The top US nuclear war-fighting commander said time is running short to begin modernizing the decades-old US nuclear forces.
US Admiral Cecil Haney and other Pentagon leaders contend the force is still in fighting shape — “safe, reliable and effective” is the official mantra, but they also argue the time has come to begin modernizing the force or risk eroding its credibility as a deterrent to attack by others.
The debate in Congress over spending hundreds of billions of US dollars to build and field a new generation of nuclear-capable bombers, submarines and land-based missiles is just beginning.
Critics said full-scale modernization is neither affordable nor necessary.
The debate is influenced not only by the perceived need to fully replace aging weapons, but also by concerns over North Korea’s nuclear ambitions and over what US Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter calls Russia’s “nuclear saber-rattling.”
US Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work said the Pentagon would need an estimated US$18 billion a year between 2021 and 2035 to modernize the three “legs” of the US nuclear triad — weapons capable of being launched from land, sea and air.
“We need to replace these,” Work said. “We can’t delay this anymore.”
The enormous sums needed are at risk of getting squeezed by high-priority requirements for non-nuclear, conventional weapons. And Work’s numbers do not include the billions that would be needed to modernize the nuclear warheads on the business end of missiles and bombs.
“Modernization now is not an option; it must happen,” Haney, the commander of US Strategic Command, said in an interview on Friday, just hours after watching a test launch of an unarmed Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile.
The Minuteman III, which has been on constant 24-hour alert since 1970, has long surpassed its 10-year life expectancy.
Haney said the US stockpile of nuclear warheads is the oldest it has ever been. As head of Strategic Command, he is the military’s top nuclear war-fighter.
“We have to realize we can’t extend things forever,” Haney said, adding that the US Navy is planning to replace its aging Ohio-class ballistic nuclear missile submarines, while the US Air Force intends to build a new nuclear-capable bomber to replace the B-52.
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