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More Nukes! More Nukes!
Chant it with me, “MORE NUKES!” Or, so it would seem this is the plan for the president elect who tweeted yesterday that we must strengthen and expand our nuclear capability.
The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 22, 2016
Never one to back down, President-Elect Trump clarified the remarks by telling MSNBC’s Morning Joe team “Let it be an arms race … we will outmatch them at every pass and outlast them all.” Media speculation is that these statements were in response to Russia’s Putin saying “We need to strengthen the military potential of strategic nuclear forces, especially with missile complexes that can reliably penetrate any existing and prospective missile defense systems.” The 80’s are back, H/T to Mitt Romney.
The left will, as if on cue, go berserk about how Trump is threatening world peace and will incite the next world war, the big big one where nukes fly and babies die. This is hardly the reality. What is really going on here is the next president showing decisively that the wobbly legged foreign policy of the current occupant of the White House is coming to an immediate end. Trump is not starting an arms race; rather, he is acknowledging the arms race already in progress that began when President Obama sold our nuclear deterrent capabilities for the pottage of a signed treaty.
As R. James Woolsey wrote before the New START Treaty was ratified:
The Russians are engaging in a comprehensive modernization of their nuclear forces, which senior Russian military officials say is their top priority. We cannot deal effectively with them or with the growing number of nuclear-weapon states around the world if we are strategically weaker, undefended and clueless about our adversaries’ capabilities.
The arms race is here whether the left likes it or not, and it is actually the direct result of Obama’s policy of “leading from behind” in foreign policy. What Trump’s statements show is an acceptance of this reality, and of the reality that we are on our heels in this race just as we were after Carter had decimated our military. The U.S. nuclear forces are aging and doing so at an accelerated rate when compared to other nuclear capable countries that are modernizing their forces. We must do what is necessary to secure our place at the top of the nuclear pecking order before the race for arms becomes a race for mere survival.
Published in General
Oh, man, you beat me to it. I was toying with a post titled, “In Favor of Trump’s Nuclear Build-up”. Mr. C and I were just talking this morning about how he and the very few guys like him with experience in nuclear capability development and testing are back in the news!
I would like to see more details given that this is a dramatic reversal of the last 30 years of policy, but I’m not entirely opposed to the idea given the age of our nuclear arsenal.
I will challenge the more is better idea in a nuclear arms race given that we already have more nukes than it takes to destroy the world several times over. Remeber what the Russians feared was SDI, not our nuclear stockpile. I’m not very interested in our new president engaging in a…hands…measuring contest with Putin
A policy that updated our nuclear arsenal could still reduce it in cost and size while maintaining effectiveness and focus more on strategic defense would be the ideal. Again details matter here. This is the problem with Government by Twitter – spouting off is easy, details are hard.
I certainly hope part of strengthening our nuclear arsenal include updating the control software and increasing the professionalism of the caretaker forces.
It doesn’t matter that we have enough nukes to destroy the world several times over if the launch program is on buggy 5″ floppies and the guys with fingers on buttons have been cheating on the certification exams so long they don’t know how to do the job.
What people miss in the initial tweet is the last half — until such a time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes. He’s in no way starting an arms race. He’s threatening to enter it and win it. This is one case where his bully style works in our favor. The little guys are all about having a free-for-all until the big guy jumps in. That’s what I see Trump doing here. He’s warning Russia and others that should they continue down this path they will find that it leads to a destination they won’t like.
I just took that as typical Trumpian weasel words, he always throws in that kind of vague generality to leave himself an out should his latest tweet get him into trouble.
This is where Obama really failed us in a massive way with the New START. It was written in such a way that the Russians can (and do) interpret it to limit our missile defense production and capabilities. Every step we take in that area is viewed as a departure from the treaty which frees the Russians to do what they want.
There’s a lot of inside baseball that this statement misses. I can’t explain it, but I can assure that the media is hips over shoulders on this one. They do not know what they are talking about.
As for the software being old, well the systems for our land based and bomber forces are actually that old. The sub force at least has the benefit of equipment deployed after Reagan left office.
No doubt, hence why details matter here. There’s one way to read this that I like and another that I don’t. I’ll wait for the specifics.
It’s possible I’m guilty of eisegesis here. I’ve accused Trump supporters of enough of it in the past that in the single instance where I agree with him it’s wholly possible that I’ve done it as well.
