RUTHFULLY YOURS

Peter Huessy: Risking Armageddon for $1 Billion a Year

Posted By Ruth King on August 11th, 2016

Everybody is looking for defense dollars. The latest sleuth is Luke O’Brien, an Army “Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction Fellow” at the National Defense University. He thinks he has found a $62 billion pot of cash if we just got rid of our land based ICBMs. The money could then be spent on more important conventional military needs.

It is true nuclear modernization of the USA deterrent force will cost $700 billion over the next 25 years according to a study done by the Center for Security and International Studies. At first glance that is a great deal of money. But it averages $28 billion a year for nearly 500 missiles, submarines and bombers, 5-12 types of warheads, the command and control associated with the force, and the nuclear laboratories and facilities supporting warhead production, safety and refurbishment.

This comes to 4.6% of the current defense budget and a projected ½ of 1% of the Federal budget in 2025 at the initial peak of modernization spending.

Now it is also true that to improve military readiness now and restore both our nuclear and conventional deterrent, we need more defense funding in the next five year defense plan, and certainly in the next decade. Otherwise we may end up with a hollow military much as we did at the end of the Carter administration. But killing ICBMs simply doesn’t solve either problem.

In the next ten years the nuclear platforms including nuclear capable bombers, land based missiles, and submarines will cost $135 billion. These funds are roughly divided between sustainment of old systems and modernization for new ones.

The ICBM sustainment is $15 billon while another $7 billion would be for modernization. A modest additional amount is also projected to be spent on ICBM warheads and new command and control systems bringing the total to around $24 billion for the next decade.

But fully 40% of those funds will probably disappear due to the off-set costs of closing the three existing Minuteman bases. So the net available dollars might be $15 billion over ten years. Or what Americans spent buying blue jeans last year.

Putting things in perspective, the land based missile program over the next decade would be roughly $24 billion out of roughly $270 billion (current dollars) for the entire nuclear enterprise or less than 10%. And cutting all ICBMs won’t begin to make up for the $1.2-4 trillion already cut out of the defense budget since FY09 (projected to FY18) which is why we are in the fiscal mess we are in.

And cancelling the ICBM modernization program might very well encourage further cutting simply because Washington may in the final analysis simply not want to  increase the defense budget beyond current projections without also increasing spending everywhere else. And in the absence of a deal to increase spending across the board, future defense budgets might not be significantly higher than they are today, putting a lot more than ICBMs at risk.

Even if the budget savings were really significant, the rest of O’Brien’s essay rests on four equally faulty and misconceived assumptions that make his recommendation a non-starter.

These are: (1) the responsiveness of the ICBM force is matched by SLBMs and thus not needed; (2) the future survivability of submarines at sea is sufficiently guaranteed that no adversary could attack the US without knowing a retaliatory strike would be on its way; (3) ICBM silos are in known locations and are vulnerable to a Russian strike; and (4) consequently a USA president would be tempted to promptly launch our ICBMs in a crisis for fear they would not be available later.

Let’s examine each of these in turn.

Responsiveness is not just a communications matter. ICBMs have the utility of being able to be used for a wide variety of scenarios including where the US homeland is not attacked.

The only scenario in which ICBMs would not be available to retaliate in significant numbers is if an adversary launched an all-out attack on the continental United States including targeting all our ICBM targets plus our bomber and submarine bases. Former defense official Paul Nitze described that as the “Armageddon option”.

But our 450 ICBM silos and their associated launch control facilities will not be attacked precisely because of the high uncertainty associated with trying to take out all such missiles without risking retaliation from our bombers and submarines. That uncertainty is probably near 100%. Thus the apt Nitze description.

Minutemen thus is not only survivable but also uniquely responsive. A small number of ICBM warheads could be used to take out biological or chemical weapons facilities without jeopardizing the survivability of any of the other missiles.

Minuteman also serves as a hedge to a technology failure in any of the other legs of the Triad.

As former OSD official Brad Roberts has emphasized, while the air, space and ground have become transparent, why do we trust assertions that the frontier of the oceans will always remain opaque? Thus how strange it is that the enduring survivability of the sea based deterrent is what ICBM opponents appear almost universally upon which to rely. But an anti-submarine detection breakthrough could attrite submarines at sea over time.

If this happens, as has been explained by both former SAC Commander General Larry Welch and former Strategic Command head Admiral Richard Mies, the entire nuclear deterrent of the US would be placed in jeopardy.

While our silos have known locations, they can only be eliminated through an attack numbering close to one thousand enemy warheads, an attack that would have to include advanced warning and thus be highly irrational by an adversary. And with advanced warning, the US could put bombers in the air and more submarines to sea, making our nuclear force even more survivable and defeating an adversary’s intent to disarm us in a pre-emptive strike. .

Taken together, these factors mean no USA president need make a rash decision to quickly use ICBMs in a crisis. No American President has had to do so for the nearly 60 years ICBMs have been in our force. On the other hand, President Kennedy explained their utility in the Cuban missile crisis when he noted: “Minuteman [just deployed in October 1982] was my ace in the hole”.

Risking a nuclear deterrent of primarily submarines also risks strategic stability in a big way. A nuclear force of only submarines would consist of 192 missiles carrying a maximum number of 1536 warheads. While that is near the ceiling for the New Start treaty, Russia says nuclear expert James Howe could deploy upwards of 4500-5000 warheads when the treaty expires while the US could not.

The US up-load hedge capability would thus disappear leaving the US with virtually no leverage in future crises or negotiations with the Russians. We would be locked in to a second place warhead ceiling of our own making.

For all these reasons, policy makers should reject calls to do away with the ICBM leg of the Triad. A bi-partisan consensus does exist in the US Congress to proceed with the nuclear Triad modernization, including ICBMs, not because they are “nice to have” but because they are a hard necessity.

Deterrence works and we may not know exactly why but it works and has for 70 years. But as we enter the 8^th decade of the nuclear age, it apparently is true that as Dr. Kissinger noted, the “longer nuclear deterrence works the more difficult it is to demonstrate that getting rid of it would spell disaster.” Saving all of $1 billion a year for the next decade in return for putting our country in strategic extremis is not a good deal.

We should not assume we can replace what works-the Triad– with augmented conventional forces or stripped down nuclear forces based on untried strategic concepts that themselves rest on unproven assumptions. As Prime Minister Thatcher patiently explained years ago to a parliamentary critic of the British nuclear deterrent, “There is a memorial to the failure of conventional deterrence in every town and village in Europe.”

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