[Senate Hearing 112-813]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 112-813
EXAMINING THE PROPER SIZE OF THE NUCLEAR WEAPONS STOCKPILE TO MAINTAIN
A CREDIBLE U.S. DETERRENT
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HEARING
before a
SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE
COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
SPECIAL HEARING
JULY 25, 2012--WASHINGTON, DC
__________
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COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
DANIEL K. INOUYE, Hawaii, Chairman
PATRICK J. LEAHY, Vermont THAD COCHRAN, Mississippi
TOM HARKIN, Iowa MITCH McCONNELL, Kentucky
BARBARA A. MIKULSKI, Maryland RICHARD C. SHELBY, Alabama
HERB KOHL, Wisconsin KAY BAILEY HUTCHISON, Texas
PATTY MURRAY, Washington LAMAR ALEXANDER, Tennessee
DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California SUSAN COLLINS, Maine
RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois LISA MURKOWSKI, Alaska
TIM JOHNSON, South Dakota LINDSEY GRAHAM, South Carolina
MARY L. LANDRIEU, Louisiana MARK KIRK, Illinois
JACK REED, Rhode Island DANIEL COATS, Indiana
FRANK R. LAUTENBERG, New Jersey ROY BLUNT, Missouri
BEN NELSON, Nebraska JERRY MORAN, Kansas
MARK PRYOR, Arkansas JOHN HOEVEN, North Dakota
JON TESTER, Montana RON JOHNSON, Wisconsin
SHERROD BROWN, Ohio
Charles J. Houy, Staff Director
Bruce Evans, Minority Staff Director
------
Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development
DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California, Chairman
PATTY MURRAY, Washington LAMAR ALEXANDER, Tennessee
TIM JOHNSON, South Dakota THAD COCHRAN, Mississippi
MARY L. LANDRIEU, Louisiana MITCH McCONNELL, Kentucky
JACK REED, Rhode Island KAY BAILEY HUTCHISON, Texas
FRANK R. LAUTENBERG, New Jersey RICHARD C. SHELBY, Alabama
TOM HARKIN, Iowa SUSAN COLLINS, Maine
JON TESTER, Montana LISA MURKOWSKI, Alaska
RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois LINDSEY GRAHAM, South Carolina
DANIEL K. INOUYE, Hawaii (ex
officio)
Professional Staff
Doug Clapp
Roger Cockrell
Leland Cogliani
Carolyn E. Apostolou (Minority)
Tyler Owens (Minority)
Tom Craig (Minority)
LaShawnda Smith (Minority)
Administrative Support
Molly Barackman-Eder
C O N T E N T S
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Page
Opening Statement of Senator Dianne Feinstein....................
1..............................................................
Statement of Senator Lamar Alexander.............................
2..............................................................
Statement of General James E. Cartwright, USMC, Retired..........
4..............................................................
Prepared Statement of General James E. Cartwright, United States
Marine Corps (Retired) and Ambassador Thomas R. Pickering......
8..............................................................
The Global Zero Commission Aims and Purposes.....................
8..............................................................
A 2022 U.S. Nuclear Force........................................
9..............................................................
Strengthening Universal Nuclear Disarmament and Nonproliferation.
9..............................................................
Reducing U.S.-Russia Nuclear Arms Through Negotiations...........
9..............................................................
From TRIAD to DYAD: Eliminating the Land-Based Missile Component.
10.............................................................
De-Alerting Strategic Forces.....................................
10.............................................................
Prompt Launch Constrains Presidential Decisionmaking.............
11.............................................................
New Strategy and Tools to Support Presidential Conflict
Deliberation and Choice........................................
12.............................................................
Downsizing the Nuclear Complex; Risks and Cost Savings...........
12.............................................................
Downsizing the Nuclear Force Structure; Risks and Cost Savings...
13.............................................................
Statement of Hon. Thomas Pickering, Former Undersecretary for
Political Affairs, United States Department of State...........
14.............................................................
Statement of Keith B. Payne, Ph.D., Professor and Department
Head, Missouri State University, Department of Defense and
Strategic Studies..............................................
16.............................................................
Prepared Statement of Dr. Keith B. Payne.........................
19.............................................................
Russian Threats of Nuclear Targeting, Including First or
Preemptive Uses of Nuclear Forces..............................
25.............................................................
Additional Committee Questions...................................
41.............................................................
Questions Submitted to General James Cartwright, USMC, Retired...
41.............................................................
Questions Submitted by Senator Susan Collins.....................
41.............................................................
EXAMINING THE PROPER SIZE OF THE NUCLEAR WEAPONS STOCKPILE TO MAINTAIN
A CREDIBLE U.S. DETERRENT
----------
WEDNESDAY, JULY 25, 2012
U.S. Senate,
Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development,
Committee on Appropriations,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met at 10:03 a.m., in room SD-192, Dirksen
Senate Office Building, Hon. Dianne Feinstein (chairman)
presiding.
Present: Senators Feinstein, Tester, and Alexander.
opening statement of senator dianne feinstein
Senator Feinstein. I'd like to convene this hearing and say
good morning and welcome to the Energy and Water subcommittee's
hearing ``Examining the Size of the Nuclear Weapons Stockpile
Necessary to Maintain a Credible United States Deterrent.''
Ladies and gentlemen, we're an appropriations subcommittee.
Where we come into this is the money that's spent, because this
is a mandatory security part of our portfolio and the mandatory
security part of the portfolio keeps growing, which pushes out
other parts of the portfolio, such as energy, water, various
other programs run by the Army Corps of Engineers, that kind of
thing, which makes a fair distribution of assets increasingly
difficult.
One of the best things about Washington is that you really
have access to great minds, people who are good thinkers,
people who have developed skills over the years. It's important
to listen as we form our decisions. So that's really the
purpose of this morning's hearing, to listen to three very
prominent people, very skilled, very good thinkers, who we will
introduce very shortly.
But let me just put forward a few points on the current
plan for nuclear weapons modernization. It calls for $215
billion on nuclear weapons and delivery systems in the next 10
years. According to a recent Stimson Center report, the United
States already spends about $31 billion a year to maintain
nuclear weapons capabilities.
On Monday, I learned from the National Nuclear Security
Administration (NNSA) that the cost of the B61 life-extension
program is $8 billion. That's double the cost of the original
estimate. An independent Department of Defense (DOD) review
puts the cost at $10 billion.
Similarly, the cost of building a uranium processing
facility at Y-12, with which the vice chairman and I have been
dealing, has grown from $600 million to $6 billion, 10 times
more the cost projected in 2004. An independent Army Corps of
Engineers assessment puts the cost of the project as high as
$7.5 billion.
So increased costs and schedule delays have already had a
significant impact on modernization plans. The construction of
a new plutonium facility at Los Alamos has been delayed by at
least 5 years. The reason for this delay was to free up funding
to pay for higher priorities, such as the B61 life-extension
program and the construction of the uranium facility at Y-12.
However, this delay would only save $1.8 billion over 5
years. The new B61 extension program cost estimate alone
requires NNSA to find an additional $4 billion at a time when
budgets are shrinking and sequestration is a real possibility.
These are some of the indicators of where we are. Into this
came a report which caught my eye. The title is ``Global Zero:
U.S. Nuclear Policy Commission, Modernizing United States
Nuclear Strategy, Forces, and Posture for the 21st Century''.
What also caught my eye were the authors: Retired General James
Cartwright and Ambassador Thomas Pickering. They are two
stellar people each in their own area, and I will introduce
them a bit more fully when the ranking member completes his
remarks.
The purpose of this hearing is not to make a decision. It
is to receive testimony on a different way of approaching this
issue in light of the fact that we are going to face an
increasing financial crunch.
One of my great delights is to work with the man on my
left. He's fair, he's straightforward, and he's been a good
friend. So I will ask the distinguished ranking member if he
has any comments he'd like to make.
statement of senator lamar alexander
Senator Alexander. Thank you, Madam Chairman.
Welcome to the witnesses, distinguished folks. I agree with
what the Senator from California said. This is an opportunity
for us to learn, so I'll be doing a lot of listening today.
Nuclear weapons are an important component of our national
defense structure. We all know that. But we have two
inescapable facts ahead of us. One is that we're short of
money, borrowing 42 cents of every $1 we spend, and the part of
the budget that keeps getting squeezed is the part that
includes everything from national defense to national parks,
while the mandatory spending runs away.
So the nuclear modernization costs we're talking about are
all part of what's getting squeezed. And it already, according
to the Budget Control Act, is only growing at about the rate of
inflation over the next 10 years. If the mandatory part of our
budget were growing at the same rate as the discretionary part,
we wouldn't really have a fiscal cliff to worry about in a few
months. So that makes the challenge of dealing with nuclear
weapons modernization very difficult.
The other inescapable fact is we have to do it. Especially
if we're going to reduce our nuclear weapons, we have to make
sure that what we have left works. We want to make sure that as
we reduce nuclear weapons we're not left with what amounts to a
collection of wet matches.
In December 2010, the President committed to a 10-year plan
to make sure our remaining weapons work. Then-Defense Secretary
Gates said at the time, ``There's absolutely no way we can
maintain a credible deterrent and reduce the number of weapons
in our stockpile without either resorting to testing our
stockpile or pursuing a modernization program.''
In our Energy and Water bill this year, we reported out an
increased funding of $363 million for NNSA's weapons
activities. That's a 5-percent increase. It's a huge increase
compared to other parts of the budget. Yet it falls short of
the amount called for by the President by about $372 million,
and it doesn't include the new plutonium facility, the
Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement (CMRR) facility.
The administration has indicated that we can defer this
facility for 5 years and is developing an alternative strategy
for meeting plutonium requirements in the mean time. Some of
the testimony you've submitted touches on this, and I'm
interested to hear your comments because this has provoked a
major dispute within the Congress. On the one hand, we have
authorizers who don't believe the alternative strategy is
acceptable, and we have appropriators who followed the
administration's recommendations and are short of money.
So you can help us here in how do we reconcile making sure
that the nuclear weapons we continue to have work and finding
ways to save money or not to spend money that we don't have.
So I thank the chairman for her vision in putting this
subject up front and for inviting distinguished witnesses, and
I look forward to the testimony.
Senator Feinstein. Thank you very much.
I'd like to introduce the first two witnesses and then ask
Senator Alexander to introduce Dr. Payne.
General James Cartwright retired from Active Duty on
September 1, 2011, after 40 years of service in the United
States Marine Corps. Unique among Marines, the General served
as Commander, United States Strategic Command, before being
nominated and appointed as the eighth Vice Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Nation's second-highest military
officer.
General Cartwright served his 4-year tenure as Vice
Chairman across two presidential administrations and constant
military operations against diverse and evolving enemies. He
became widely recognized for his technical acumen, vision of
future national security concepts, and keen ability to
integrate systems, organizations, and people in ways that
encourage creativity. He sparked innovation in the areas of
strategic deterrence, nuclear proliferation, missile defense,
cybersecurity, and adaptive acquisition processes.
He was both a naval flight officer and a naval aviator who
flew the F-4 Phantom, the Skyhawk, the Hornet. In 1983, he was
named Outstanding Carrier Aviator of the Year by the
Association of Naval Aviation.
Our second witness is Ambassador Thomas Pickering. His
four-decade-long career in foreign service included
ambassadorships in Russia, India, the United Nations, Israel,
El Salvador, Nigeria, and Jordan. Additionally, he served as
Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs from 1997 to
2000. He holds the rank of career ambassador, the highest in
the United States Foreign Service.
Following his retirement from the Foreign Service in 2001,
Mr. Pickering served as Senior Vice President for International
Relations at Boeing until 2006. Currently, he is serving as an
independent board member at the world's biggest pipe company,
OAO TMK, in Moscow.
Senator, would you introduce Dr. Payne, please.
Senator Alexander. Thank you very much.
Welcome to General Cartwright and Ambassador Pickering.
It's good to see you again.
We're delighted to have Dr. Keith Payne. He was a member of
the Congressional Commission on the United States Strategic
Posture. He was Assistant Secretary of Defense in 2002 and
2003, and he's Professor and head of the Graduate Department of
Defense and Strategic Studies at Missouri State University. So,
Dr. Payne, welcome, glad you came.
Senator Feinstein. Thank you very much.
What I'd like to do is ask each of you to confine your
remarks to as close to 5 minutes as you can. It'll give us an
opportunity to have a good back and forth. So we'll begin with
you, General Cartwright.
STATEMENT OF GENERAL JAMES E. CARTWRIGHT, USMC, RETIRED
General Cartwright. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman and Vice
Chairman, Senator Alexander.
As I sit here and reflect a little bit, the people at this
table, we have been together for a lot of years, both in
studies and consulting and operations. So I think you'll get a
pretty diverse view here.
In context, we are a nation that's been at war for more
than 10 years. That war is indicative of the conflicts that
we're likely to see as we move into the 21st century, and most
any study that I've seen, whether they're from the intelligence
community or the academic community, forecasts a level of
persistent conflict as we look to the future of the type that
we're seeing. Whether they characterize it as Arab Spring or
counterinsurgency, it is that low-level conflict that is rising
from a population that is represented with a maldistribution of
wealth, whether that be mineral wealth, homes, water, dollars.
That maldistribution is out there and it's unresolved and it is
leaving for many in the world a calculus that, if I can't feed
my family or house my family, my risk for engaging the
Government that runs the country I live in is very low, I'm
going after it, I've got to find some way to do something about
that.
Our strategic forces were built in the 1950s and 1960s,
finished out in the 1970s. That war and that conflict they were
designed for is behind us. They did what they were designed to
do in the cold war and they deterred. We got up in the
neighborhood of the tens of thousands of weapons in the
stockpile during that period. We have come down substantially
over the past 15 years and we are today under the umbrella of
the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), which
takes us down to 1,550 or less deployed weapons.
Recapitalization of that infrastructure that creates our
strategic deterrent and of those weapons and delivery systems
are 50-year decisions and all of them are in front of us,
whether you're talking about the next generation bomber, the
next generation intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM), the
next generation submarine and submarine-launched ballistic
missile (SLBM), or the infrastructure itself. All of these
decisions are 50-year decisions.
So I think one thing that everybody at this table can agree
on is that they shouldn't be just driven strictly by budget;
they should be led by a thoughtful review of the strategy,
which the administration has sought to do, but that should be
joined by the academic community, by people, I guess the old
people at this table, that have been around this business for a
while, and the public should take some understanding of this in
a way such that they understand what it is they're spending
their hard-earned money on, how much of it they're willing to
put against this capability, and how much of it we might need
under what constructs.
The study's objective was to provide an open discussion
about--using an illustrative force posture and sizing
construct. So in other words, take a look at the problems that
we think are reasonable to consider as you look into the
future; come up with an alternative sizing construct, in other
words, the number of weapons and the number of delivery
platforms and the size of the infrastructure, from what we have
today, that would address both what we think we know, which
we're almost always wrong at, and what the future might bring
to us.
So you look at what's most likely and what's most dangerous
when you consider things like this. Those are the two criteria
that you try to run as a litmus against any proposal that you
might make.
The realities today, we have a bipolar strategic
relationship with Russia, a legacy of the cold war. But we live
in a multipolar, multicountry, nuclear-capable nations world.
That's the reality. To some extent, our dialogue with Russia
locks out realistic dialogues with other nation states that
either have, aspire to have, or are thinking about moving
towards the capability of nuclear weapons in their stockpiles.
The likelihood of an ICBM, strategic bomber war with Russia
or China is remote, but it is possible. It is not something
that should be just walked away from or discounted.
The range of threats and the lethality of those threats in
today's world are growing. In other words, as we start to watch
cyber come into capability, as we watch the capabilities of
potential bio and chemical type weapons and nuclear weapons,
more people have them and their lethality is growing.
Proliferation of the intellectual capital that's associated
with these weapons is being fed by global access to
information. It is no longer whether or not you can build a
bomb. What is really the question today is whether you want to.
In other words, they have access to the information. They can
get that information.
Most nation states aspire to weapons of mass destruction as
a guarantor of their sovereignty. As they think about it, if
they build these weapons it is to ensure that they can maintain
their sovereignty. When you come to the nexus between terrorism
and nuclear weapons, terrorists tend to want these weapons
generally for weapons that they can use to either undermine the
confidence of the people of a nation or to kill as many people
as possible in one bold strike, both of which tend to come
together, undermining the confidence in a government in power
and the killing of as many people as possible, when you put the
nexus between nuclear weapons and terrorists together.
