In a hearing Thursday, members of the Senate Armed Services Committee lauded a new report that recommends expanding the U.S. nuclear arsenal to counter Russian and Chinese nuclear weapons.
The testimony of the leaders of the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States was “very compelling,” Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) said during the hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee, which he chairs. The committee met about a week after the commission released its final report on the Strategic Posture of the United States.
Broadly, the report from the 12-member commission recommends ways for the U.S. to increase its deployed nuclear weapons and delivery systems in ways now prohibited by the bilateral New START nuclear arms-control treaty with Russia, which expires in 2026.
Right now, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) “may or may not be capable” of playing its part in such an increase, former Sen. John Kyl (R-Ariz.), the commission’s vice chair and leading opponent of the New START treaty during his time in Congress, told the Senate Armed Services Committee.
The NNSA’s path to rebuilding the U.S. nuclear weapons production complex is “complicated,” Madelyn Creedon, the agency’s former principal deputy administrator and commission chair said at the hearing. “[T]hey need the right people, they need the right funding, they need consistent funding” and they need a supply chain “that doesn’t exist right now.”
Also at the hearing, Sen. Angus King (I-Maine.), one of several independents to whom Democrats owe their slim Senate majority, appeared to back the idea of the U.S. taking a serious look at additional tactical nuclear weapons.
It would not be “credible,” King said at the hearing, for the U.S. to believe it could prevent Russia or China from using one of these relatively smaller nuclear weapons in a theater of war by threatening general thermonuclear war with the U.S. arsenal in response.
Meanwhile, the committee’s ranking member, Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), briefly pressed Creedon and Kyl about the cost of the tactics recommended in the strategic posture report.
Wicker asked whether the commission had gotten any input for its report from the White House Office of Management and Budget. Creedon said no.
Kyl went with a variation of former Defense Secretary James Mattis’ we-can-afford-survival mantra.
“Let’s just say the entire thing [costs] maybe 4%-5% of GDP. Is that too much to ensure that we’re not going to be in a nuclear war?” Kyl said. “I don’t think so.”
