PerspectiveA Cheaper Nuclear Sponge
“With today’s technology, land-based [ballistic] missiles are an embarrassment,” the late, great strategist Thomas Schelling wrote in 1987. Steve Fetter and Kingston Reif write that so long as U.S. adversaries possess nuclear weapons, we believe the United States should maintain a safe, secure, and effective nuclear arsenal to deter nuclear attacks against itself and its allies. But the Trump administration’s approach to sustaining and upgrading the arsenal is unnecessary, unsustainable, and unsafe. Nowhere is this more evident than with respect to its plan to build a new ICBM.
“With today’s technology, land-based [ballistic] missiles are an embarrassment,” the late, great strategist Thomas Schelling wrote in 1987. The weapons, he added, “seem to give the entire deterrent a bad name.”
Schelling was right: Intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) are by far the least valuable leg of the so-called nuclear triad, which also consists of submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and air-delivered cruise missiles and gravity bombs.
Steve Fetter and Kingston Reif write in War on the Rocks that so long as U.S. adversaries possess nuclear weapons, we believe the United States should maintain a safe, secure, and effective nuclear arsenal to deter nuclear attacks against itself and its allies. But the Trump administration’s approach to sustaining and upgrading the arsenal is unnecessary, unsustainable, and unsafe. Nowhere is this more evident than with respect to its plan to build a new ICBM.
“Instead of proceeding with current plans to build an entirely new ICBM system at a cost that is likely to exceed $100 billion, the Pentagon could save scores of billions — without sacrificing U.S. security — by continuing to rely on a smaller number of existing Minuteman III missiles,” they write, adding:
The United States is planning to spend hundreds of billions of dollars over the next two decades to rebuild its nuclear arsenal. At the end of the process, the arsenal will look like the one the country has today, and will last another 50 years. But the spending plans face significant budgetary, programmatic, and political challenges. There’s a better way. It is not too late to pursue a different path. Now is the time to re-evaluate nuclear weapons spending plans before the largest investments are made.
The Minuteman III can be sustained beyond the missile’s expected retirement in the 2030 timeframe. Pursuing this approach would defer a decision on whether to build a costly new missile, freeing up billions to spend on other, higher priority Pentagon modernization programs. And doing so would still allow the ICBM force to provide the purported deterrent benefits that it provides today.
