The Pentagon is making plans to develop two new sea-based nuclear weapons in order to be able to respond to Russia, China and North Korea’s growing military capabilities, a Defense Department review of nuclear strategy shows.
Supporters of the Pentagon’s plan say it is time for the U.S. to update its nuclear forces to deal with changing threats posed by countries that keep increasing their nuclear capacities.
“While the United States has continued to reduce the number and salience of nuclear weapons, others, including Russia and China, have moved in the opposite direction. The United States must be capable of developing and deploying new capabilities, if necessary, to deter, assure, achieve U.S. objectives if deterrence fails, and hedge against uncertainty,” a draft of the Pentagon’s plan said.
One of the weapons the U.S. is seeking to develop is a “low yield” warhead for the Trident missile and the other one is a new nuclear-tipped cruise missile, according to The Wall Street Journal. Critics of the Pentagon’s plan argue that developing “low yield” nuclear weapons would bring about a lower threshold for deploying them. However, the review refutes this claim and maintains that it would give the U.S. more credible options to respond to Russia’s threats without using more powerful strategic nuclear weapons.
The development of the two weapons is among a broad range of recommendations in the Pentagon’s Nuclear Posture Review, a major reassessment of the U.S. nuclear strategy and programs that President Donald Trump commissioned about a year ago. The strategy is to be unveiled later this month.
According to the Pentagon’s review, a new Russian ground-launched cruise missile poses a major concern as it violates the treaty banning intermediate-range missiles based on land signed in 1987 and is part of a Russian doctrine that calls for threatening the limited use of nuclear weapons.
Nonetheless, the review says that there are circumstances under which the Trump administration may abandon the program: a decision by Russia to fix its alleged violation of the 1987 treaty and also reduce its formidable arsenal of tactical nuclear weapons.
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