The leader of U.S. Strategic Command now counts a nuclear-tipped sea-launched cruise missile among his “critical” nuclear modernization efforts, alongside a new stealth bomber, ballistic missile submarines and intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Air Force Gen. Anthony Cotton has, until Thursday, avoided specifically endorsing development of a nuclear-capable sea-launched cruise missile, or SLCM-N. He has said that when advising the president on how to keep nuclear competitors like Russia and China at bay, he is open to new weapons if needed.
Cotton on Thursday told the Senate Armed Services Committee that SLCM-N ranks alongside major delivery platform development as a necessary nuclear modernization requirement.
“While our legacy systems continue to hold potential adversaries at risk, it is absolutely critical that we continue at speed with the modernization of our nuclear triad, including land-based ICBMs [intercontinental ballistic missiles], the B-21, the B-52, the Columbia-class submarine, the nuclear sea-launched cruise missile, the [long-range standoff missile], as well as numerous related systems,” Cotton said.
Testifying alongside Space Force Gen. Stephen Whiting, who leads U.S. Space Command, Cotton was not asked by any Senator about his embrace of the SLCM-N, though the need for the weapon was repeatedly put to him during hearings on the budget for the current fiscal year, which began Oct. 1.
The statement puts Cotton somewhat at odds with the Biden administration, which has repeatedly sought to cancel SLCM-N development, considering it redundant to the W76-2 low-yield, submarine-launched intercontinental ballistic missile warhead.
Funding for the cruise missile and its associated warhead, a marinized version of the W80-4 warhead, was zeroed out in the administration’s 2024 budget request. Congress, for the second time, restored funding for both the Navy’s missile program and the warhead, which will be designed and built by the National Nuclear Security Administration.
The final version of the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act includes a requirement for the Defense Department and National Nuclear Security Administration to develop a nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missile.
The U.S. military has access to dial-a-yield weapons like the W76-2 warhead that rides on the Trident submarine-launched ballistic missile, but supporters in Congress tout the need for a cruise-missile-delivered weapon with a relatively lower yield.
SLCM-N boosters and the military say that W76-2, owing to its ballistic flight trajectory, is a complement to and not a replacement for a cruise missile, which can fly lower and evade radar.
