WASHINGTON — The United States should cut its nuclear arsenal, the chair of the House Armed Services Committee reaffirmed at a major nuclear policy conference here Tuesday.
“We need to reduce our nuclear weapons presence,” Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) said. However, “I don’t agree that we ought to get rid of all of our nuclear weapons.”
Smith, to the consternation of two rank-and-file Democrats on the House Armed Services Committee, has proposed shrinking the U.S. ICBM fleet, which today encompasses 400 deployed Minuteman III missiles set to be replaced starting in the next decade by Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent missiles.
Smith has also targeted the much smaller number of planned W76-2 low-yield warheads, the first of which the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) finished building in February. The Donald Trump administration says the the nation needs the W76-2 to stop Russia from using a similarly capable weapon to win a war it starts but cannot finish with conventional weapons.
Smith does not buy that logic and has vowed to kill the W76-2. In his view, the current U.S. arsenal deters Russia from using any nuclear weapon.
“If you use a new nuclear weapon, you will cease to exist,” Smith said at the Carnegie International Nuclear Policy Conference. “So don’t go there. We are not going to worry about being proportional.”
The NNSA plans to deliver the first W76-2 to the Navy by Sept. 30. On Monday, the agency said it will finish work on “a small number” of W76-2 warheads in fiscal 2020.
