Defense Secretary Ashton Carter touted the nation’s nuclear modernization efforts and existing deterrence strategy during a trip this week to areas central to the U.S. nuclear enterprise.
He spoke to troops at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota – which hosts B-52H bombers and Minuteman III ICBMs – and Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico, and toured the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos and Sandia national laboratories.
Carter highlighted the Defense Department’s efforts to modernize each leg of the nuclear triad – including upgrading intercontinental ballistic missiles, developing a long-range standoff weapon to replace the air-launched cruise missile, and replacing the Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines. The modernization program overall has been estimated to cost $1 trillion.
“We’re now beginning the process of correcting decades of underinvestment in nuclear deterrence,” he said in North Dakota, referring to the recapitalization of the nuclear triad. Since the Cold War, he said, “we only made modest investments in basic sustainment and operations. And it turned out that wasn’t enough.”
Now, he said, the choice is not between replacing nuclear weapons platforms or keeping existing systems, “it’s really a choice between replacing them or losing them.” Carter noted the Defense Department plans to invest $108 billion over the next five years to recapitalize its nuclear forces and strategic command, control communications, and intelligence systems.
Senior military officials have argued for years that the decades-old components of the nuclear triad must be replaced as they reach or exceed the end of their intended service lives. “Despite numerous upgrades to Minuteman III since it was first deployed in 1970, significant obsolescence and 26 sustainment challenges require development of a follow-on ICBM capability,” Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein said as the service in July ramped up the contracting process for the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent, according to National Defense Magazine.
Carter said the U.S. is also helping NATO integrate conventional and nuclear deterrence to deter Russia from nuclear strikes against the alliance. However, he denied that Russia and the United States are embroiled in a new nuclear arms race, even with both countries ramping up their nuclear force modernization activities. Russia is building new nuclear bombers, ballistic missile submarines, and intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Today’s risk of nuclear-weapon use, he said, involves “smaller but still unprecedentedly terrible attacks, for example, by Russia or North Korea to attempt to coerce a conventionally superior opponent to back off or abandon an ally during a crisis.”
Ultimately, he said, “I do not think that as long as nuclear weapons exist that there is a replacement for nuclear deterrence.”
Carter on Wednesday called plutonium science and manufacturing “essential to the U.S. nuclear deterrent” while on a tour of the Los Alamos lab’s Plutonium Facility.
“I want to express my sincere appreciation for the difficult and vitally important work done at Los Alamos to help assure the development, assessment and security of the nuclear triad,” he said.
