All three legs of the nuclear triad are “aging into obsolescence” just as defense budgets are facing steep cuts, but the Defense Department should still make room in the budget to modernize the entire triad even if it means requesting a supplemental budget from Congress, the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments recommended in a report released Thursday.
Unveiling the report entitled “The Future of America’s Strategic Nuclear Deterrent” at the Capitol Visitor Center, author Evan Montgomery said that support for nuclear weapons and the platforms that deliver them has dropped since the Cold War, and so the triad has undergone patchwork life extension programs but is now in need of replacement.
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| The Navy’s Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine will be the most expensive leg of the nuclear triad to replace, at about $100 billion over two decades, CSBA fellow Evan Montgomery wrote in a report released Thursday. Photo: U.S. Navy. |
“Because the triad in its entirety is aging into obsolescence, even deferring modernization in some cases is tantamount to nuclear cuts, and in some cases large nuclear cuts in arsenal size or force structure or both,” he said. Those who argue the nuclear triad is no longer necessary, or is not worth the financial investment during sequestration, make “an assumption that the United States will enjoy the same relatively benign security environment that it’s benefited from over the last two and a half decades, which has enabled it to defer modernization and cut nuclear warheads…Those conditions may not hold in the near future, and they certainly may not hold in the far future.”
Montgomery said the replacement of the Ohio-class SSBN ballistic missile submarine fleet has been particularly contentious because of its price tag of about $100 billion over two decades. Two alternatives have surfaced–procuring modified attack submarines or restarting the production line of the current SSBNs to eliminate design costs–but “neither would be as stealthy as a newly designed and constructed SSBN for a variety of reasons. And second, while those options might save some money in design and procurement, it’s not as much as you’d think,” he countered.
He added that suggestions that fewer subs should be procured would threaten the Navy’s ability to patrol both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and provide a credible, survivable nuclear deterrent. The current plan is to buy 12 boats, with 10 operationally available at any given time.
Asked after his presentation if the need for the undersea leg of the deterrent was great enough to warrant crowding other platforms out of the Navy’s shipbuilding budget–a concern among Navy leaders and lawmakers, given that Congress appears unwilling to provide more than historic averages for the shipbuilding budget–Montgomery said it was.
“The Navy’s made it clear it’s a priority and they’re going to spend the money for 12 Ohio-replacements even if it means cutting elsewhere,” he said. “I think if you’re in the position were you have to make significant cuts in the rest of your fleet to sustain the most important part of your nuclear deterrent, that’s a really bad place to be. It’s bad operationally, it’s bad strategically, it’s bad if you want to be a superpower. I’m not our budget guru but I would say that if a $5-billion-a-year supplemental [budget] is what it takes to keep the SSBN fleet afloat, I don’t think that’s unreasonable.”
Montgomery said the Air Force too needed to keep the B-2 replacement stealth bomber as a priority despite budget cuts, as the plane-based leg of the triad is the only one capable of launching the lower-end warheads–a more reasonable response for the most likely nuclear threat, that of a limited nuclear activity from a small nuclear power, he said. The planes can also carry nuclear and conventional weapons to respond to an evolving situation, and they make for a good show-of-force to keep a situation from escalating to nuclear warfare in a way that a submarine cannot do.
Montgomery also advocated for keeping the Minuteman III ICBMs in the fleet until 2030 and funding whatever replacement concept comes out of the Air Force’s analysis of alternatives, which is already underway. He said the ICBM leg of the triad is essential, if not glamorous, because it is dispersed throughout 450 locations in the continental United States, making it virtually impossible for an enemy to deplete.