Extended deterrence, the concept that we had for many years
that was the guarantor of, you don't need to build these
weapons, we will put you under our umbrella and we will protect
you, is losing its credibility, mainly because the threats
these nations face are not threats of ICBMs or SLBMs raining
down on them. They are the threats of their neighbors and
short-range delivery or the potential that a terrorist might
get control of one of these weapons and bring it to their
country.
Their thought process is: Should I have these weapons? Do I
need them? Will the United States be there when I need them,
and do they have the capability of protecting me from long
distances? These are the things that undermine, whether you're
talking in the Pacific or whether you're talking in the Middle
East or Europe. It is a question of will we actually respond in
a way that they think is in their best interests for their
sovereignty.
With the rise in the number of nations possessing weapons
and the number of weapons in their arsenal comes also the
increased likelihood that the loss of control of one of these
weapons can occur. It's just the natural thing that more
nations have these things, there are more weapons out there;
the likelihood that one of them could be somehow stolen or lost
control in some way is increasing.
The likelihood of a mishap with one of these weapons also
increases. It's not through necessarily intent, but if you are
a new nation, you're new at handling these weapons, you're new
at the protocols of protecting these weapons, et cetera, the
likelihood that you will make a mistake early on is increased.
That's just the way we looked at it.
Also, the likelihood of miscalculation of the intent of a
neighbor or an adversary goes up. So our systems today are
aging. The systems in other nations, like Russia and China, in
particular Russia, systems are aging. Their ability to
characterize whether they're being attacked or whether it is
something else routinely comes up, and sensors that
miscalculate or mischaracterize inbound activities as potential
threats. Time lines for decisions about whether or not a
country does something about these inbound threats is in
minutes. The likelihood of a miscalculation with the increased
number of states that have these weapons is going to go up.
So these are the things that are most worrisome as we look
out towards the future and the proliferation of these weapons
and their capabilities.
I'm a person whose glass is half full, okay. We have the
world's greatest conventional military. I'm biased. I put that
right up front: They are the best. We have built the world's
greatest intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance
capability. Nobody comes close. We have built the world's
greatest space capability. People aspire to it, but nobody's
close yet.
We have built the world's greatest regional missile
defense. Nobody comes close. It's growing. Other countries are
adopting it. It is starting to be integrated into their
defenses. It is starting to offer nations an alternative to an
offensive-only posture, and that's important.
We have integrated all of these capabilities. We are
building the world's greatest nonkinetic capabilities, whether
you think about cyber or whether you think about directed
energy. All of these capabilities are just on the horizon.
Our greatest strength is our people and the ability of
those people to integrate all of these capabilities and use
them in an integrated fashion. It is the vision of what
Goldwater-Nichols brought to us, the ability to work together,
to integrate all the capabilities and to never think single
dimensionally.
We are looking at the strategic capabilities in this
hearing, but we should not discount as nontrivial the
capabilities that we have built in this Nation in defense, in
missile defense, in offensive capability on the conventional
side. They are tools. They are credible tools that any
president would want to use before he or she ever considered
using a nuclear weapon. That's important. We should not
discount those capabilities. We have built them, we have spent
money on them, and we should in fact understand how nuclear
weapons play into this integrated force.
I'll close by just hitting a couple of the numbers that we
have in the study and then we'll be ready to take questions
after the other two gents have a chance to talk. The study
recommends--and this is illustrative in nature; it is not a
hard number. But we recommend 900 total weapons in the
inventory. That's not like we have done treaties up until now,
which just recategorizes weapons and we still maintain
thousands of weapons in other categories. This is a total. All
other weapons would be eliminated. 900 total in the inventory,
not deployed. This is the total number, 900.
Of those, today we would allocate about 720 of them to the
Trident force, and we would reduce that Trident force from 12
to 10. We would use the force structure that we have today, on
the bomber side 18 B-2's, capable of delivering, and we would
have 180 weapons in that inventory for them.
Of each of those, the 720 and the 180, only a fraction of
those would be deployed at any given time. We're generally in
the mode of one deployed, two in the pipeline, so to speak,
either being recharacterized and going through testing and
upgrading or in a hedge status that could be brought out in
days or weeks if they were needed.
The posture that we would advocate for is a posture that
does not have these weapons on minute by minute alert. It is a
posture that would have these weapons available in 24 to 48
hours. We worked hard on that activity. We believe that it is
doable. There are a lot of assumptions in these numbers. There
are a lot of assumptions in that posture that we would have to
work our way towards.
PREPARED STATEMENT
There is no recommendation for unilateral movement to these
numbers. It should be done in conjunction with the Russians. It
should be done in conjunction with other nuclear nation states,
so that as we move we have an understanding of what our
adversaries are doing. We potentially can start to change the
character of the alert posture from one that is offensive
weapons on alert to defensive weapons on alert, as we develop
credible capabilities to provide that alternative.
We believe that we can be well on that path in a period of
about 10 years. The savings that we would think are available
here are in the $100 to $120 billion in that first 10 to 15
years, depending on the pace at which we wanted to move towards
this activity. Most of that money is cost avoidance. It's cost
avoidance. It's not building as many submarines, it's not
building as many weapons, it's not doing as much on the life-
extension program, because we don't need as many weapons. So a
lot of this money is cost avoidance. I'll give you that right
up front. But it is still money and we still have to think
about it.
Thank you for this opportunity. I stand ready for your
questions.
[The statement follows:]
Prepared Statement of General James E. Cartwright, United States Marine
Corps (Retired) and Ambassador Thomas R. Pickering
introduction
Senators Inouye, Feinstein, Alexander, and other distinguished
members, it's an honor and a pleasure for us to present testimony
before this august committee. Thank you for inviting us and for taking
an interest in the findings and proposals of the Global Zero U.S.
Nuclear Policy Commission on which we served. We hope our commission
report (Modernizing U.S. Nuclear Strategy, Force Structure and Posture,
May 2012) and remarks here contribute to your vitally important work in
protecting America's national security. Our written joint testimony
highlights some of the commission's key conclusions and recommendations
as well as answers some of the critical questions raised by readers
after the report was released to the public.
the global zero commission aims and purposes
The goal of the commission was simple: conceive and articulate a
nuclear strategy, force structure, and posture that best address the
national security challenges our country faces in the 21st century. We
first considered present and future threats across the spectrum of
possibilities, ranging from deliberate or accidental nuclear attack by
a nation state to terrorist nuclear attack--and everything in between.
Then we assessed the role of U.S. nuclear weapons in diminishing these
dangers through deterrence or war-fighting, and also weighed the
potential for missile defenses, conventional forces, alliance
cooperation and diplomacy to offer non-nuclear tools to our kitbag for
dealing with these threats. Next we performed a net assessment of both
the benefits and risks of further nuclear arms reductions and lowered
launch readiness (``de-alerting''). Finally, we formulated a new
construct for a 21st century nuclear strategy.
Of special interest to the commission was the paramount goal of
broadening the scope of nuclear arms reductions to include all
countries and all types of weapons in their possession. The nearly
half-century of arms negotiations with the Russians has been an
exclusively two-sided affair that has excluded some important players.
These negotiations need to be extended to China and other nations that
maintain existing or planned nuclear arsenals. The major risks of
nuclear weapons use, proliferation and arms race instability in fact
mostly lie outside the U.S.-Russian arena, particularly in Northeast
and South Asia and in the Middle East. It is essential to begin a
multilateral process that brings the rest of the nuclear-armed world to
the negotiating table to begin to cap, freeze, reduce and otherwise
constrain these third-country nuclear arms programs. We estimate that
U.S. and Russian arsenals would need to be downsized substantially--900
or fewer total weapons on each side--in order to draw these third-
countries into the process.
a 2022 u.s. nuclear force
Our net assessment concluded that the current U.S. nuclear force
remains sized and organized operationally for fighting the ``last
war''--the cold war--even though threats from that era posed by the
Soviet Union and China have greatly diminished or disappeared. Russian
and China are not mortal enemies of the United States. Our geopolitical
relations with our former cold war adversaries have fundamentally
changed for the better.
The U.S. (and Russian) arsenal is thus over-stocked. Ample latitude
exists for further nuclear cuts. The extent of such cuts, the
composition of the reduced arsenals, and the number of weapons held in
reserve as a geopolitical hedge against a downturn in relations are
matters worthy of public debate, and of congressional hearings. There
are a number of alternative force structures that would well serve to
maintain a credible U.S. nuclear deterrent and advance other national
security interests.
In the commission's view, one such illustrative nuclear force would
be composed of 900 total strategic weapons--total deployed and
reserve--on a dyad of ballistic missile submarines and strategic
bombers. This would represent a steep (80 percent) reduction from the
current U.S. arsenal, but it would not be a small force, nor a humble
force designed for minimal deterrence. It would not entail a radical
shift in targeting philosophy away from military targets to population
centers. It is not a city-busting strategy. On the contrary, it would
hold at risk all the major categories of facilities in all the
countries of interest--a diverse set of nuclear/weapons of mass
destruction (WMD) forces and facilities, top military and political
leadership, and war-supporting industry. It would fulfill reasonable
requirements of deterrence vis-a-vis every country considered to pose a
potential WMD threat to the United States.
strengthening universal nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation
At the same time, an arsenal shrunk to 900 total U.S. weapons,
matched by comparable Russian reductions, would represent a dramatic
cut that should work to draw the other nuclear countries into a
multilateral process culminating in formal arms reduction negotiations
among all nations with nuclear arms.
It should also demonstrate a serious U.S. and Russian commitment to
fulfilling their disarmament obligations under Article 6 of the Non-
Proliferation Treaty, and thereby help rally the anti-proliferation
community to greater efforts to thwart would-be proliferators. The idea
is not that virtuous U.S. and Russian behavior in the form of steep
nuclear arms reductions will inspire aspiring proliferators to abandon
their quests. We do not subscribe to this naive notion. Rather, there
are reasons to believe that such behavior could inspire our
antiproliferation partners to get tougher with recalcitrant states
seeking the bomb.
reducing u.s.-russia nuclear arms through negotiations
The commissioners agreed that cuts to 900 total nuclear weapons in
the U.S. and Russian arsenals should be the aim of the next round of
bilateral New START follow-on negotiations. We call upon them to reach
a comprehensive, verifiable agreement that provides for equal
reductions by both sides down to a total force of 900 weapons that
counts all types of strategic and nonstrategic weapons--with ``freedom
to mix'' on both sides--and that counts every individual warhead or
bomb whether deployed or held in reserve.
We wish to emphasize that the commission does not call for
unilateral cuts by the United States. Our view is that the only valid
and useful approach should be to negotiate an agreement with the
Russians. However, there may well be other ways to advance the goal of
further reductions. Some unilateral steps, or parallel reciprocal steps
along the lines of the 1991 Presidential Nuclear Initiatives, could
facilitate the effort. For instance, Russia has already dropped below
its allowed ceiling of 1,550 deployed strategic forces stipulated by
the New START agreement. It may behoove the United States to follow in
Russia's footsteps and take advantage of Russia's unilateral reductions
to reduce U.S. forces below the allowed level as an approach designed
to remove the incentive for Russia to build its forces back up and take
advantage of the benefits, set out further in this presentation, of
additional reductions. This would serve to lower the ceiling on
deployments and maintain momentum for further reductions. It would
match U.S. and Russian forces, take advantage of Russian unilateral
needs to restrict its force size, maintain stability and serve as a
further reinforcement of the process of mutual reductions. There is no
reason why the present verification systems could not be used or
adapted for use for these kinds of steps. In short, there is some scope
for parallel reciprocal steps to advance the cause of bilateral arms
cuts, but we would certainly pursue the cuts through direct
negotiations with the Russians, and then would seek to add the other
nuclear weapons countries to this formal process.
We envision each side enjoying substantial latitude to choose the
composition of their own forces according to their perceived security
needs as long as they do not exceed the 900-warhead ceiling. This
potential variation in the composition of forces is another reason why
we characterize our proposed U.S. force structure as ``illustrative.''
Our commission strongly supports an open debate on the appropriate
make-up of U.S. nuclear forces, and acknowledges that honest
differences of opinion exist. Experts differ on the relative merits of
bombers, submarines and land-based missiles, for instance, and also
debate whether it is necessary to maintain three different types of
delivery vehicles in the U.S. arsenal.
from triad to dyad: eliminating the land-based missile component
After evaluating the vulnerability, flexibility, and other key
characteristics of the different delivery systems, our commission
concluded that a dyad of sea- and air-based strategic weapons would
meet the post-cold war requirements of deterring a WMD attack on the
United States. The Minuteman land-based intercontinental ballistic
missile (ICBM) would be eliminated in this scheme.
The elimination of Minuteman and consequently of the TRIAD of
delivery vehicles in favor of a dyad stemmed from the fact that
Minuteman is vulnerable and inflexible from a targeting standpoint.
Minuteman is vulnerable to sudden decimation unless it is launched
promptly on tactical warning of an incoming Russian missile strike. The
ability to launch promptly the Minuteman force (within a few minutes)
is often touted as a virtue, but in reality it is a liability. In the
(admittedly extremely improbable) event of a large-scale Russian
nuclear missile strike against the three U.S. Minuteman fields,
enormous pressure would be exerted upon the National Command Authority
rapidly to authorize the immediate firing of the force en masse--the
deadline for a presidential (or successor) execution decision would be
12 minutes at most. Moreover, the unleashing of Minuteman forces would
necessitate unleashing other strategic missiles--notably Trident
submarine missiles, because of the integrated operational nature of
major attack options to assure full coverage of all intended targets.
The second severe deficiency of Minuteman is its targeting
inflexibility. It is suitable for the most unlikely scenario--large-
scale nuclear war with Russia--but is unsuitable for nuclear conflict
with North Korea or Iran because it would have to fly over both Russia
and China to reach either of them. In the very unlikely event of a
U.S.-China nuclear conflict, Minuteman missiles would have to fly over
Russia to reach China.
Put differently, the Minuteman force is suitable only for Russia
contingencies, our least likely adversary in nuclear conflict. The
other legs of the commission's proposed dyad offer means of dealing
with almost any scenario involving a WMD threat to America from a
nation-state adversary. Neither U.S. strategic submarine missiles nor
strategic bombers are constrained by rigid flight trajectories. These
are versatile platforms that offer highly flexible angles of attack
against practically any target on the globe. Although a prompt global
strike by Minuteman could be carried out with a single warhead, a
Trident missile could perform the same mission (if a small number would
be downloaded to carry a single warhead instead of the multiple
warheads now carried) without risk of causing Russia to think it is
under nuclear missile attack and ordering a nuclear ``counter-strike''
in retaliation. Moreover, ballistic missile submarines on alert patrol
can be fired almost as quickly as Minuteman missiles if so desired (15
minutes versus 2 minutes), although the commission did not identify
scenarios in which the prompt launch of sea-based ballistic missiles
armed with nuclear warheads fulfilled any evident national security
requirement.
One critic of the proposal to eliminate Minuteman (and cancel any
follow-on nuclear ICBM program), the Chief of Staff of the Air Force,
recently asserted that a critical virtue of this force is that it
forces an enemy bent on attacking the United States to strike the
American homeland. Gen. Norton Schwartz said, ``Why do we have a land-
based deterrent force? It's so that an adversary has to strike the
homeland.'' In the commission's view, the optimal U.S. nuclear
deterrent would ensure that the U.S. homeland is never struck with
nuclear weapons in the event of war while preserving the full elements
of deterrence currently available to the President.
de-alerting strategic forces
The commission viewed unfavorably the continuing practice of
keeping Minuteman and strategic submarines on launch-ready alert, and
especially of gearing the nuclear command-control-communications and
warning system from the President on down to the individual launch
commanders for rapidly executing the forces in the opening phase of a
nuclear conflict. (The Russia system is similarly organized.) The
short-fused Minuteman and strategic submarine alert forces, together
with the supporting rapid reaction command system, impose a severe
constraint on presidential deliberation and choice during a crisis or
conflict. Public reports of past experience with short time lines for
decisionmaking have shown that the process is flawed and that near
cataclysmic errors have been narrowly avoided but made more likely by
the rushed nature of the process. The President and his top advisors
should have many more tools at their disposal, including non-nuclear
options, and be afforded the time to deliberate and exercise these
tools, which include diplomacy.
