Sixteen Democratic senators on Monday protested President Donald Trump’s reported plans to direct the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) to create a new low-yield nuclear warhead for submarine-launched missiles and expand the scenarios in which such weapons might be employed.
“Creating new nuclear capabilities and widening their possible use conditions constitute an increase in America’s nuclear warfighting capability that will pressure other nuclear weapon states to follow suit,” the lawmakers wrote in a letter to Trump dated Jan. 29 and posted online by Sen. Ed Markey (Mass.).
The other senators who signed the letter to Trump are: Sen. Tammy Baldwin (Wis.); Cory Booker (N.J.); Maria Cantwell (Wash.); Dick Durbin (Ill.); Dianne Feinstein (Calif.); Kirsten Gillibrand (N.Y.); Kamala Harris (Calif.); Jeff Merkley (Ore.); Patty Murray (Wash.); Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.); Brian Schatz (Hawaii); Tina Smith (Minn.); Elizabeth Warren (Mass.); Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.); and Ron Wyden (Ore.).
Of these, Warren and Gillibrand are members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, which was briefed behind closed doors on the Trump administration’s Nuclear Posture Review last week. The official review is due out in early February after Trump’s first State of the Union address, which is slated for this evening.
However, a draft of the review that leaked out in early January said — among many other things — that the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) should develop at least one and possibly two new warheads for submarine-launched missiles. The first of these should be a new capability for existing submarine launched ballistic missiles. The second would be for a new shorter-range, submarine-launched cruise missile.
