OMAHA — The U.S. should focus on the air- and sea-based legs of the nuclear triad rather than the land-based leg, a California member of the House Armed Services Committee said last week.
“Should we spend $170-80 million on the triad, on the ground based ICBM system, or could we better achieve deterrence using the other two legs of the triad?” Rep. John Garamendi (D-Calif.) said via teleconference at the 2024 U.S. Strategic Command Deterrence Symposium last week in Omaha, Neb. Garamendi has long opposed the current nuclear modernization regime.
Garamendi made a familiar argument that he thought the 400 silo-based, Boeing Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) now in service and the Northrop Grumman-made Sentinels intended to replace them were not “necessary,” and that if the U.S. entered an “arms race,” China and Russia would destroy the silos with the missiles first.
“Why in this particular context, why are we spending all of this money on the Sentinel program with all the risks that are inherent in it, when we might be better off spending that money [elsewhere]?” Garamendi asked.
The Pentagon disclosed in January that the Sentinel program is undergoing a Nunn-McCurdy review after a 37% unit-cost breach that easily crossed the 25% threshold that triggers the review. As of July, the overall cost estimate at $140.9 billion was 81% higher than the September 2020 estimate, when the program entered the engineering, manufacturing and development phase.
At the show here, Lawrence Livermore director Kim Budil said so far, “nothing has changed” regarding the scheduling for the missile’s warheads.
Meanwhile, another participant on the panel with Garamendi, Gen. Kevin Chilton, former commander of U.S. Strategic Command and board member for Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories, said that capitalizing on the “land-based deterrent” seemed necessary.
“If there’s an arms race today, Russia has already crossed the tape, China’s halfway around the track, and we’re not in the stadium yet,” Chilton said, adding that he thinks the U.S. is trying to “recapitalize” on the current nuclear posture and to stop abiding by the New START treaty standards since Russia withdrew.
Garamendi, however, remained firm that he thought the silo-based missiles are “the most dangerous of the three legs,” and that “that’s going to be target one” in an attack.