The day-to-day high alert posture of the United States today also
represents a threat to Russia that has untoward unanticipated
consequences for the United States. By dint of possessing the ability
to fire U.S. strategic missiles promptly on warning (``launch-under-
attack'' in the operating vernacular), the United States concurrently
possesses the ability to initiate a sudden massive strike against
Russia (or any other country). This surprise attack option technically
threatens the survival of almost all Russian nuclear forces in their
day-to-day configuration unless, like the United States, Russia
launches these forces out from under the attack, on warning. If coupled
with U.S. missile defenses designed against Russia's strategic
retaliatory forces--a current Russian fear despite American assurances
that Russia is not a target of such defenses--the U.S. first-strike
threat puts Russia on even greater vigilance and launch readiness.
The upshot is that both U.S. and Russian forces are kept on quick-
launch alert because the other side does the same. This entwines the
two countries in a proverbial ``hair-trigger'' dynamic that increases
the risks of accidental, mistaken, inadvertent, misinformed, or
unauthorized launch with devastating consequences. Launch on false
warning is doubly worrisome in light of the chronic deficiencies in
Russian early warning that are not going away anytime soon. This is a
serious risk not to be undertaken without the greatest care to avoid
it, and we believe that can be done with our proposals while still
protecting the essential security interests of the nation.
These postures also set a terrible example for the other nuclear
armed nations, who for various reasons have not yet adopted launch-
ready postures for their own forces. As a rule, their warheads and
bombs are kept separate from their means of delivery, a safe practice
that greatly reduces the danger of an unintended nuclear exchange. We
can imagine a multitude of grave dangers that would emerge if this
practice is abandoned in favor of increasing the launch readiness of
nuclear forces. Acute instability would arise if Pakistan, India,
China, and North Korea adopted a quick-launch posture requiring
execution decisions to be made within minutes and seconds on the basis
of attack early warning indications from satellite infrared or ground
radar sensors. The risks of unauthorized launch, or the terrorist
capture of dispersed assembled weapons, would also grow significantly.
In short, the current launch-ready postures of the United States
and Russia are major sources of instability. They not only would
generate pressure on leaders to make a premature decision on the use of
nuclear weapons in a crisis, but they also run a risk of unintentional
strikes. The postures pose an existential threat to the very survival
of the United States, and Russia perceives no less cause for concern.
The commission therefore recommended the de-alerting of U.S.
strategic forces in tandem with Russian de-alerting. A negotiated
agreement that cuts the Gordian knot and allows both sides to stand
down their forces would well serve their vital security and safety
interests. In a similar vein, we also proposed that the United States
deploy only 270 U.S. sea-based strategic warheads on day-to-day patrol,
a number that is below the approximate threshold of 300 warheads that
constitute a first-strike decapitation threat to Russia. This reduced
deployment level would further allay Russian concern over its
vulnerability and encourage it to get off of its dangerous ``hair-
trigger'' launch posture.
If the U.S. strategic arsenal required 24 to 72 hours to generate
the ability to fire and the Russians followed suit, the world would be
far safer and a norm would be forged to encourage other countries to
maintain their current practice of keeping weapons separated from their
bombers, submarines, and land-based rockets. Again, as we make clear,
this is not a unilateral step but a reciprocal one with Russia to begin
with and others to follow. It would be insured by the levels of
reliability we have achieved and can achieve through further work on
the verification systems and procedures that we have already engaged in
our nuclear arrangements with Russia.
prompt launch constrains presidential decisionmaking
While some observers may view this 24-72 hour generation
requirement as a constraint that would hobble a U.S. President in a
crisis, our commission found that the current posture, which exerts
pressure on the President to make a nuclear choice rapidly, is a far
greater constraint. Launch-under-attack pressure severely hobbles
presidential decisionmaking. It deprives our leaders of the time
necessary for deliberation and of the tools needed to direct U.S. power
to coherent national purpose.
new strategy and tools to support presidential conflict deliberation
and choice
This commission recommendation therefore undertakes the
responsibility of suggesting a strategy that would relieve the pressure
on our leaders and reduce our reliance on nuclear weapons as a primary
or unique choice in the face of aggression. Our report lays out the
elements of this strategy, which features a growing role for missile
defenses and conventional forces including a new ICBM (HTV-2) with a
conventional warhead and sufficient range to reach practically any
target in the world from home bases on U.S. soil without traversing
Russian territory during flight. Its range and accuracy would provide
an unprecedented tool for destroying critical targets globally within 1
hour. At present, the only tool available to the President for such a
global quick strike is a nuclear warhead atop a land- or sea-based
missile.
Missile defenses and conventional offensive forces as well as other
kinetic and non-kinetic (cyber) tools of warfare, and various ``soft
power'' tools would be designed to buy time for a day or two and exert
non-nuclear leverage to resolve a dispute before it could escalate to
nuclear dimensions. This strategy would empower a president, not hobble
him. It would extend the deadline for a nuclear decision. It would help
stabilize a crisis. Again, it is the paucity of non-nuclear options and
the time pressure to resort to nuclear options that represents the
fundamental problem for presidential choice.
downsizing the nuclear complex; risks and cost savings
Under the commission's plan, the number of different types of
nuclear weapons in the U.S. active inventory would decrease from seven
types today to four by 2022. The need to re-furbish weapons remaining
in the stockpile would greatly diminish--almost all of weapons
previously requiring it would be eliminated from the active inventory.
This drastic curtailing of the life-extension program for thousands of
weapons currently in the pipeline would save at least $10 billion.
The existing plutonium pit facility at Los Alamos could readily
service the regular pit manufacturing demands of a 900-warhead arsenal.
Assuming a 50-year pit shelf life, only 2 percent of the active
stockpile, or 18 warheads, would need to be remanufactured each year.
The facility has a normal throughput capacity of about 20 per year with
the option to add extra staff shifts in order to raise capacity to 40
pits per year. With the addition of extra equipment (5-6 years to
install), the capacity could be increased to perhaps as high as 80 per
year.
This number would grow higher still if old pits could be re-used
and if pits with sensitive, conventional high explosives could be re-
fitted with insensitive high explosives to improve safety. Current
studies underway at the U.S. national laboratories to be completed
within the next couple of years should determine the feasibility of
these options. Preliminary analyses suggest that upwards of 50 percent
of plutonium pits in the stockpile could be swapped out in these
processes, allowing for a much faster rate of pit replacement.
In an emergency in which a systemic defect in one of the four
warhead types warranted a crash effort to replace those warheads, it
appears feasible that upwards of 120 defective weapons per year could
be remedied through a combination of pit manufacturing and pit re-use.
Such a systemic defect is a low-probability event, but assuming 225
defective warheads (notionally one-fourth of the 900-warhead total)
needed to be repaired, it would take approximately 2 years of full-
capacity work to finish the job.
In short, the current plutonium facility with some new equipment
working overtime with other partners such as the Pantex facility could
probably handle an unusual emergency to replace a big chunk of the
arsenal. Our commission viewed this capability of the existing
facilities as obviating the need to build the multibillion dollar new
facility now in early construction stage at Los Alamos. However, some
small additional risk of reduced stockpile reliability must be
acknowledged if we shrink the variety of warhead types from seven to
four, and the margin of comfort for replacing an entire category of
weapons in the event of a systemic defect is not large. On balance, our
commission deemed these risks to be quite low, and acceptable, but we
strongly recommend a full-scope survey by the pertinent agencies
(National Nuclear Security Administration--NNSA, the national
laboratories, and Strategic Command) to determine an optimal
infrastructure in support of the 900-warhead arsenal outlined in the
commission report.
downsizing the nuclear force structure; risks and cost savings
Unforeseen Nuclear Challengers?
Some readers of our report have raised the question whether our
illustrative force would be stretched thin and fall short if an
unanticipated threat of major proportions emerged from an unexpected
source--perhaps an unfriendly state that unexpectedly breaks out a
substantial nuclear arsenal, or an existing state such as China that
greatly expands its nuclear arsenal. (In China's case, its recent
nuclear modernization created an infrastructure capable of
substantially increasing its existing small arsenal if it chose to do
so.)
The answer to this question has three parts. First, this is an
intelligence challenge that warrants an intelligence estimate as to the
likelihood of such break-out or rapid expansion scenarios over the next
10 years. Our commission found no grounds to believe that the
intelligence community places any credence in them. A Chinese surge is
unlikely to yield an arsenal much larger than 250-300 warheads. A
Russian surge appears both financially and technically implausible.
Although Russia has begun a strategic modernization program with
upwards of $70 billion earmarked for this purpose over the next 10
years (an amount far less than the planned U.S. strategic modernization
budget over the same period), the ability of its military-industrial
infrastructure to deliver the goods has proven to be quite impaired.
Pakistan, currently an unfriendly ally of the United States, is rapidly
growing its arsenal, but its focus is India. Other candidates for such
a surge are unclear to us. In short, while we do not claim
clairvoyance, the prospect that any aspiring proliferator or existing
nuclear-armed nation will undertake a crash build-up on a large scale
is remote.
Second, it is highly doubtful that any of the hypothetical
possibilities could unfold without being detected. Since the beginning
of the nuclear age, no nation has ever produced enough nuclear weapons
material to build a bomb without first being detected by foreign
intelligence. (This applies even to the super-secret U.S. Manhattan
project in the mid-1940s, before the advent of satellite surveillance
or on-site inspections.) It strains credulity to project a breakout of
such a magnitude over the next 10 years that the United States would
wake up one morning and find itself ``out-gunned.''
Third, in any case the proposed U.S. arsenal is sufficient to
project a draconian threat of retaliation against any and all possible
nuclear newcomers or late-bloomers over the next decade and beyond. It
is sufficient to deter reliably any conceivable threat on the horizon.
Cost Savings
A significant cost savings would accrue if our illustrative force
structure is implemented. An 80-percent force reduction that includes
the elimination of all Minuteman missiles (and cancellation of its
replacement), all B-52 bombers and all tactical nuclear forces in the
U.S. inventory, combined with a scaling back of future strategic
submarine construction from 12 to 10 boats and of the strategic bomber
replacement aircraft to a minimum number of nuclear-capable aircraft
(e.g., 30), would save an estimated $100 billion over the next 15
years. As noted earlier, the illustrative force would also impose
lighter demands on the nuclear complex, saving an additional (est.) $20
billion during this period. The total savings for our proposed nuclear
architecture is roughly estimated to be $120 billion over the next 15
years.
conclusion
The nuclear strategy, force structure and posture proposed by our
diverse commission of generals, diplomats, strategic arms negotiators
and policymakers are not necessarily the Holy Grail for the next phase
of our Nation's pursuit of security in the 21st century. We believe,
however, that our recommendations promise to more squarely and
effectively address the real threats that our Nation will be facing
over the next decade than current U.S. nuclear policy promises. A
fundamental transformation of our nuclear architecture and policy is
needed to maintain a credible U.S. deterrent against classical risks of
nuclear aggression by other nations while preserving strategic
stability and protecting the nation against nuclear proliferation,
terrorism, cyber warfare, failed states, organized crime, regional
conflict and other threats the 21st century has wrought. We appreciate
the opportunity to present our findings and join the debate.
Senator Feinstein. Thank you very much, General.
Ambassador Pickering.
STATEMENT OF HON. THOMAS PICKERING, FORMER
UNDERSECRETARY FOR POLITICAL AFFAIRS,
UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF STATE
Ambassador Pickering. Thank you very much, Madam Chairwoman
and Senator Alexander. It's a pleasure to be here this morning
and a particular pleasure to follow on General Cartwright, who
chaired the commission and whose I think brilliant presentation
this morning laid out for you not only the problem, but some
directions toward which the illustrative figures in the report
that we prepared can provide a solution.
I will follow along in his wake literally and talk about
some of the political points that we believe will be important
in dealing with some of the areas that he was expressing a deep
concern about, which I share: the question of proliferation and
also the question of the stability of forces on both sides and
some of the problems that we hope will be dealt with by this
particular approach in terms of the pressure for very early
decision under conditions of some uncertainty, which we have
had before.
Of special interest to our commission was the paramount
goal of broadening the scope of nuclear arms reductions to
include all of the countries and all of the types of the
weapons in their possession. The nearly half century of arms
control negotiations has involved us pretty exclusively with
the Russians in a two-sided affair that has obviously left
aside other important players, such as China, Britain, and
France, among the five recognized nuclear powers. These
negotiations obviously will need to be extended to China and to
other nations that maintain existing or planned nuclear
arsenals, and in my own view they will have to come as well to
countries like India and Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea, and
if, God forbid, Iran becomes such a power, with Iran.
The major risks of nuclear weapon use, proliferation and
arms race instability, in fact mostly lie outside, as the
General made clear, the U.S.-Russian arena. Particularly, they
lie in Northeast and South Asia and in the Middle East. It is
essential to begin a multilateral process that brings the rest
of the nuclear-armed world to the negotiating table and that
begins the process that we have long established of capping,
freezing, and then reducing and otherwise constraining these
third country nuclear arms programs.
Our commission estimated that the U.S. and Russian arsenals
would need to be downsized substantially, to the 900 or fewer
total weapons on each side that the General spoke about, in
order to draw these third countries into the process. At the
sake time, an arsenal shrunk to 900 total U.S. weapons, matched
by comparable Russian reductions, would represent in itself a
dramatic cut that should work to draw those countries into the
multilateral process, culminating in formal arms reduction
negotiations among all nations with nuclear arms.
It should also demonstrate a serious U.S. and Russian
commitment to fulfill their disarmament obligations under
Article 6 of the Non-Proliferation Treaty and thereby help to
convince those that might be significantly interested in
proliferation that the comparable portion of the bargain on the
other side, serious reductions in the direction of elimination
by the U.S. and Russia, was obviously taking place, and that
greater efforts in this direction I think would be part of the
background for the kind of work that we would like to take to
enhance our efforts at proliferation.
The idea is not, Madam Chairwoman, that the virtuous U.S.
and Russian behavior in the form of steep nuclear arms
reductions will inspire aspiring proliferators to abandon their
quests. We don't ascribe to that naive or somewhat naive
notion. Rather, there are reasons to believe that that behavior
would inspire our antiproliferation partners to get tougher on
the recalcitrant states that are seeking the bomb.
The commissioners agreed that a total cut to 900 weapons in
the U.S. and Russian arsenals would be the aim or should be the
aim of the next round of bilateral New START negotiations to
follow on the ones that were successfully completed earlier in
the administration. We call upon them to reach a comprehensive,
verifiable agreement that provides for equal reductions by both
sides down to the total force we outlined and that counts all
types, as the General made clear, of strategic and nonstrategic
weapons, with the freedom to mix on both sides, that counts
every individual warhead or bomb whether deployed or held in
reserve.
We want to emphasize that the commission does not call for
unilateral cuts by the United States. Our view is that the only
valid and useful approach should be a negotiated agreement with
the Russians. However, there may well be other ways to advance
the goal of further reductions. Some unilateral steps or
parallel reciprocal steps along the lines of the 1991
Presidential Nuclear Initiatives under President Reagan could
facilitate the effort.
For instance, Russia has already dropped below its allowed
ceiling of 1,550 deployed strategic forces stipulated in New
START. It may well behoove the United States to follow in
Russia's footsteps and take advantage of Russia's apparent
unilateral reductions to reduce U.S. forces below the allowed
level as an approach designed to remove the incentive for
Russia to rebuild forces back up to a higher level and take
advantage of the benefits, including for our own budget, if I
could put it that way, set out further in our presentation of
additional reductions.
This would serve to lower the ceiling on deployments and
maintain momentum for further reductions. It could take
advantage of Russian unilateral needs to restrict its force
size while maintaining stability and serve as a further
reinforcement of the process of mutual reductions. There's no
reason why the present verification system could not be
adapted, expanded, enlarged, and this will require some
inventive work, to take care of the verification of this kind
of a process.
We envisage each side enjoying substantial latitude to
choose the composition of its forces to meet their perceived
security needs, as long as they don't exceed the maximum
allowed number, whether that be 900 or a different ceiling.
