Whether “low-yield” nuclear weapons are a legitimate tool of war dominated Cold War-era debates about America’s defense strategy.
Now it’s back.
A provision by the new House Armed Services Committee chairman, Rep. Adam Smith, would prevent U.S. forces from deploying new low-yield nuclear weapons and engaging in other nuclear modernization efforts. The proposal, in the House version of next year’s National Defense Authorization Act, would be a seeming reversal from bipartisan efforts to upgrade the nation’s arsenal.
The Washington Democrat contends the nuclear arsenal is already too large. Smith wants to start a debate on the nuclear issue.
“The one area where we have disagreement is we don’t think we should build a low-yield submarine based nuclear weapon. And understand, we have low-yield nuclear weapons. The debate here is not whether we should have them,” Smith said during an talk at the Center for Strategic and International Studies on Monday. “[A]s a constituent of mine pointed out this weekend, referring to something as low yield as a nuclear weapon is, you know, like jumbo shrimp, its a little bit of a misnomer there. It’s a nuclear weapon. It’s going to destroy a whole lot of stuff if it goes off. So we just think its a destabilizing move to put these things on submarines and so we are going to have that argument.”
The military has already retooled some of its Trident submarine missiles with nuclear warheads that are significantly less powerful than a typical nuclear weapon. Smith’s bill would prevent their deployment, rendering them useless.
Instead, he said, the U.S. should rely on its current arsenal of extremely powerful nuclear warheads as a deterrent. Yet his bill also would cut $103 million from the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent program, an update to the nearly 50-year old Minuteman III — America’s only remaining land-based inter-continental ballistic missile.
Smith’s argument harkens back to Cold War concerns, when some politicians and experts worried the arms race between the U.S. and Soviet Union would lead to nuclear holocaust. But unlike that era, today’s low-yield weapons are significantly less powerful.
The bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan that helped end World War II measured in at 15 kilotons — the equivalent explosive power of 30,000 pounds of TNT. Modern strategic nuclear weapons measure in the hundreds of kilotons, giving them incredible destructive power.
Because any exchange of these weapons would lead to mutually assured destruction, Russia for at least 20 years has instead developed nuclear weapons measuring as little as the equivalent of several tons of TNT. These so-called “clean” weapons theoretically offer the punch of a nuclear weapon with significantly less permanent destruction and lingering radiation.
U.S. experts are concerned low-yield weapons could be used by Russia against an enemy force in its so-called “escalate to de-escalate” strategy in the event of a conflict. The U.S. has pursued its own nuclear modernizaton efforts, including some during the Obama administration, but its low yield capabilities are limited.
“Russia, China, and North Korea, but in this case Russia, are already building these capabilities, so the idea that we’re provoking things by building these capabilities is false,” Matthew Kroenig, deputy director of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, told the Washington Examiner. “[I]f anything, there’s an arms race that we’re sitting out. Russia’s building weapons right now to threaten us and our allies, and we’re not doing anything about it.”
The current low-yield U.S. nuclear arsenal is mostly comprised of air-dropped bombs, but Kroenig believes they would take too long to deploy in the event of a conflict and the planes carrying them would be at risk of being shot down by Russia’s advanced air defense systems. Retired Army Lt. Gen. Thomas Spoehr told the Washington Examiner failure to deploy an effective low-yield weapon limits U.S. deterrence.
“So we may find ourselves [where] the President is forced to either use a large megaton yield weapon, or nothing at all,” said Spoehr, who currently serves as the director of the Heritage Foundation’s Center of National Defense. “We don’t want to be in a situation where we lack good options to respond in kind.”
House Armed Services Committee ranking member Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, released a sweeping amendment to the bill on Tuesday which would add funding for several nuclear initiatives, including nuclear modernization, National Nuclear Security Administration activities, ballistic missile defense, and new hypersonic missiles.
“The Armed Services Committee heard repeated testimony from acting [Defense] Secretary Shanahan, former Secretary Mattis, General Dunford, and others, that the military’s budget must grown between three and five percent through 2025 in order to restore readiness and maintain our competitive edge against Russia and China. The Chairman’s mark does not meet that standard,” said Thornberry in a statement on Monday.
The House Armed Services Committee will begin the amendment process for the bill on Wednesday, where a heated debate is expected between Republicans and Democrats. Congress has until the end of September to pass a defense spending bill, which Pentagon officials say could devastate military readiness.
