive must be countered in the only way possible, which is to guarantee strong retaliation,” Bernard Brodie, Strategy in the Missile Age, 1959, RAND Corp.