This potential variation in the compositions of the forces is
another reason why we characterize our proposed U.S. force as
illustrative.
Much thought needs to be given, much new work needs to be
accomplished, before some final view on this can be expressed.
But we believe that raising it here at the hearings is an
important way to begin that process, and we thank you for doing
that.
I have a few final words. The commission is recommending
that the United States undertake the responsibility--or that it
undertake the responsibility here in the United States for
suggesting a strategy that would relieve the pressure on our
leaders and reduce their reliance on nuclear weapons as a
primary or unique choice in the face of aggression. Our report
lays out the elements of that strategy and points as well to
the growing role for missile defense and conventional forces,
including a new ICBM with a conventional warhead and sufficient
range to reach practically any target in the world from home
bases on our own soil, without traversing Russian territory
during the flight. Range and accuracy of this missile would
provide an unprecedented tool for dealing with critical targets
globally within an hour. At present, the only tool available to
the President for such global quick strike is a nuclear warhead
on top of a land or a sea-based missile.
Missile defenses and conventional offensive forces, as well
as other kinetic and nonkinetic tools of warfare and various
soft power tools would be designed to build in time for a day
or two and exert non-nuclear leverage to resolve disputes
before they could escalate to their nuclear dimensions. I know
you and the committee appreciate the value of all of this.
The strategy would empower a president, not hobble him with
the need for rapid and excruciatingly difficult decisions under
tight time deadlines. It would extend the deadline for nuclear
decisions and would help stabilize crises. Again, the paucity
of non-nuclear options and the time pressure to resort to
nuclear options represent fundamental problems at the present
time.
I won't go further into some of the other issues, except I
wanted briefly to address finally the question of cost savings.
A significant cost saving would accrue if our illustrative
force structure or something like it is implemented. An 80-
percent force reduction that includes the elimination of all
Minuteman missiles and cancellation of its replacement, all B-
52 bombers, all tactical nuclear forces in the U.S. inventory,
combined with a scaling back of future strategic submarine
construction from 12 to 10 boats as the General has outlined,
and of the strategic bomber replacement aircraft to a minimum
number of nuclear aircraft, would save an estimated $100
billion over 15 years.
As noted earlier in our report and in our testimony, the
illustrative force would also pose lighter demands on our
nuclear complex, saving perhaps an estimated $20 billion during
this period. The total savings for our proposed nuclear
architecture is roughly then estimated at $120 billion over the
next 10 years, as an example, Madam Chairman, of the issues
that you would like us to have discussed.
It's been a pleasure to make my presentation and I look
forward to the questions.
Senator Feinstein. Thank you very much, Ambassador.
Dr. Payne.
STATEMENT OF KEITH B. PAYNE, Ph.D., PROFESSOR AND
DEPARTMENT HEAD, MISSOURI STATE UNIVERSITY,
DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE AND STRATEGIC STUDIES
Dr. Payne. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. It's an honor to be
here this morning.
The number of U.S. START-accountable strategic nuclear
weapons has been reduced by more than 80 percent since the end
of the cold war. Some analyses, such as the Global Nuclear Zero
(GNZ) Commission Report, recommend further deep reductions
compatible with a minimum deterrence policy. I have enormous
respect for my colleagues at the table and had the pleasure of
working with General Cartwright for years, but I believe there
are six basic problems with this report's recommendations, as
is the case with most proposals for minimum deterrence.
First, the report recommends deep U.S. reductions that
would leave only a small U.S. nuclear dyad of sea-based
missiles and B-2 bombers. When our understanding of opponents
suggests that deterring them requires flexible targeting
options and a basic threat to well-protected leaders, military
forces, and internal security forces as may be the case, then
this minimum deterrence dyad would not be compatible with
effective deterrence. It would be dangerously vulnerable and
inflexible and incapable of addressing even the extremely
limited targets sets outlined in the GNZ report.
For more than five decades, all Democratic and Republican
administrations have sought to avoid such a dangerous
condition. The GNZ report essentially answers this concern by
asserting that Russia and China are not opponents and are
unlikely ever to be so again. Over the past several years,
however, top Russian leaders have made numerous threats of
preemptive and preventive nuclear strike against U.S. allies
and friends. To claim that nuclear weapons will not be salient
in contemporary or future relations with Russia or China is, I
believe, an unwarranted and highly optimistic hope, not a
prudent basis for calculating U.S. deterrence requirements.
Second, deterrence must work in contemporary and future
crises. Yet no one knows what will be the future force
requirements for a credible deterrent because opponents and
threats shift so rapidly. Consequently, a priority force
requirement now is sufficient flexibility and diversity to
adapt deterrence to a wide spectrum of potential opponents and
threats.
Yet the minimum deterrence dyad recommended in the GNZ
report would be the opposite of flexible and resilient. What
level of U.S. forces is compatible with the requisite U.S.
flexibility and resilience? In 2001 we defined 1,700 to 2,200
warhead ceiling with essentially no limits on launchers of such
a force. In 2010 General Kevin Chilton, then Commander of
Strategic Command, stated that the ceilings of the New START
treaty are the lowest numbers that he could accept, given this
need for U.S. flexibility.
Third, deterrence is not the only goal of U.S. nuclear
forces. U.S. forces must also contribute to the assurance of
our allies and friends. Key allies believe that the credibility
of U.S. extended deterrence commitments depends on a wide
variety of U.S. nuclear capabilities, their quantity, and their
location, and the U.S. capability to threaten a wide variety of
targets.
Yet the report's minimum deterrence force levels appear to
have little or nothing to do with the quantity, types, or
location of U.S. nuclear forces needed to assure our allies.
Proponents of minimum deterrence typically respond to this
concern with the assertion that is repeated in the GNZ report,
that conventional forces can provide credible assurance for
allies increasingly. However, some allies already openly state
that if U.S. nuclear credibility wanes they will be compelled
to find their own independent deterrence capabilities. That
could lead to a cascade of nuclear proliferation.
Non-nuclear capabilities may some day be adequate for
assurance purposes, but that day has not arrived, per the
express view of key allies who are concerned about U.S.
credibility at current force levels.
Fourth, the basic rationale for further U.S. reductions is
to strengthen global cooperation on nuclear nonproliferation, a
rationale repeated in the GNZ report. The net effect of U.S.
movement toward minimum deterrence, however, may instead be to
increase nuclear proliferation, as allies feel compelled to
establish their own deterrence capabilities.
Fifth, proponents of minimum deterrence also claim that
further deep force reductions will save scarce U.S. dollars. To
state that moneys would not be needed if the triad were to be
abandoned is to state the obvious. However, the real question
in this regard is the net cost of deep nuclear reductions,
given the corresponding necessary buildup of advanced
conventional weapons, a need acknowledged by the authors of the
report. Claiming savings from a transition to minimum
deterrence is at best a half truth and we should never take
risks with our deterrence credibility. The stakes are too high.
Sixth, the GNZ report, unlike others, justifies further
deep reductions as a necessary step en route to global nuclear
zero. Recall, however, that the Bipartisan Congressional
Strategic Posture Commission concluded unanimously that, ``The
conditions that might make the elimination of nuclear weapons
possible are not present today and establishing such conditions
would require a fundamental transformation of the world
political order.'' The establishment of a powerful and reliable
global collective security system would be such a fundamental
global transition. Further U.S. nuclear reductions would not
be.
PREPARED STATEMENT
The horrific scale of warfare that the world often suffered
up until 1945, including 110 million casualties in the
approximately 10 years of war of World War I and II, that level
has not been repeated since 1945, thanks at least in part to
nuclear deterrence. Prudence suggests that we not put nuclear
deterrence at risk until a reliable alternative approach to
peacekeeping is in hand, which certainly is not now.
In summary, I'm skeptical of the GNZ report and further
U.S. deep nuclear reductions, not for reasons of old think, but
because the supposed benefits are dubious or illusory and the
effects may be to undermine deterrence, to undermine assurance,
and to increase nuclear proliferation in an era of great
uncertainty.
Thank you.
[The statement follows:]
Prepared Statement of Dr. Keith B. Payne
The number of United States Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty
(START)-accountable strategic nuclear weapons has been reduced by more
than 80 percent since the end of the cold war--from more than 10,000
weapons in 1991 to fewer than 1,800 today.\1\ We clearly have been well
past cold war force levels and strategies for many years. There is an
on-going debate regarding the wisdom of reducing U.S. nuclear forces
further. Some analyses, such as the Global Nuclear Zero Commission
(GNZC) report, recommend further deep reductions; others are skeptical.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ Department of States, Bureau of Arms Control, Verification and
Compliance, Fact Sheet, New START Treaty Aggregate Numbers of Strategic
Arms, April 6, 2012.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The authors of the GNZC report suggest that the skeptics are driven
by a continuing commitment to cold war strategies. In fact, this debate
is not between ``new think'' and ``old think.'' Skeptics of further
deep reductions have moved well beyond cold war thinking, and I know of
no one who considers the prospective employment of nuclear weapons to
be anything other than a last resort option in the most extreme
circumstances.
Instead, the basis for the differences between those who advocate
further deep reductions and those who are skeptical reside in their
fundamentally different views of deterrence, the current and future
security environments, and the appropriate methods for measuring ``how
much is enough?'' for the U.S. nuclear arsenal. The GNZC report, like
similar reports promoting deep reductions, reflects a familiar approach
to deterrence force sizing that dates back to the 1960s.
This approach, often called Minimum Deterrence, considers the U.S.
nuclear arsenal to be adequate if it essentially is capable of
threatening a relatively small number of opponent targets. The types of
targets to be threatened can vary, but the fundamental measure of force
adequacy is the number of weapons considered necessary to cover targets
that are relatively few in number and easy to strike. The force level
deemed adequate via this methodology can be manipulated easily by
defining and redefining the targets deemed suitable for deterrence. By
defining down the number and types of targets considered important for
deterrence, the number of U.S. nuclear weapons deemed adequate for
deterrence can be reduced to low levels compatible with an aggressive
arms control agenda. Opponents and threats may not have eased, but
deterrence metrics can be redefined by fiat to be compatible with deep
U.S. nuclear reductions. For decades, proposals for Minimum Deterrence
and related low force levels typically have defined the requirements
for deterrence in this fashion and thereby have created the deterrence
policy narrative necessary for deep nuclear reductions.\2\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ Federation of American Scientists, From Counterforce to Minimal
Deterrence: A New Policy Path Toward Eliminating Nuclear Weapons,
Occasional Paper No. 7 (April 2009), available at: http://www.fas.org/
pubs/_docs/OccasionalPaper7.pdf.
\3\ ``The emphasis in McNamara's statements on nuclear forces and
doctrine shifted after 1963 to that of Assured Destruction. This
doctrine held that a nuclear exchange would, with high probability,
result in more than 100 million fatalities in both the United States
and the U.S.S.R. and that attempts to limit damage through active and
passive defenses could be readily defeated by improvements in offensive
forces. The principal test of adequacy of the U.S. strategic force came
to be the ability of our programmed force to produce civil damage, even
against a greater than expected threat. The damage criterion settled on
by McNamara for determining the size of the strategic force was the
destruction of 20-25 percent of the Soviet population and 50 percent of
its industrial capacity. The programmed forces decided on in the early
1960s readily met this test. So readily that it seemed evident that our
forces were more than adequate. The primary purpose of the Assured
Destruction capabilities doctrine was to provide a metric for deciding
how much force was enough: it provided a basis for denying service and
Congressional claims for more money for strategic forces.'' Henry S.
Rowen [deputy assistant secretary of defense for international security
affairs, 1961-1964], ``Formulating Strategic Doctrine,'' in Report of
the Commission on the Organization of the Government for the Conduct of
Foreign Policy, Vol. 4, Appendix K: Adequacy of Current Organization:
Defense and Arms Control (Washington, DC: GPO, June 1975), p. 227
(emphasis in original).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
In the 1960s, for example, Secretary of Defense McNamara publicly
defined threats to specific percentages of Soviet population and
industry as the appropriate measure for U.S. deterrence threats. This
formulation facilitated relatively low U.S. nuclear force requirements
because the Soviet civilian targets declared key for deterrence were
relatively few in number and highly vulnerable. According to senior DOD
officials at the time, the ``primary purpose'' of this definition of
deterrence adequacy was to have a relatively easy-to-meet measure in
hand to answer the question ``how much force was enough''.\3\
This Minimum Deterrence methodology for defining force requirements
may be compatible with very low force levels, but is inadequate for six
basic reasons.
First, calculating the forces adequate for deterrence is not simply
a matter of identifying some preferred type of U.S. threat that is
compatible with very low force levels. The requirements for the most
effective deterrence strategy possible should drive our preferred
numbers, not vice versa.
In this regard, Harold Brown, Jimmy Carter's Secretary of Defense,
rightly concluded that deterrence should be based on a credible threat
to that which the opponent ``considers most important.'' This is an
initial starting point for prudently measuring ``how much is enough?''
Such deterrence threats will vary for different opponents, times and
contingencies, and may often be incompatible with the very low, fixed
number of U.S. nuclear weapons typically recommended by Minimum
Deterrence. For example, if our understanding of opponents and their
worldviews suggests that deterring them requires a variety of flexible
options and a basic threat to well-protected leaders, military forces,
and internal security forces, as was widely-thought to be the
requirement vis-a-vis the Soviet Union after the 1960s, then a Minimum
Deterrence-based force would not be compatible with effective
deterrence in plausible scenarios, even if it would be compatible with
an aggressive arms control agenda.
The GNZC report, for example, calls for the complete elimination of
the ICBM leg of the traditional U.S. triad of strategic forces
(bombers, ICBMs, and sea-based missiles), the elimination of the
nuclear B-52 bomber and U.S. tactical nuclear weapons, and deep
reductions in sea-based nuclear forces. These recommended reductions
would leave a small U.S. dyad of sea-based missiles and B-2 bombers.
Multiple expert assessments of a dyad consisting of sea-based missiles,
B-52 and B-2 bombers have concluded that such a dyad would reduce the
number of U.S. aim points for an opponent targeting of U.S. strategic
forces from about 455 to 5.\4\ A study by the Center for Strategic and
International Studies concluded that a dyad of sea-based missiles, B-2
and B-52 bombers, ``presents the worst case for survivability of all
the options. In a `bolt from the blue' attack, just five dedicated
nuclear strikes could take out all three strategic nuclear bomber bases
and the two submarine bases,'' \5\ leaving the United States with just
the SSBNs at sea. The GNZC's recommended elimination of ICBMs and
nuclear B-52 bombers could worsen this situation by further reducing
the number of U.S. targets to only three.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\4\ Dana J. Johnson, Christopher J. Bowie, and Robert P. Haffa,
``Triad, Dyad, Monad? Shaping U.S. Nuclear Forces for the Future,''
Presentation to the Air Force Association Mitchell Institute for
Airpower Studies, Northrop, 11, available at http://
www.northropgrumman.com/AboutUs/AnalysisCenter/Documents/pdfs/triad-
brief-to-afa-121009.pdf. This discussion is adapted with permission
from Mark Schneider, ``The Future of the U.S. ICBM Force,'' Comparative
Strategy, Vol. 3, No. 2 (Spring 2012), pp. 147-148.
\5\ Owen C. W. Price and Jenifer Mackby, eds., ``Debating 21st
Century Nuclear Issues,'' Washington, DC: Center For Strategic and
International Studies, 2007, 23, available at http://
www.northropgrumman.com/AboutUs/AnalysisCenter/Documents/pdfs/triad-
monograph.pdf. In 1998, the Defense Science Board concluded that,
``Without the ICBMs, surprise attacks against a handful of bomber bases
and sea-launched ballistic missile facilities, with plausible
deniability, could drastically alter the correlation of forces.'' See
General (ret.) John A. Shaud and Dale L. Hayden, ``The Success of our
ICBM Force: Capability, Commitment, and Communication,'' in Fiftieth
Anniversary of Intercontinental Missile, Air Force Space Command, High
Frontier, February 2009, 8, available at www.afspc.af.mil/shared/media/
document/AFD-090224-115.pdf.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The 2009 Bipartisan Strategic Posture Commission (the Perry-
Schlesinger Commission) saw substantial importance in the fact that by
sustaining the Triad, including the ICBM force, the United States could
not be subject to an effective small-scale counterforce attack.\6\ It
noted that, ``for the foreseeable future, there is no prospect that a
significant portion of the ICBM force can be destroyed by a preemptive
strike on the United States by small nuclear powers, including China.''