It starts with a good NPR and goes from there. The Ohio replacement is underway (even if sluggishly), so at least that is happening. Missile development is crap, and there has been zero thought given to warhead replacement since Reagan. This will hopefully be fixed quickly. Bomber and land based missiles will need a look, obviously, but I’m less knowledgeable of our real capabilities in those two legs of the triad.
I recognize that my statement is hyperbole, but from my admittedly limited perspective, we don’t need more nukes per se; we just need our nukes to be the most powerful, best controlled, and least defensible ones on the planet. That’s more an issue of improving things like software and personnel, which are known to have some real problems, even if not as bad as the media screams about.
1. I suspect the Soviet arsenal is out dated and possibly unreliable.
2. I don’t think we have the number of warheads to destroy the world as many times as is being stated. That’s more of an old Cold War thing.
3. It’s all about deterrence. Do our potential foes believe we have sufficient capacity to survive a first strike while capable of full on retaliation. Do our potential foes and allies believe we have the will to use that capability?
Mister we could use a man like Herman Kahn again!
There is no way to improve the personnel. Management, yes; personnel, no. We already operate with a zero defect mentality. The strictest of controls are already in place to weed out any fault of character which might harm either safety or security. The controls are not just at the entry point but are continuous. As with all things human, nothing is foolproof to a sufficiently motivated fool, but for a fool to be successful in his foolishness in this environment requires exponentially more motivation than in the rest of the world.
This is the heart of the matter. This is what Obama destroyed regardless of how many warheads we have deployed, how capable and reliable the delivery systems are, or how good our burgeoning missile defense systems can be.
…and a really weird draw down of our military capabilities over a long period that has resulted in things that I thought I’d never see in my lifetime such as a United States Navy carrier gap.
Donald Trump and the GOP in congress have a giant flaming mess to deal with when it comes to the state that Barack Obama left the United States military and our foreign policy in. It’s going to take a long time to fix so they’ll need to get started ASAP since all branches of the military are really in tough shape when it comes to people and tools.
I don’t claim to be an expert on the specifics of our nuclear arsenal, but it wouldn’t surprise me if its in the same shape as the rest of our weapons systems are.
The United States of American can never have too many nukes. Build them, test them.
And, Trump can tweak the Bushes while he orders them tested.
Sorry, perhaps the better word is the human element, in which I do include the management of the personnel who are actually working with the things, programmers, and flight operators.
Whatever weak links in the chain (and I’ll admit I don’t know where they might be), I still feel like our issue is one of quality, not quantity. I admit I may be going off of Cold War impressions; I’m not well educated about current force levels, but even where we’ve decommissioned ICBMS, as I understand it, it’s the missile body that was dismantled, not the warhead.
I have absolute confidence that the Navy could and would perform its mission flawlessly. I can’t speak for the Air Force, and that is where all the news stories come from.
Bingo! Game, set, match.
I trillion nukes costing 4 quadrillion dollars a year to maintain?
Those Air Force pukes … :D
I’m curious (if you’re allowed to say) do we have nuclear missiles that have fly-by-wire capabilities like drones, or are we still at fire-and-forget? That would be a huge improvement in our force capacity without increasing raw numbers.
At least we don’t have to rely on Tankers in this case. @spin
The nature of the mission does not make fly by wire an improvement in any way. Targets worthy of “the power of God in the hands of man” are not the sort that move around much.
Another thought occurs to me; as I understand, the idea behind our missile defense program was to use automated counter-missiles. Has there been thought put into giving them drone-like fly-by-wire capacity so that trained operators on the ground can shoot them down instead of trying to get software smart enough to do it?
It would if they had to dodge a missile defense system.
The boost phase of flight is very short. It’s not like in Arrow when Felicity drives the missile off its target. The rocket part of the thing is not part of the equation after a few minutes.
Think of the jobs! And there is the magical multiplier effect.
Look, I know I’m in the minority here, but I want to weigh in.
I think that nuclear weapons as a class are monstrously immoral and buying more of them not only perpetuates that monstrous immorality, but a colossal waste of money.
However, if you people insist on modernizing, can we use the occasion to revisit our nuclear strategy and do away with the damn nuclear triad?
Note: I realize that this would require a President that actually knows what the nuclear triad is.
First, being a disarmed victim is also immoral, perhaps even more than being armed to prevent aggression.
Second, the triad was developed to support the idea of survivability. No matter what another nation does, we can do it back to them as bad or worse. This makes first strike for anyone an irrational act. If there’s a better configuration of forces I’m open to the ideas. Subs are already way greater than 50% of the triad, so the idea of a triad is already becoming a misnomer.
What is the problem with the nuclear triad?