When Defense Secretary Mark Esper visited the headquarters of the U.S. Strategic Command in Omaha in late February, he was given a tabletop demonstration of a hypothetical lose-lose confrontation with Russia. It begins with Moscow using a “battlefield” nuclear weapon against a target in Europe and leaves the United States with little choice but to respond with a low-yield nuclear weapon of its own.
A Pentagon briefer who described the exercise to reporters didn’t disclose how the imaginary war game played out, except to confirm it went nuclear — and in a world where the primary purpose of nuclear weapons is deterrence, that counts as a loss.
As Esper said the day before, as he toured Minot Air Force Base in frigid northern North Dakota, “At the end of the day, we’re trying to deter war.”
Minot is home to the Air Force’s 5th Bomb Wing and 91st Missile Wing, two legs of America’s Cold War-era triad of submarines, bombers, and land-based missiles, a triumvirate of options the Pentagon credits with deterring major war for more than seven decades.
As Esper clambered into the cramped interior of an aging B-52 Stratofortress, he got a firsthand look at how creaky America’s nuclear arsenal has become.
The iconic plane, made in the 1960s, is older than the pilots who fly it.
It still has a hole in its roof designed to accommodate a sextant for celestial navigation, from the days before GPS.
And lacking modern-day stealth, it’s relegated to carrying standoff air-launched cruise missiles, ALCMs, first deployed in the 1980s.
The Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles Esper inspected from a control room deep underground date back to the 1970s.
And the Navy’s ballistic missile submarines, designed to last 30 years, will be over 40 when they are retired in the next 10 years.
“In the submarine’s case, we’re literally reaching physics and engineering limits, such that you cannot extend it,” Adm. Charles Richard, head of the U.S. Strategic Command, told Congress recently. “You can only take a piece of high-strength steel, pressurize it at great depths, then take that pressure back off before you just don’t want to get in the tube anymore.”
Virtually every major component of America’s nuclear force is past its sell-by date and needs to be rebuilt, retooled, or replaced.
And the price tag is an eye-popping $1.3 trillion over 30 years, according to the latest Congressional Budget Office estimate.
This year, the Trump administration is proposing to invest $28.9 billion in modernization, along with another $20 billion that’s part of the Energy Department budget for warhead development, putting the total for what’s called the “nuclear enterprise” at roughly $50 billion, not counting another $6 billion for environmental cleanup.
Where is the money going?
To update the bomber fleet, the Air Force is adding the B-21 Raider, a stealthy, batwing bomber that, according to an artist’s rendering released by Northrop Grumman, looks a lot like the company’s 1990s vintage B-2 Spirit.
The old air-launched cruise missiles will be retired in favor of the new Long-Range Standoff Missile, built by Raytheon and Lockheed Martin.
The current Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines will be replaced by the new Columbia class, built by General Dynamics, due to enter the fleet in 2031.
The nuclear-armed submarines will be getting a new missile warhead, the W-93, which will be used for both ballistic and sea-launched cruise missiles.
The Minuteman III ICBMs are being replaced with what’s called the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent, modern missiles built by Northrop Grumman.
Esper argues that while the U.S. has been nursing its geriatric systems until they are on life support, Russia and China have been aggressively building up their nuclear stockpiles, especially Russia.
“What they’re doing is not just growing their strategic forces, but they are creating new capabilities, and they are improving the quality of their force as well,” Esper told Congress when he defended his budget before the House Armed Services Committee.
“What often goes ignored are their tactical and nuclear weapons,” he said. “They number nearly 2,000, and they are battlefield weapons.”
With Russia’s stated doctrine of “escalate to deescalate” — that is, deliver a knockout blow upfront so an adversary judges the risk of retaliation too high — the U.S. can’t afford to be seen as falling behind.
“With respect to Russia, they are the only country on the Earth that represents an actual, no-kidding existential threat to the United States of America,” testified Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley at the same House hearing. “Every man, woman, and child could be killed by the Russians, and we can do the same to them. And they know that, and we know that; hence, mutually assured destruction, hence deterrence. So, maintaining a guaranteed nuclear enterprise is critical relative to Russia.”
“Deterrence really comes down to a combination of credibility and capability,” is the way a senior Pentagon official explained it to reporters in a background briefing. “You have to have a resolve to respond to nuclear use at any level, but you can’t just say you have the resolve, you can’t just feel it. You have to show it.”
But the Pentagon insists it is not being lured into an arms race with Russia because the plan to rebuild America’s arsenal is based on a one-for-one replacement.
“We’re not trying to match them weapon for weapon,” said Esper, “but what we do need to have is the essentials to keep America safe and secure, to have different capabilities that each leg of the triad brings us.”
In his testimony before the Senate in February, Richard, the top commander of America’s nuclear forces, said he fears “the oft-repeated message of the need to modernize and recapitalize has lost its impact.”
“These capabilities are foundational to our survival as a nation,” Richard told the senators, calling the massive nuclear weapons overhaul “a once-every-other-generation responsibility to recapitalize the strategic deterrent.”
Jamie McIntyre is the Washington Examiner’s senior writer on defense and national security. His morning newsletter, “Jamie McIntyre’s Daily on Defense,” is free and available by email subscription at dailyondefense.com.