\7\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\6\ William Perry and James R. Schlesinger, America's Strategic
Posture: The Final Report of the Congressional Commission on the
Strategic Posture of the United States (Washington, DC: U.S. Institute
of Peace, 2009), pp. 25-26.
\7\ Ibid. p. 26.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
However, at the force levels recommended in the GNZC report and
with reported normal U.S. operating practices,\8\ only 3-4 U.S. missile
carrying submarines could be expected to survive an attack by a handful
of nuclear weapons, leaving 135-180 surviving U.S. warheads. That U.S.
retaliatory force could be dangerously inflexible and incapable of
covering even the extremely limited target sets outlined in the GNZC
report. For over five decades, all Democratic and Republican
administrations have sought to avoid such a condition because it could
significantly degrade our deterrence strategy and create provocative
vulnerabilities. Such recommendations for further U.S. deep reductions
are all the more troubling in light of the recently declared Russian
intention to deploy a nation-wide, missile defense ``umbrella'' by
2020.\9\ In light of such considerations, Gen. Cartwright's previous
emphasis on the value of the U.S. Triad and the ICBM force is much more
prudent.\10\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\8\ See, Schneider, ``The Future of the U.S. ICBM Force,'' op.
cit., p. 148.
\9\ Chief of the Russian General Staff, Gen. Nikolai Makarov, as
quoted in Bill Gertz, ``Inside the Ring,'' The Washington Times,
January 5, 2011, available at http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/
jan/5/inside-the-ring-442522451/print/.
\10\ See, U.S. Senate, Committee on Armed Services, Hearing to
Consider the Nominations of General James E. Cartwright, USMC, For
reappointment to the Grade of General and Reappointment as the Vice
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, July 9, 2009, p. 8.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The GNZC report, however, essentially dismisses this concern by
asserting that Russia and China are not now opponents and are unlikely
ever to be so again: ``The risk of nuclear confrontation between the
United States and either Russia or China belongs to the past, not the
future.'' Such a prediction fits the narrative for further deep
reductions, but it does not appear to fit Russian or Chinese actions
and statements concerning their ambitions and nuclear developments.
Over the past several years, top Russian leaders have made numerous
threats of pre-emptive and preventive nuclear attack against United
States allies and friends. Most recently, the Chief of the Russian
General Staff, Gen. Nikolai Makarov threatened a pre-emptive attack
against NATO States, and the threat was implicitly nuclear.\11\ (Please
see the attached compilation of Russian nuclear threats since 2007 by
Dr. Mark Schneider at the end of this prepared statement).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\11\ See, ``Russia's Top General Says Preemptive Strike Against
Missile Shield Possible,'' VOA News, May 3, 2012.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Such threats challenge Western sensibilities and faith in a
powerful, global nuclear ``taboo,'' but they are within the norm of
Russian behavior and doctrine regarding nuclear forces. To claim that
nuclear weapons will not be salient in contemporary or future United
States relations with Russia or China is an unwarranted and highly
optimistic prediction, not a prudent basis for calculating U.S.
deterrence strategies and forces. If wrong, Minimum Deterrence and
corresponding low force levels could invite serious risk and
provocations.
Second, the question of having an adequate deterrence capability
cannot be answered simply by determining if we can threaten some given,
contemporary set of targets. Deterrence must work in contemporary and
future crises, and we will come to those crises with the forces we have
in hand. No one knows with confidence ``how much of what force'' will
be necessary for credible deterrence now, and future requirements are
particularly arcane because opponents and threats can shift rapidly in
this post-cold war era and the requirements for deterrence
correspondingly can change rapidly. This reality complicates the task
of calculating ``how much is enough'' for deterrence. The priority
deterrence question now is whether we have sufficient force options and
diversity to threaten credibly the wide spectrum of targets that
opponents may value over the course of decades. In some plausible
scenarios, a small and undiversified U.S. nuclear force may be adequate
for deterrence, in other cases, effective deterrence may demand a large
and diverse nuclear arsenal with capabilities well beyond those
envisaged for Minimum Deterrence. Confident declarations that some
fixed Minimum Deterrence force level will prove adequate cannot be
based on substance; they reflect only hope and carry considerable risk.
Instead, the flexibility and resilience of our forces to adapt to
differing deterrence requirements should be considered a fundamental
requirement of U.S. force adequacy, and our standing capabilities must
be sufficiently large and diverse to adapt to a variety of shifting
deterrence demands. It may be convenient to pick some fixed, low number
and claim that 300, 400, or 500 weapons will be adequate for deterrence
now and in the future, but no one can possibly know if such statements
are true. We do know that the more diverse and flexible our forces, the
more likely we are to have the types of capabilities needed for
deterrence in a time of shifting and uncertain threats, stakes, and
opponents. But force diversity and flexibility does not come
automatically. It is important that our nuclear force posture and
infrastructure incorporate these characteristics and that they are
manifest to opponents and allies for deterrence and assurance purposes
respectively.
This need for force diversity and flexibility is one of the reasons
why the bipartisan Congressional Strategic Posture Commission
recommended unanimously to sustain the Triad, as did the 2010 Nuclear
Posture Review and the current and recent past Commanders of Strategic
Command. The Congressional Strategic Posture Commission reviewed
arguments in favor of a dyad and instead unanimously highlighted the
importance of the ``resilience and flexibility of the triad,''
qualities which have ``proven valuable as the number of operationally
deployed strategic nuclear weapons has declined'' and ``promise to
become even more important as systems age.'' \12\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\12\ Perry, Schlesinger, America's Strategic Posture: The Final
Report of the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the
United States, op. cit., pp. 25-26.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
In contrast, moving to a Minimum Deterrence Dyad as recommended in
the GNZC report would be the opposite of sustaining a diverse force
with flexibility and resilience. Minimum Deterrence force requirements
typically are intended to be compatible with deep arms control
reductions, as is stated in the GNZC report, but could easily prove to
be too narrow and inflexible to provide effective deterrence in a
shifting threat environment.
Adm. Rich Mies, a former Commander of Strategic Command, observed
recently that ``every STRATCOM force structure analysis'' in which he
was involved yielded two general truths: ``Diversity affords a hedge
against single-point failures and significantly complicates a potential
adversary's offensive and defensive planning considerations [and] there
is tyranny in low platform numbers that greatly restricts the
flexibility, survivability and resiliency of the force.''\13\ Indeed, a
small, undiversified, Minimum Deterrence force:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\13\ See Adm. Richard Mies, USN (ret.), ``Strategic Deterrence in
the 21st Century,'' Undersea Warfare (Spring 2012), p. 19.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
--Will offer fewer choices among warheads and delivery modes, thereby
limiting U.S. flexibility and the prospective effectiveness of
U.S. deterrence strategies;
--Is less likely to compensate for weaknesses in one area of our
nuclear force structure by strengths in another area;
--Will, vis-a-vis peer or near peer powers, inevitably move U.S.
deterrence strategies toward threats against civilian targets
and/or threats against a relatively small set of military
targets:
--the first such threat may well be incredible; and
--the second inadequate;
--Eases the technical/strategic challenges for opponents who might
seek to counter our deterrence strategies, now or in the
future;
--Will encourage rather than dissuade some opponents to compete and
challenge our deterrence strategies.
What level of U.S. forces is compatible with the requisite U.S.
flexibility and resilience? This question rightly elevates the
discussion of deterrence requirements beyond a fixed number of warheads
to include their diversity, and the number and diversity of their
launchers. In 2001, we judged 1,700-2,200 operationally deployed
warheads as sufficient, with no negotiated limits on launchers in the
Moscow Treaty.\14\ In 2009, Gen. Cartwright stated publicly that he
would ``be very concerned if we got down below'' 800 launchers,\15\ and
in 2010, Gen. Kevin Chilton, then-Commander of Strategic Command,
stated publicly that the 1,550 warhead ceiling of the New START treaty
was the lowest he could endorse given this need for flexibility.\16\ In
contrast, the GNZC report, as with most proposals for Minimum
Deterrence, recommends far lower force levels for weapons and
launchers.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\14\ Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, Annual Report to the
President and the Congress (Washington, DC: GPO, 2002), pp. 88-89,
available at http://history.defense.gov/resources/2002_DOD_AR.pdf.
\15\ Quoted from, U.S. Senate, Committee on Armed Services, Hearing
to Consider the Nominations of General James E. Cartwright, USMC, For
reappointment to the Grade of General and Reappointment as the Vice
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, July 9, 2009, p. 22.
\16\ Gen. Kevin Chilton, Senate Armed Services Committee, Hearing
to Receive Testimony on the Nuclear Posture Review, April 22, 2010, pp.
8, 13, 14; and Gen. Kevin Chilton, House Armed Services Committee,
Hearing, U.S. Nuclear Weapons Policy and Force Structure, April 15,
2010, p. 11.
\17\ ``North Korea's Nuclear Threat/Reinforcing Alliance With U.S.
Helps Bolster Nuclear Deterrence,'' The Daily Yomiuri, 23 March, 2007.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Third, deterrence is only one among several goals by which to
measure the adequacy of U.S. nuclear forces. It is impossible to
measure U.S. force requirements by focusing on deterrence alone. United
States forces must also contribute to the assurance of our allies and
friends. This assurance goal is different from deterrence and has
different specific requirements. The United States has nuclear
assurance commitments to 30 or more allies and the push for Minimum
Deterrence undoubtedly threatens our capability to assure allies in
some important cases.
Assurance commitments establish diverse quantitative and
qualitative requirements not included in Minimum Deterrence
calculations. For example, President John Kennedy identified ``second-
to-none'' as the appropriate standard for the purpose of protecting
allies and friends; the Nixon administration identified ``essential
equivalence'' as a necessary measure. And, most recently, some allied
leaders have identified specific quantitative and qualitative standards
for U.S. nuclear forces to provide assurance.
For example, Japanese Defense Minister Fumio Kyuma explicitly
linked quantitative and qualitative standards to the credibility of the
U.S. extended nuclear deterrent: he called for ``highly accurate
nuclear-tipped cruise missiles,'' and stated that, ``The strongest
deterrence would be when the United States explicitly says, `If you
drop one nuclear bomb on Japan, the United States will retaliate by
dropping 10 on you'.'' \17\ More recently, key allies have argued that
the credibility of U.S. extended deterrence commitments depends on
specific types of U.S. nuclear capabilities, including low-yield and
penetrating nuclear weapons, the U.S. capability to threaten a wide
variety of targets, and the capability ``to deploy forces in a way that
is either visible or stealthy, as circumstances may demand.'' \18\
Again, it is very convenient to claim that 300, 400, or 500 U.S.
weapons will be adequate for assurance, but such a target-based measure
may have little or nothing to do with the quantity or types of U.S.
nuclear forces needed to assure our allies of the credibility of our
extended nuclear deterrent. U.S. unilateral reductions to low force
levels as recommended by the GNZC report certainly would destroy any
remaining U.S. claims of ``second to none'' or ``essential
equivalence,'' and raise deep concerns among at least some key allies
and friends.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\18\ Perry, Schlesinger, American's Strategic Posture: The Final
Report of the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the
United States, op. cit., pp. 20-21; and, testimony of Dr. Johnny Foster
regarding the report of the Congressional Strategic Posture Commission,
in, U.S. Senate, Senate Armed Services Committee, Hearing on the Report
of the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United
States, May 7, 2009, available at: http://votesmart.org/
speech_detail.php?sc_id=458591&keyword=&phrase=&contain=.
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Proponents of Minimum Deterrence typically respond to this concern
with the assertion--repeated in the GNZC report--that conventional
forces can provide assurance for allies that is ``far more credible''
than are U.S. nuclear forces. This narrative fits the policy line for
further deep nuclear reductions, but, U.S. movement to advanced
conventional strategic forces has been slow and limited, and the actual
evidence is that some allies find unique assurance in a credible U.S.
nuclear guarantee. They now state openly that if U.S. nuclear
credibility wanes, they will be compelled to find their own independent
deterrence capabilities. Japanese, South Korean and Turkish leaders
have openly made this point, as have some friends and allies in the
Middle East. This should not be surprising: West Germany was clear that
it could agree to the 1969 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty only
because of the assurance it found in a credible U.S. nuclear umbrella.
The same was true for South Korea.\19\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\19\ See Keith Payne, Thomas Scheber, Kurt Guthe, U.S. Extended
Deterrence and Assurance for Allies in Northeast Asia (Fairfax, VA:
National Institute Press, 2010), pp. 9-10.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
This need expressed by some allies for credible U.S. nuclear
assurance is fully understandable. U.S. advanced conventional forces
are very likely to contribute usefully to deterrence in some cases.
But, in the context of a conventional conflict involving United States
``shock and awe,'' the threat of ``more of the same'' may simply be
insufficient to deter a committed aggressor.\20\ In contrast, nuclear
weapons pose the threat of escalation to incalculable consequences and
thereby appear unique in countering the overly-optimistic expectations
or high cost-tolerances that often inspire aggression. This factor may
explain why nuclear deterrence appears to have been the reason Saddam
Hussein did not employ chemical or biological weapons during the first
gulf war. In addition, given events over the past decade, the U.S. will
to engage in another high-cost, large-scale projection of conventional
force into a distant theater on behalf of friends and allies may appear
insufficiently lethal or credible to assure some vulnerable allies or
to deter some determined or eccentric foes. Non-nuclear threats may
someday be an adequate substitute for nuclear threats for assurance
purposes, but that day has not arrived per the expressed views of some
key allies. And, with regard to the U.S. goal of assurance, it is their
views of U.S. adequacy that matter.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\20\ In 1999, allies saw persistent and concerted NATO conventional
air strikes fail to destroy a deep tunnel complex at the Pristina
Airport in Kosovo. As a British inspector present at the time reported,
``On June 11, hours after NATO halted its bombing and just before the
Serb military began withdrawing, 11 Mig-21 fighters emerged from the
tunnels and took off for Yugoslavia.'' Tim Ripley, ``Kosovo: A Bomb
Damage Assessment,'' Jane's Intelligence Review, Vol. 11, No. 9
(September 1999), p. 11.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fourth, the push for Minimum Deterrence puts at risk the U.S.
capability to deter and to assure for the purpose of strengthening
global cooperation on nuclear non-proliferation--the rationale repeated
in the GNZC report. To be specific, the claim is that further U.S.
nuclear reductions would somehow contribute greatly to nuclear non-
proliferation. This asserted positive linkage between further U.S.
nuclear reductions and more effective non-proliferation efforts is
wholly speculative, and I believe mistaken.\21\ Further U.S. nuclear
reductions are unlikely to improve the behavior of recalcitrant
proliferators or their enablers. And, on the available evidence, it is
reasonable to expect that a U.S. transition to Minimum Deterrence would
increase the incentives for some U.S. friends and allies who now rely
on the U.S. extended nuclear deterrent to develop or acquire their own
independent means for nuclear deterrence. Consequently, the net effect
of movement toward Minimum Deterrence may well be to increase nuclear
proliferation rather than to strengthen nonproliferation. This would be
a serious mistake from which we might not easily recover.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\21\ See the pertinent discussion by Chris Ford, ``Disarmament
Versus Nonproliferation?'' posted at the New Paradigms Forum Web site
on October 29, 2010, available at: http://www.NewParadigmsForum.com/
NPFtestsite/?p=531.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The GNZC report also asserts that further U.S. unilateral nuclear
reductions would encourage Russia and China to consider ``comparable
unilateral actions.'' Perhaps so; but experience suggests not. Harold
Brown's observation about the Soviet Union appears to apply equally to
Russia and China today: ``When we build, they build; when we cut, they
build.''
