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Will New Nuclear Cruise Missiles Make Us Safer?
From Bloomberg’s editorial board:
For a president who famously advocated for a world without nuclear weapons, Barack Obama has done a lot to keep the U.S. nuclear arsenal intact. That’s not a criticism — it was his promise that was naive, not his policy — but in one respect, his strategy is unnecessarily destabilizing.
The administration’s proposal to spend up to $30 billion to create a new nuclear cruise missile meant to be carried by the aging B-52 bomber makes no sense financially or strategically. Cruise missiles, which are smaller than land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles and fly farther than tactical bombs dropped by planes, are the wild card of the nuclear arsenal: Unlike ICBMs, they are very hard to spot by radar or satellite, and, even if detected, they’re indistinguishable from conventionally armed cruise missiles.
This is a problem because a successful deterrence strategy requires that both sides in a potential nuclear conflict have a pretty good idea of what the other would do. Three years ago, the U.K. decided not to develop a submarine-based nuclear-tipped cruise missile because it carries too great a risk of “miscalculation and unintended escalation.” …
Your thoughts?
Published in Foreign Policy, Military
I’ll agree that deterrence only works if your opponent knows what you’re willing to do (and that you’re willing to do something nasty enough to deter them.) I don’t think that applies to capabilities in the same way. As long as you have a deterrent to begin with, I don’t see how having a better deterrent hurts your negotiating position. As long as they believe we’ve got a deterrent at all, them being in doubt as to how quickly and easily we could kill them all is a good thing.
Follow the money. Who is developing this new cruise missile? Which company is getting an enormous defense contract to monkey around with this whether we ever build, buy, or deploy them? How is this anything but a payback for loyal support to the administration? Honestly, we’re far enough advanced in missile tech that developing a new one (especially a cruise missile) is redundant. Where we are falling behind and aging is in our payloads. When was the last time the U.S. developed a new nuclear warhead?
How much harder would it have been to research and include the argument made by the advocates of the LRSO nuclear cruise missile?:
Insanity and stupidity.
Deterrence can work if the other side is certain I can destroy them. Deterrence also can work if the other side has no idea what I can do (uncertainty). It fails where they have an idea that I can’t do something.
The authors are confusing (and then deliberately lying about) configuring your forces to encourage an enemy first strike (e.g., by configuring your own forces for a first strike). The argument is that the other side worries so much about you launching a first strike that it decides to launch its own first strike.
The fly times of cruise missiles against a country like Russia with its population centers well inland creates the opposite effect (particularly when you include the time to get the bombers from their bases to their launch areas). It tells Russia not to worry because, even if the civilized world were to launch first, Ivan can get off a strike well before the bombers get to their launch areas let alone the cruise missiles reach their targets.
Thus, the people who advocate as in the article are effectively arguing for the US lose any deterrent capability.
Sounds like it’s a good excuse to dust off those old Project Pluto blueprints…
Gotta be my third favorite project. After Excalibur and Orion.