Fifth, proponents of Minimum Deterrence also claim that further
deep force reductions will save scarce U.S. defense dollars. I am
dubious of this claim. The United States and NATO came to rely on
nuclear deterrence in general because it was judged to be a feasible
and much cheaper avenue for security than the buildup of conventional
forces otherwise necessary. There obviously is a cost to sustaining a
flexible and diverse nuclear arsenal, including the nuclear Triad. But,
to state that monies would not be needed for this purpose if we
abandoned such an arsenal is to state the obvious. The real question in
this regard is the net cost of further deep nuclear reductions and
Minimum Deterrence given the corresponding, necessary buildup of
advanced conventional arms, a buildup acknowledged by the authors of
the GNZC report. I certainly support advanced U.S. conventional forces
as a complement to U.S. nuclear capabilities. But to claim savings from
Minimum Deterrence without also calculating the added cost for the
advanced conventional forces that supposedly can substitute for
deterrence purposes is a common error. I do not know how comparisons of
net costs might appear at this time, but I do know that claiming
savings simply from Minimum Deterrence and abandonment of the Triad is
at best a half-truth.
Sixth, and finally, the GNZC report, like others, justifies the
push for Minimum Deterrence as a necessary step en route to global
nuclear zero--one of the Obama administration's stated priority goals.
It should be recalled, however, that the bipartisan Congressional
Strategic Posture Commission concluded unanimously that: ``The
conditions that might make the elimination of nuclear weapons possible
are not present today and establishing such conditions would require a
fundamental transformation of the world political order.'' The
establishment of a powerful and reliable global collective security
system for the first time in history would be such a fundamental global
transformation; further, U.S. reductions would not. Winston Churchill
noted along these lines: ``Be careful above all things not to let go of
the atomic weapon until you are sure and more than sure that other
means of preserving peace are in your hands.'' There is no evidence at
this point of movement toward a serious, reliable global collective
security system; much less do we have it in hand.
Consequently, before the pursuit of nuclear zero puts at risk U.S.
capabilities to deter and to assure credibly, and also threatens to
increase nuclear proliferation, it is important to recall that over the
course of centuries we have learned, unfortunately, that conventional
deterrence periodically fails catastrophically. During the final five
non-nuclear decades of the last century, the world suffered
approximately 110 million casualties in just 10 years of warfare. The
subsequent almost seven decades of nuclear deterrence have been much
more benign by comparison (see the attached pertinent graphic by Adm.
Richard Mies, used here with permission). Humankind was at the nuclear
zero ``mountaintop'' from the beginning of history until 1945, and that
condition often was ugly and brutal on a scale not repeated since 1945,
thanks at least in part to nuclear deterrence. Simple prudence suggests
that we not put U.S. strategies for nuclear deterrence at risk in a
quest to go back to that mountaintop we so desperately sought
previously to leave.
In summary, I am skeptical of the GNZC report and further U.S. deep
nuclear reductions at this point not for reasons of ``old think,'' but
because the supposed benefits are dubious or manifestly illusory and
the effects may be to undermine deterrence and assurance, and to
increase nuclear proliferation. Gen. Larry Welsh, a former Commander of
the Strategic Air Command and Air Force Chief of Staff, recently
observed, ``The only basis for the idea that drastically reducing the
number of nukes we have would magically make us safer and help
eliminate other nuclear dangers is hope. But hope is not a plan, and
hope is not a basis for security. Hope does not defend us.'' And, I
will add, the unwarranted hopes reflected in the GNZC's most recent
proposal for Minimum Deterrence should not be the basis for our
calculations of ``how much is enough?''
______
Russian Threats of Nuclear Targeting, Including First or Preemptive
Uses of Nuclear Forces
dr. mark schneider
senior analyst, national institute for public policy
Then-Defense Minister, Sergei Ivanov, February 2007:
``As regard to [the] use of nuclear weapons in case of aggression,
of course [it will use them in this case]. What else were they built
for?'' \1\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ ``Russia Reserves Right to Preemptive Strikes,'' Moscow
Agentstvo Voyennykh Nosostey, February 7, 2007. Transcribed in Open
Source Center, Doc. ID: CEP200707950213.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Statements by Colonel General Nikolay Solovtsov, then commander of the
Strategic Missile Troops 2007-2008.
``[Correspondent] Russia has reacted sharply to the statement by
the prime ministers of Poland and the Czech Republic. The commander of
Strategic Missile Troops [SMT], Nikolay Solovtsov, said that if need
be, our missiles would be targeted on the new ABM facilities, if they
are built.'' \2\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ ``General says Russia may target missile defence sites in
Eastern Europe,'' Moscow Channel One Television, February 19, 2007.
Translated in Open Source Center, Doc. ID: CEP20070219950390.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
``We have to take measures that will prevent the devaluation of the
Russian nuclear deterrence potential. I do not rule out that our
political and military administration may target some of our
intercontinental ballistic missiles at the aforesaid missile defense
facilities in Poland and the Czech Republic.'' \3\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\3\ ``Solovtsov: Russian Missiles May Be Targeted At US ABM Sites
in Europe,'' Moscow, Agentstvo Voyennykh Novostey, December 17, 2007.
Transcribed by Open Source Center Doc. ID: CEP20071217950364.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
``I cannot exclude that, in the event that the country's highest
military-political leadership will make the appropriate decision, the
indicated missile defense facilities in Poland and the Czech Republic
and also other similar facilities in the future could be selected as
targets for our intercontinental ballistic missiles'', the general
stated. ``The RVSN is compelled to take steps, which will not permit
the devaluation of the Russian nuclear deterrence potential under any
conditions.'' \4\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\4\ Yuriy Gavrilov, ``The Nuclear Reaction: Strategic Missile
Complexes Could Be Retargeted at Poland and the Czech Republic,''
Moscow Rossiyskaya Gazeta, September 11, 2008. Translated by Open
Source Center Doc. ID: CEP20080911358018.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Statements by General Yury Baluyevskiy, then Chief of the General
Staff, 2007-2008:
``If we see that these facilities pose a threat to Russia, these
targets will be included in the lists of our planners--strategic,
nuclear or others. The latter is a technicality.'' \5\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\5\ ``Baluyevskiy Says US European Missile Defense Poses Threat to
Russia,'' InternetWebDigest. RU, May 3, 2007. Translated in Open Source
Center, Doc. ID: CEP20070504358001CEP2007054358001.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
``We do not intend to attack anyone. But all our partners must
realize that for the protection of Russia and its allies, if necessary,
the Armed Forces will be used, including preventively and with the use
of nuclear weapons.'' \6\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\6\ ``Russia will use nuclear weapons if necessary--chief of
staff,'' Moscow ITAR-TASS, January 19, 2008. Transcribed in Open Source
Center, Doc. ID: CEP20080119950015.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Colonel General Anatoly Nogovitsyn, Defense Ministry Spokesman, August
2008:
``Poland is making itself a target. This is 100 percent'' certain,
Russia's Interfax news agency quoted General Anatoly Nogovitsyn as
saying.
``It becomes a target for attack. Such targets are destroyed as a
first priority,'' Gen Nogovitsyn was quoted as saying.
He added that Russia's military doctrine sanctions the use of
nuclear weapons `` . . . against the allies of countries having nuclear
weapons if they in some way help them,'' Interfax said.\7\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\7\ Damien McElroy, ``Russian general says Poland a nuclear
`target','' August 15, 2008, available at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/
news/worldnews/europe/georgia/2564639/Russian-general-says-Poland-a-
nuclear-target-as-Condoleezza-Rice-arrives-in-Georgia.html>.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nikolay Patrushev, the Secretary of the Russian Security Council
October 2009:
``We have corrected the conditions for use of nuclear weapons to
resist aggression with conventional forces not only in large-scale
wars, but also in regional or even a local one . . . There is also a
multiple-options provision for use of nuclear weapons depending on the
situation and intentions of the potential enemy. `In a situation
critical for national security, we don't exclude a preventive nuclear
strike at the aggressor'.'' \8\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\8\ ``Russia to broaden nuclear strike options,'' Russia Today,
October 14, 2009, available at: .
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Lt. General Andrey Shvaychenko, then Commander of the Strategic Missile
Troops, December 2009.
In Shvaychenko's opinion, ``this defines a key role played by the
RVSN [the Strategic Missile Forces] and the strategic nuclear forces as
a whole in ensuring Russia's security. In peacetime, they are intended
to ensure deterrence of large-scale non-nuclear or nuclear aggression
against Russia and its allies. In a conventional war, they ensure that
the opponent is forced to cease hostilities, on advantageous conditions
for Russia, by means of single or multiple preventive strikes against
the aggressors' most important facilities. In a nuclear war, they
ensure the destruction of facilities of the opponent's military and
economic potential by means of an initial massive nuclear missile
strike and subsequent multiple and single nuclear missile strikes,''
the commander explained.\9\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\9\ ``Russia may face large-scale military attack, says Strategic
Missile Troops chief,'' Moscow ITAR-TASS, December 11, 2009. Translated
by Open Source Center Doc. ID: CEP20091216950151.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lt-Gen Vladimir Gagarin, then-Deputy Commander of Russia's Strategic
Missile Troops, December 2009:
``So, the situation is then analysed and orders are issued--either,
maybe, to launch a massive nuclear strike with the use of everything
involved in that initial massive nuclear strike; or it could be group
strikes, that is to say with part [of the forces] used; or it could be
single strikes, one or two launch systems. Once again, the
authorization for the launch to be executed, to be carried out, is
issued by the Russian Federation president, by our supreme commander-
in-chief.'' \10\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\10\ ``Russian Strategic Missile Troops general details re-
armament, structure--more,'' Moscow Ekho Moskvy Radio, September 5,
2009. Translated by Open Source Center Doc. ID: CEP20090911950207.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lt.-General Sergei Karakayev, Commander of the Strategic Missile
Troops, December 2011:
``From a technical viewpoint, there are no restrictions on the
possibility of the use of missiles by RVSN. It does not take a long
time to select a target and enter it in the flight duty of an
intercontinental ballistic missile,'' Karakayev said in response to a
question as to whether changes may be made to the plans of RVSN combat
use due to the creation of objects of the U.S. missile defense systems
in Europe and the lack of progress in the negotiations between Russia
and the U.S. on the matter.
Statements by President Putin, 2007-2008:
Just before a summit with President Bush he stated, ``I draw your
attention and that of your readers to the fact that, for the first time
in history--and I want to emphasize this--there are elements of the
U.S. nuclear capability [missile defense interceptors] on the European
continent . . . If the American nuclear potential grows in European
territory, we have to give ourselves new targets in Europe.''
``We will have to target our missiles at sites which, in our
opinion, may threaten our national security.''.
3) In a press conference with the President of Poland he stated,
``If such systems are deployed on the territory of Poland, which we
believe will be used to attempt or to neutralize our nuclear missile
potential, leading to total disruption of the strategic balance in the
world and will threaten our national security, then what should we do?
We will have to take some retaliatory measures, which may include
retargeting some of our strike missile systems onto those facilities,
which in our opinion will be a threat to us. We would not like to do
this.''
At a press conference President Putin said, ``Our General Staff and
experts believe that this system [the proposed deployment of a missile
defense site in Poland] threatens our national security, and if it does
appear, we will be forced to respond in an appropriate manner. We will
then probably be forced to retarget some of our missile systems at
these systems, which threaten us.'' \11\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\11\ ``Russian President Putin's uncensored and amazing Interview
with G8 Newspaper Journalists,'' June 9, 2007, available at: http://
engforum.pravda.ru/index.php?/topic/124795-russian-president-putins-
uncensored-and-amazing-interview-with-g8-journalists/.: ``Russia may
target missiles at Ukraine in case of security threat--Putin,''
Interfax, February 14, 2008, available at: http://en.trend.az/news/cis/
russia/1135177.; ``Putin presser: Russia may have to retarget missiles
at Poland,'' Moscow Vesti TV, February 14, 2008. Translated by Open
Source Center Doc. ID: CEP20080214950197.; ``Highlights from Putin's 14
Feb News Conference,'' OSC Feature--Vesti TV, February 14, 2008.
Translated by Open Source Center Doc. ID: FEA20080215541987.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
General Nikolai Makarov, Chief of the General Staff, 2011-2012:
```The possibility of local armed conflicts virtually along the
entire perimeter of the border has grown dramatically,' Makarov said.
`I cannot rule out that, in certain circumstances, local and regional
armed conflicts could grow into a large-scale war, possibly even with
nuclear weapons'.'' \12\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\12\ Robert Bridge, ``Border Alert: Nuke war risk rising, Russia
warns,'' November 17, 2011, available at: http://rt.com/politics/
makarov-nuclear-russia-nato-575/.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
``Asked about whether there existed a risk of local conflicts near
Russian borders developing into a full-scale war General Makarov said,
``I do not rule out such a possibility.'' \13\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\13\ ``No understanding between Russia, West on missile defense--
General Staff,'' ITAR-TASS, December 7, 2011, available at: http://
www.itar-tass.com/en/c154/291946.html.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
``Taking into account a missile defense system's destabilizing
nature, that is, the creation of an illusion that a disarming strike
can be launched with impunity, a decision on preemptive employment of
the attack weapons available could be made when the situation worsens,'
Makarov said at an international conference on Missile Defense Factor
in Establishing New Security Environment in Moscow on Thursday.
The deployment of new attack weapons in the south and northwest of
Russia to strike missile defense sites, including the deployment of the
Iskander missile systems in the Kaliningrad region, is among the
possible options for destroying missile defense infrastructure in
Europe.'' \14\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\14\ ``Russia Might Strike European Missile Defense Sites
Preemptively--Military Official (Part 2),'' Interfax, May 3, 2012,
available at: http://www.interfax.co.uk/russia-cis-general-news-
bulletins-in-english/russia-might-strike-european-missile-defense-
sites-preemptively-military-
official-part-2-2/.
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Statements by President Medvedev, 2008-2011:
``During televised remarks President Medvedev said, `I would add
something about what we have had to face in recent years: what is it?
It is the construction of a global missile defense system, the
installation of military bases around Russia, the unbridled expansion
of NATO and other similar `presents' for Russia we therefore have every
reason to believe that they are simply testing our strength. Of course
we will not let ourselves be dragged into an arms race. But we must
take this into account in defense expenditures. And we will continue to
reliably protect the safety of the citizens of Russia. Therefore, I
will now announce some of the measures that will be taken. In
particular measures to effectively counter the persistent and
consistent attempts of the current American administration to install
new elements of a global missile defense system in Europe. For example,
we had planned to decommission three missile regiments of a missile
division deployed in Kozelsk from combat readiness and to disband the
division by 2010. I have decided to abstain from these plans. Nothing
will disband. Moreover, we will deploy the Iskander missile system in
the Kaliningrad Region to be able, if necessary, to neutralize the
missile defense system. Naturally, we envisage using the resources of
the Russian Navy for these purposes as well.'.'' \15\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\15\ ``Medvedev Russia will deploy Iskander in Kaliningrad to
neutralize U.S. missile threats,'' available at: http://
mishasrussiablog.blogspot.com/2008/11/medevev-russia-will-deploy-
iskanders-in.html.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
``Second, protective cover of Russia's strategic nuclear weapons
will be reinforced as a priority measure under the programme to develop
our air and space defences.
Third, the new strategic ballistic missiles commissioned by the
Strategic Missile Forces and the Navy will be equipped with advanced
missile defence penetration systems and new highly effective warheads.
Fourth, I have instructed the Armed Forces to draw up measures for
disabling missile defence system data and guidance systems if need be.
These measures will be adequate, effective, and low-cost.
Fifth, if the above measures prove insufficient, the Russian
Federation will deploy modern offensive weapon systems in the west and
south of the country, ensuring our ability to take out any part of the
United States missile defence system in Europe. One step in this
process will be to deploy Iskander missiles in Kaliningrad Region.''
\16\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\16\ ``Statement in connection with the situation concerning the
NATO countries' missile defence system in Europe,'' Office of the
President of the Russian Federation, November 23, 2011, available at:
http://eng.kremlin.ru/news/3115 able and constructive approach from our
Western partners.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Statement by Defense Anatoliy Serdyukov February 2010:
``If additional threats emerge in Europe, the Iskander will be
deployed (in Kaliningrad Region).'' \17\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\17\ ``Russian defence minister explains missile deployment
statement,'' Interfax, February 19, 2010, available at: http://
wnc.dialog.com/.
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Senator Feinstein. Thank you very much, Dr. Payne, and
thank all three of you.
We'll now begin a round of questions.
As both General Cartwright and Ambassador Pickering have
pointed out, Russia is already below the New START limits on
deployed strategic delivery vehicles and warheads, and this is
because they're retiring their older systems faster than
they're adding new systems. However, it's my understanding that
Russia is considering the development of a new intercontinental
ballistic missile that can carry up to 10 warheads.
So here's the question: Could reciprocal reductions or a
new bilateral arms control agreement dissuade Russia from
moving forward with its destabilizing nuclear modernization
programs, such as a new ICBM? Who wants to take that? General
Cartwright.
General Cartwright. I'll start and let the others follow on
it.
Senator Feinstein. Okay, we'll go down the line.
General Cartwright. I think that, one, you've characterized
the Russian reductions very accurately as to the probable
motive of the transition from older systems to newer systems.
The development of those systems, the pace at which they're
being fielded, is behind the pace at which they're retiring.
We've faced much the same problem in this country. We'll go
through that same evolution as we start to move forward.
I'm not sure that it's a question of dissuading them,
although that may be one of the attributes of the discussion.
It's probably a question of giving them to opportunity for an
alternative approach, and that's what Ambassador Pickering was
trying to, I think, illustrate, is that if we were to follow
suit now, which would require no treaty change, but move from
where we are, instead of taking 7 years to get down to 1,550,
to move more quickly to match the Russians and have that
dialogue with them, which requires no real change in any
treaties, the demonstration of where we're heading would be
confirmed for them and that may alter their calculus about how
much they want to spend and how much they want to build and how
much they need to modernize.
Like us, they may choose to modernize one element over
another or they may choose to just have smaller forces and have
them of the same character. That's really up to them. But you
can see in the open press that the character of their force is
moving away from strategic towards tactical. They believe the
adversaries they have to worry about on the most likely side
are adversaries that are much closer to their homeland. They
are not the ICBM-type threats that they're worried about.
As they change the character of their force, the
opportunity to have a dialogue with us to create a stable
transition so that they can change the character of their force
and the size of it and we can do the same I think is an
opportunity, not a vulnerability.
Senator Feinstein. Ambassador, do you have a comment?
Ambassador Pickering. I would only add, I've spent a lot of
time in Russia and a lot of time after having been in Russia
with Russians. My sense is that they understand the enormous
devastation that would result from the failure of deterrence.
They themselves have had a famous incident or two in which
they were called upon seemingly to make very critical decisions
on very short notice and found it extremely difficult and very
destabilizing. I think that they value highly the ability to
speak with us about where and how these directions of change
might be mutually advantageous. It's been true for the last 25
years.
So I agree entirely with what General Cartwright has said,
that there is an opportunity for further new openings of
discussion. There are extreme budgetary pressures on them as
well that have in fact helped, if I could put it that way and
use that word advisedly, to guide the direction of their own
strategic construction, and they seem to be moving for another
generation to be moving for another generation, to seem, but
deliberately and very carefully, and maybe obviously wishing to
solve completely all the technical problems before they invest
significant amounts of new money.
That deliberation is very helpful. So your suggestion that
would we find a way rapidly to convince them not to go in a
particular direction is probably a conclusion that's more
informed by optimism than reality. But nevertheless, the
general process I think can be a very useful one, and if we
look back over the 20 to 25 or 30 years we've been engaged in
these processes with the Russians, I believe that it is well
worth our time and our effort in investing in those kinds of
conversations, to see in fact whether we can produce a more
stable, more realistic, still primarily heavily biased toward
defending our own interests, kind of a political and strategic
set of relationships, and the effort here is to try to outline
that. Obviously, it takes us beyond where we have been in
traditional cold war thinking, and I think that Dr. Payne,
whose views I respect very, very much, is still pretty much
giving us the traditional cold war thinking about this.
Not that I would advocate being fast and loose with any of
this. I think every step of the way we have to be exquisitely
careful, particularly over the verification systems that will
buttress and undermine our confidence that breakout is not on
the mind of anybody.
Senator Feinstein. Thank you very much.
My time has expired, but, Dr. Payne, I do want to give you
a chance to respond, and then we'll go to Senator Alexander.
Dr. Payne. Thank you. I'd be happy to respond shortly to
that. I see a real disconnect here, particularly with the
recommendations from the commission's report, because in
addition to the new heavy ICBM, Madam Chairwoman, that you
rightly described, the announced Russian plans are for two
other new ICBMs, a new stealthy bomber, and the deployment of
new nuclear cruise missiles. There's also a report of a
development of a fifth generation nuclear-carrying, nuclear
missile-carrying submarine, and to carry nuclear cruise
missiles. New advanced nuclear warheads are reportedly being
deployed, including low-yield, low collateral damage warheads.
And more recently, the Russians have announced plans to move
towards nationwide ballistic missile defense, including by the
year 2020.
My concern is that with that level of modernization program
and with that emphasis on nuclear weapons, that the Russians
have both the strategic level and at the tactical level, it
would be extremely difficult to engage the Russians in
negotiations if we were to follow the program outlined in the
commission's report. Essentially, you have a very robust
nuclear modernization program on the Russians' side, leading
towards heavily MIRVed nuclear systems, and I believe that
those are a real problem, particularly if we move to a
direction of a vulnerable force structure such as is presented
in the commission's report.
As I said, there's a disconnect between the Russians moving
in that direction, our moving in a much less robust direction,
and then expecting us to be able to come up with a good arms
control agreement with the Russians in that context.
Senator Feinstein. Thank you very much.
Senator Alexander.
Senator Alexander. Thank you, Madam Chairman.
General Cartwright, your testimony says the existing
plutonium facility at Los Alamos--I believe it says this--could
accommodate plutonium pit requirements in the future, producing
as many as 80 pits a year; and that the new facility, which we
call CMRR, wouldn't be needed. I talked not long ago with the
Los Alamos director, who told me he'd be hard pressed to make
more than 30 pits per year.
Can you discuss that discrepancy? Also, isn't it true that
as long as we have nuclear weapons, even a lower number, that
we'll still need a new plutonium facility in the future?
General Cartwright. I think we're within four, five, six of
the same number. In other words, what the commission looked at
was taking the planned smallest option, which was an option
that got you somewhere between 30 and 40 for a single shift for
a year, and going to dual shift in a crisis that would take you
up to somewhere in the 70 to 80 number depending on what you
could get.
The tooling, the floor space of those issues, the floor
space was one of the critical issues.
Senator Alexander. So you're saying it's as simple as going
to two shifts?
General Cartwright. It's not simple because you have----
Senator Alexander. But you're saying it could be done?
General Cartwright. Right. But it can be done in an
extreme.
We would say, and I would agree with him, that you would
want to stay in a production rate that was somewhere in the 15
to 20 per year, just to replace and to ensure that you protect
the pedigree of the test, the quality of the material that we
have today. But if you increase the number of shifts, it is
believed that the floor space then becomes the constraint and
that constraint would limit you to somewhere in the
neighborhood of 80 per year in running the plant, so to speak,
full up.
Senator Alexander. Well, that's interesting. I mean, I
didn't ask you about shifts, so I'll do that next.
But isn't it true that as long as we have nuclear weapons,
even a lower number, we'll need a new plutonium facility in the
future? Or do you think the current one we have is adequate?
General Cartwright. The current one that we have is
adequate today, but I do agree that we will eventually need a
facility. The question is to size it appropriately and to
understand exactly why you're building it under the stockpile
stewardship side of the equation also, the science part of
this.
The question becomes do you need it now, number one; and
then, number two, do you have existing infrastructure that
could accommodate it or do you need a whole new facility?
That's the question, and I would certainly turn to the experts
to get the answer to that. But what I believe is right now the
thought process is we need it now. I think the administration
has demonstrated already that that's not necessarily the case.
Senator Alexander. Ambassador Pickering or Dr. Payne, do
you have any comment on that?
That's a very important point, General Cartwright, and one
which I hadn't even considered, about the two shifts in terms
of the need for the CMRR.
Are you familiar enough with that process to say whether a
different sort of facility is needed, a new way? Do we need a
new strategy for producing plutonium pits within the current
facility? Are you familiar enough with the process to make a
comment on that?
General Cartwright. No, it would be the same process. In
fact, we've already invested and bought the tools for a second
group to run. It is a floor space issue. This again is to the
level of detail that you probably don't want to go to, but you
have two buildings sitting side by side----
Senator Alexander. I've seen that.
General Cartwright [continuing]. With a gap between. You
can connect and increase the floor space to what people believe
would get you somewhere in the neighborhood of the ability to
do 80 per year.
Senator Alexander. So you're basically saying that,
whatever the current level of production is, whether it's 20 or
30 or you think it might be even higher than that, that if the
floor space issue is solved that you can double that production
within the same facility?
General Cartwright. With additional shifts.
Senator Alexander. With additional shifts, would double the
facility. Do you have any idea as to the cost? Is solving the
floor space issue a substantial cost?
General Cartwright. No, it's not. It has been costed out by
the lab.
Senator Alexander. Thank you, Madam Chairman. My time is
up.
Senator Feinstein. Thank you very much, Senator.
Senator Tester, welcome. It's good to have you here.
Senator Tester. Thank you, and thanks for having this
hearing. I want to thank everybody for being here, of course.
You started out, General Cartwright, by saying these are
50-year decisions and I don't really know where to start, so
I'm going to start 50 years ago. In 1962 I was entering
elementary school, my first year, and I live in the neck of the
woods in north central Montana where they were building ICBMs,
where the teacher would tell us what we were to do in the case
of a nuclear attack, head to a bomb shelter.
I remember this stuff very vividly, where when we were out
riding horses we'd see tinfoil that looked like it was shredded
and wrapped in paper, that my folks said: Don't touch that;
that's radioactive and it could have some impacts on you. The
Cuban nuclear crisis was evident.
So what I want to talk about, because the deterrent value
of these nuclear forces has been something that has been part
of what I've, quite frankly, lived through since I can
remember, and the ICBMs have been a big part of that deterrent.
Not to put you on the spot, but 3 years ago, General
Cartwright, you had testimony that endorsed the value of the
triad, the nuclear triad, and our ICBM force, saying it was a
key priority for our military to preserve that triad. What has
changed in the last 3 years?
General Cartwright. Three years ago we were still
developing missile defense. We did not have what I would call a
robust technical line towards a conventional alternative to the
ICBM force that we have today, in other words, the same
missiles with conventional warheads. That has changed. It's not
ready for fielding yet, but it is real and in the test
programs.
We did not have the nonkinetic capabilities that we have
today. We had a very capable conventional force 3 years ago.
That part of the capability had come. But the passive defenses
were also not in place, and when I talk about passive defenses
I'm talking about the things that protect the buildings, that
go underground to protect the leadership, things that you would
bring in on a natural basis, that not only address the
strategic side, but address the terrorist side of the
equation--standoff distances from buildings and what-not.
So you have now what in the last two administrations prior
to this were the things that they wanted to see built out,
which the commission that Keith, Dr. Payne, had referred to,
were the things that we did not have in a credible state of
capability at that time.
Over the next 10 years, where we are today, it's reasonable
to expect that our missile defenses are in fact going to be
capable and are capable today, particularly at the regional
level. We are not trying to make them capable yet at the
strategic level. That's something we've avoided for stability
reasons.
Conventional capabilities that are prompt global strike in
nature, that allow us to address problems that today we can
only address with nuclear weapons, give us plausible
alternatives. So it is that stack-up, in addition to the fact
that our infrastructure and our delivery systems need to be
reconstituted over the next 10 to 15 years as we start into
that program, that this is the time to have that discussion. So
that in general is the reason.
Senator Tester. Let me kick it, because this has been a
nice discussion--let me kick it over to Dr. Payne. You heard
what the General just said. Where do you disagree with that?
Dr. Payne. I agree with General Cartwright's endorsement of
ballistic missile defense and advanced conventional weapons,
very much so, as he knows. My concern with the recommendations
from the report, however, are that the reductions identified
would leave U.S. retaliatory forces vulnerable to a handful of
nuclear weapons. It's probably the worst of all worlds, is to
have a lethal capability that is very vulnerable to an
opponent.
The force structure that is recommended in the report would
be quite vulnerable, because it eliminates the ICBM, it
eliminates the B-52. Essentially what you're doing is reducing
down to essentially a handful of targets that an opponent might
envision, envisage, as the target set to strike the United
States. That strikes me as a very dangerous condition to put
the United States in, and it's something, as I said in my
opening remarks, that all Republican and Democratic
administrations have sought to avoid for 50 years.
Senator Tester. Okay. I don't know if I'll be around for
the next round because I've got a meeting at 11:15. I would
just say this. I think things have changed. One of the things I
don't understand is why the ICBMs, which were the most cost-
effective of the triad, are the ones that are being eliminated,
number one.
Number two, I think we do have different challenges than we
had when I was growing up. I mean, Russia was going to lob them
over on us, we would lob them on them, and so it was mutual
destruction for both of us, and so nothing happened. And it's
why, as you pointed out, we haven't had the kind of losses--or
maybe it was Dr. Payne--since World War II.
On the other side of the coin, it is a different world now
in that terrorists and people can figure out how to make these
bombs, and how do we stop that? Along with what Chairman
Feinstein talked about, the fact that Russia--and you guys,
too--may be developing new weapons that we need to be concerned
about. When they say they're reducing their stockpile, are they
really? You know what I mean? I mean trust and verify stuff.
Thank you guys very much.
Senator Feinstein. Thank you very much, Senator Tester. If
you want to take more time, you're welcome to do it.
Senator Tester. Well, I would love that. If I could just
ask, why the ICBM? We're going from a triad to a dyad--why the
ICBMs when they're the most cost-effective of the triad?
General Cartwright. A couple of things that we looked at.
The first is that the ICBM in a conventional form is something
we ought to retain, but not at the numbers we have of the
nuclear. I mean, we're talking somewhere in the neighborhood of
25 to 50 is probably the maximum that we want. That would be an
alternative.
Senator Tester. In a conventional form?
General Cartwright. In a conventional form. In the
strategic form that they exist in today, which is termed as
their launch positions in those States is set up for a minimum
energy trajectory, what it's called, but a basic arc from point
A to point B. That arc must traverse Russia in order to get
anyplace else in the world. When you lay the map out flat, you
must traverse Russia.
That means that any time you contemplate using the ICBMs as
they're currently based today, you run the risk of the Russians
misinterpreting and retaliating. It's a very difficult
scenario, but we've played it out I don't know how many times
certainly in my time, and Keith I think in the time that he's
worked on it.
So that's one of the issues that we're concerned about, is
the malpositioning of the basing. It was done appropriately for
the time, but today it doesn't address the rest of the world
and it puts in jeopardy the potential of a mischaracterization
of any activity.
So you would have to reconstitute the basing concept also.
Our illustrative scenario of force structure does not foreclose
ICBMs. It just used the ICBMs because you have these problems
of basing, location, and overflight issues that make it
difficult to use it against the broad range of targets that we
may need to be able to address in the future.
Senator Tester. I got you, okay. I understand. I'm putting
different countries through my head and you're correct. Is it
true with North Korea, too?
General Cartwright. It is true, yes. You do have to come
down across.
Senator Tester. Okay.
General Cartwright. That's one of the problems that we have
with missile defense for North Korea, is that the intercept
occurs over Russian territory.
Senator Tester. Okay. Dr. Payne, do you want to respond?
And I don't mean to leave you out, Ambassador Pickering. If you
want to join in, please do.
Go ahead. I could ask the question to you first and then
cut out General Cartwright, too. But go ahead, Dr. Payne.
Dr. Payne. Again, there's no disagreement between General
Cartwright and myself on the orbital mechanics involved. But
the issue is, with regard to the ICBM, that there are enormous
advantages to it, which is why I disagreed with the report's
recommendation to eliminate the ICBM.
Senator Tester. But specifically what he talked about--and
I'm a big proponent of ICBMs because I was raised with them. He
talked about the fact that if you use them Russia may
misinterpret their use. Could you respond to that?
Dr. Payne. Sure. This is an example of, I think, conflating
issues of deterrence and issues of warfighting. Remember that
deterrence is all about withholding the weapon, not about using
the weapon. So I'm looking at the ICBM as a withheld weapon for
the purposes of deterrence. As a withheld weapon, it gives the
President the most time to consider options because it is
prompt. So it gives the most time for the consideration of
options by the President, which I think is a very good thing.
It's cost-effective, as I believe you mentioned, Senator.
Absolutely, it's the most cost-effective part of the triad. And
I think most importantly, it denies any opponent a relatively
easy theory of destroying the majority of U.S. forces with a
very small counterforce shot.
Without the ICBMs, you're looking at a target structure
that could be attacked with a handful of weapons. So that's a
really important consideration when we're thinking about
stability and instability and deterrence in general. And by the
way, that's not limited to a cold war concept. That's very much
a current concept that we need to remember.
Senator Tester. Go ahead, Ambassador.
Ambassador Pickering. General Cartwright may have his own
views on this, but as long as we maintain the sea-based force--
and we're here looking at an illustrative force posture for 10
years--the best information I have is that we have a highly
reliable, highly survivable deterrent force.
Senator Tester. Once again, I want to thank the panel, and
I want to respectfully thank Madam Chair. Thank you very much
for your flexibility.
Senator Feinstein. Thank you very much.
I'd like to just ask another question and it's on the need
for a hedge. I think, General Cartwright, you spoke about a
hedge and maintaining a larger nuclear weapons stockpile is to
hedge against geopolitical or technical surprise, and that we
currently maintain two to three weapons in reserve for every
actively deployed weapon.
Now, as I understand your recommendation, it's to have 450
strategic weapons deployed and 450 in reserve, which means a
ratio of only 1-to-1 for deployed and reserve warheads. So how
do you overcome those concerns about the geopolitical and
technical surprise?
General Cartwright. I think this is a really important
point, and it is a judgment issue that we need to consider. But
in the 1950s when we put together the construct for the
national labs for building weapons, for deploying weapons, et
cetera, it was a time industrially so that you built the weapon
as a single entity, not as components. So if one weapon failed,
you took that weapon off line and you put another weapon in its
place, either of the same make or of a different make, and you
used diversity in your inventory to protect you at the end item
level and you used large numbers--or a large inventory to
assure that your hedge was available and credible when you
needed it.
Manufacturing has moved a long way since the 1950s. Today
we work at the component level, and we get diversity at the
component level to protect us against either geopolitical or
technical risk that could occur. In other words, a particular
component within the weapon all of a sudden at a certain age
dies, malfunctions, whatever the issue is.
So the money that you have put towards the industrial base,
so to speak, the labs' capabilities, is to move from end item
sparing and large inventories of weapons to component sparing.
So you have less of the end items and you have more component
diversity to allow you to do that. It's just a manufacturing
logistics, inventory management system that is much more
effective.
Several studies have indicated, both at NNSA and inside of
our federally funded research and development center (FFRDC)
structure, that you could get down to a 1-to-1 or a 1-to-1.12
level of sparing, which is substantially below where we are
today, protect the test pedigree that we have, and have a
combination of the 80-pit construct if it were an emergency and
the ability to mix and match existing pits in the stockpile to
increase the number of weapons that not necessarily were
available but are available to be used.
So the belief is, through these studies, is that that's the
method by which you bring the hedge down, don't have a large
part of your force characterized as being a hedge and therefore
not counted, and you manage your inventory in a way that's
fundamentally different than we do today.
NNSA is trying to move in that direction and they believe
it will take you somewhere, the last I heard from them was,
somewhere in the 15- to 20-year timeframe to get all of the
components updated, cleaned up, and spareable.
Senator Feinstein. Are you saying that there is one generic
pit that will fit the different warheads?
General Cartwright. Actually what I'm saying is that there
is more than one, but you don't need to have two separate
weapons to be able to bring them together. In other words, the
test pedigree will allow you to mix and match in ways that we
have not in the past, and that's the theory behind augmenting
the 80 per year.
Let's just say that 100 weapons all of a sudden were
malfunctioned in some way. The ability to reconstitute could be
a combination of your ability to build new and a combination of
taking old and putting it in in different combinations inside
the weapon. That's the theory behind it, and it's more than
theory. This has been a lot of intellectual work and a lot of
work on the part of the scientists at the two main labs to
believe and to set out and to actually prove that they could
protect the test pedigree and still do this.
Senator Feinstein. I didn't know that. I didn't know that
that was a possibility, that you could essentially use the same
pit.
General Cartwright. In a different weapon.
Senator Feinstein. Senator, did you have a question?
Senator Alexander. I only have one, Madam Chairman.
Senator Feinstein. Okay.
Senator Alexander. In April, Secretary Kissinger and
General Scowcroft wrote an op-ed about nuclear weapons
reduction and they said, ``Lower numbers of weapons should be a
consequence of strategic analysis''--which you've said to us
today--``not an abstract preconceived determination. Strategic
ability is not inherent with low numbers. Excessively low
numbers could lead to a situation in which surprise attacks are
conceivable.''
Dr. Payne, what's your reaction to that comment?
Dr. Payne. I certainly concur with the authors' emphasis on
the need for flexibility and for the survivability of the
forces that we have to pose a retaliatory deterrent. Again,
that's one of the reasons why I have the concern with the
recommendations of the report, because the recommendations of
the report, the force structure that would follow, would be, as
I said, highly vulnerable to a very small strike.
Madam Chairman, that gets back to your point about the
hedge, because there really isn't a hedge in the force
structure that's identified in the report. Essentially, the
only thing that would be--the only part of that force structure
that would be survivable would be the boats, the submarines at
sea with nuclear missiles. And if you look at the numbers, that
would probably be down to as low as four or five, given
publicly acknowledged operating practices by the Navy, which
would lead to as few as 180 warheads under the terms of the
report that would be survivable, and no hedge would necessarily
be there because everything else would be rather vulnerable to
a strike.
So my concern falls exactly along the lines that the
article that you mentioned, Senator Alexander, lays out, and it
gets back to your question about the hedge, Madam Chairwoman.
The basic point about the hedge is that the more viable the
industrial and NNSA infrastructure, the lower the need for a
standing arsenal of reserve forces for a hedge. But what we do
have needs to be survivable, particularly the hedge. And the
recommendations from the report I believe have the risk that I
just outlined, leaving both the forces and the hedge vulnerable
to a very small number of weapons.
Senator Alexander. Ambassador Pickering or General
Cartwright, do you have a comment on the concern of Secretary
Kissinger and General Scowcroft that low numbers could lead to
a situation in which surprise attacks are conceivable?
Ambassador Pickering. Well, I think that one can figure a
set of circumstances that does produce vulnerability. I think
Dr. Payne plays a little fast and loose with our figures, but
we'll leave that for the report and for you to digest.
But my own sense is of course that's true. It depends very
heavily on things like verification. It depends heavily on the
kind of assurance you have the other side is behaving. You
don't want to put yourself in a position where you put all your
eggs in a basket and say, here they are, come and get them. We
all understand that.
So there has to be, I think, a lot of careful thinking
given to the question at any level, but particularly at these
levels, of how and in what way you deal with the problem of
vulnerability. None of our proposals, I believe, put us into a
position of excessive vulnerability. That was not our intent
and we certainly looked at that very, very carefully.
The problem of one or two strikes should be something we
contemplate very, very carefully and guard against, and the
kind of force that we have and the dispersion of the weapons
and the dispersion of the launch vehicles, I think, gives us
some more than adequate hedge against that, particularly if you
look carefully at the numbers we propose and the in-commission
and in-service rates of the weapons systems engaged.
Senator Alexander. General Cartwright.
General Cartwright. I think it's been covered pretty well,
that you've got both sides of that. The only piece that I would
probably add to this is that I go back again to the
infrastructure side of the equation, because it's important
that if a nation decides to break out and build larger
arsenals, that we may need to adapt our arsenal. So having the
ability to do that with a viable infrastructure, rather than
building inventory needlessly--you can call it minimalist, but
the reality here is that that inventory--we learned it in the
conventional side: If you build an airplane for a conflict, you
have it for 5 years and then the conflict comes, you're going
to have to update that airplane for the conflict you're
actually in.
We're probably going to have to make adjustments as we go
to the future. But you do not want to build this huge inventory
that you have to make adjustments with as some sort of an
artificial edge for the last conflict and not have what it is
you need to be able to build for what you're really facing.
So this subcommittee really sits on that adaptability, it
really does. It's that infrastructure, it's that intellectual
capital at the labs, along with the ability to adapt and look
at what we have and move forward, and are we building them the
cushion, I think is what certainly Dr. Kissinger and Perry are
looking at, key.
Could you sneak in in the middle of the night and attack?
The idea that only 300 nuclear weapons or 200 or whatever it is
is insignificant if they're launched against somebody is wrong,
it's just patently wrong. Any president--it doesn't matter
whether they call it tactical or strategic. If it blows up, it
is a catastrophic event in this world, and we shouldn't
undercharacterize that.
So the likelihood of somebody launching 300 missiles over
the pole at us and what-not should not be dismissed. But the
retaliation capability that we're preserving here--and you can
mix and match; you can have more ICBMs and less of something.
But the retaliatory capability of 300 nuclear weapons on
anybody's territory is catastrophic, catastrophic.
Senator Feinstein. The sizes are all classified, and when
you know the sizes then you see the catastrophe. That's the
hard part.
Senator Alexander. I have no more questions, Madam Chair.
Senator Feinstein. In any event, are there any final
comments that anyone would like to make? I think this has been
a very useful discussion and we've all learned something. Dr.
Payne, would you like to make a comment? I'll give everybody an
opportunity for a closing comment.
Dr. Payne. If I might, and thank you, Madam Chairwoman.
I've been accused of many things, but never of being fast
and loose before. So I sort of appreciate that.
Let me suggest that the points that I was----
Ambassador Pickering. I say it with the greatest respect.
Dr. Payne. Indeed.
The point is not that 200 to 300 weapons would be
insignificant. But again, deterrence is not warfighting and
warfighting is not deterrence. They're two different things.
What we're talking about for deterrence is a withheld threat.
The requirement for deterrence over decades is to have as
flexible and resilient capability as you can, so the President
can adapt the force to very different circumstances.
The force structure recommended in the report would indeed
leave the United States with only 200 or so survivable weapons,
all SLBMs. That is the opposite of a flexible and resilient
force. So it's not that 2 to 300 weapons wouldn't cause
enormous catastrophic damage. That's easily recognized,
absolutely true. General Cartwright and I are in complete
agreement on that. That's not the question.
The question is would it provide a robust, reliable,
credible deterrent for decades? And my answer to that is it
would not be flexible, it would not be resilient, and therefore
we would be putting at risk our ability to deter war possibly
for decades. This isn't something that we want to minimize. We
want the best deterrent that we can, and that calls for a force
structure, I believe, that's flexible and resilient and very
different from the one recommended in the commission's report.
Senator Feinstein. Thank you.
Ambassador Pickering.
Ambassador Pickering. I would only say the following, that
we've given the most careful consideration to the force
structure that we are advocating. It's illustrative at the
moment. It isn't something that we would say every piece of
every point of every presentation we made is fixed in concrete
somewhere. But we believe overall it provides an extremely
solid and resilient and careful perspective.
Dr. Payne wants us to look ahead several decades. General
Cartwright has made it clear that what we have put on the table
has to be adaptable, it has to be available to be adapted, it
has to be rebuildable if other circumstances come none of us
are clairvoyant enough to know. We have taken a look for 10
years in our illustrative proposal, and we believe that what we
have provided provides the stability and the security and the
resilience over that period of time. We have taken a look at
how to go from that into the next 10 years and beyond, and
General Cartwright I think explained that extremely well.
So we believe that this is a force very much worth looking
at. It is a force that will, we hope, begin to help to move in
the direction that you set out, Madam Chairwoman, at the
beginning of the effort of can we be smarter and more capable
and indeed more effective in defending our country.
Senator Feinstein. Thank you very much.
General Cartwright, why don't you give your wrap-up
comments?
General Cartwright. I don't disagree with the attributes
that Keith is putting out. We're very much aligned there. I
believe that flexibility is gained through an adaptable
infrastructure that can respond to the threats as they emerge
and through the other arms, like conventional forces, missile
defense.
But it's a question, and it's debatable, and all of those
will be adjusted because if we move to a multipolar,
multilateral type of construct, then we have to be able to
convince--because deterrence is, as Keith said, is really in
the mind of your adversary. It's do they believe that you hold
something they hold dear at risk and that you are willing to
actually use it. So you have to talk about the warfighting
side. Otherwise you really lose the element of deterrence that
is the credibility, which is at the essence.
I would bring up just two other subjects here that we
haven't talked about, just so that it's there for
consideration. One is in fact our undeclared strategy for using
these weapons. There are nations in the world today that would
like to see us and others move to a no-first-use policy. We've
debated it in this country. The question is, with the changing
of times and the changing of the threat, is it time to go back
and look at that again?
Much of what you have in this arsenal is to protect you
against something that happens in the middle of the night and a
whole bunch of weapons that come raining down on you in a first
strike, decapitating our Government or whatever. Those things
could be the things of future treaties and verifiably watched,
such that if you could remove that kind of capability you could
in fact, or reduce it, you could in fact change your posture in
significant ways. We ought to explore that more. That's a
policy issue rather than a technical issue, but it has
technical ramifications.
The second is that as we go forward the costs that have
been associated, as you laid out in your testimony, Madam
Chairwoman, of the B-61--we have to get our arms around how to
cost these extension programs, because we are going to do them
for the next 50 years. The likelihood of going to zero is
probably not inside that window. So we have to find a way to
understand what it costs, what the implications of a large
inventory are versus a small inventory, and do a good business
case.
Even though it is warfighting and it is strategic and it is
our security, it should not escape the business case of how you
do it and how you think about the trades that you have inside
of it. I think we have not gotten that business case nailed
down, just based on the cost growth that we have today. So I
just throw that on the table.
ADDITIONAL COMMITTEE QUESTIONS
Senator Feinstein. Let me just briefly respond to you about
that, because Senator Alexander and I have been very concerned
about that. The inability to keep these programs within initial
budget confines, they go up exponentially, is a problem. So we
are on that.
Senator Alexander has specifically suggested that we look
at root causes. As late as yesterday afternoon, we met with
NNSA and Mr. D'Agostino and others with some questions we have
and, I think, set into motion at least a process where we will
be able to have regular reports on a monthly basis from one
person who is in charge of these systems and begin to
understand, if there are problems, what are they going to do
about the problem, because you can't go on and estimate
something at $600 million and have it come in at $6 billion. So
that what you've pointed out is a very acute problem that we
are aware of and doing our best to solve.
Do you want to make a comment?
Senator Alexander. No.
[The following questions were not asked at the hearing but
were submitted to the witness for response subsequent to the
hearing:]
Questions Submitted to General James Cartwright, USMC, Retired
Questions Submitted by Senator Susan Collins
Question. In your report, you discuss bilateral U.S.-Russia
negotiations as the only legitimate means to reduce the level of both
nations' current stockpiles to 900 weapons. You mention China as a
player in future reductions, but discuss its participation only when
the stockpile reaches 1,000 weapons. In my view, the report
underestimates the importance of Chinese participation in future rounds
of arms reductions. By some accounts the size of their arsenal could
already be approaching 3,000 weapons. I am also not certain that
Chinese participation can be assumed, despite claims by the Foreign
Ministry that China aspires to nuclear disarmament. More so than any
time in its history, the image of a monolithic Chinese Government is
more fiction than fact. There are multiple competing interests within
the government, many of which would oppose any effort to reduce its own
stockpile.
What is the basis for taking China at its word and assuming that it
is ready or willing to enter into disarmament negotiations?
Answer. In the area of nuclear weapons policy, China has not
deviated from its traditional position, harking back to Mao Zedong's
guidance a half century ago, emphasizing ``minimal deterrence'' and
requiring only a small survivable nuclear force. The governing nuclear
unit--the 2nd Artillery--under the Chinese General Staff has adhered
strictly to this time-honored doctrine and the other relevant
components of the Chinese Government--the Central Military Commission,
the Party, and the Foreign Ministry--appear to be ``as one'' in this
regard. The policy reflects a unified and ``monolithic'' constellation
of actors and historically produced a relatively small nuclear arsenal.
Without venturing into the classified domain, suffice it to say that
that scholarly estimates in the public domain put the size of China's
arsenal at approximately an order of magnitude smaller that the number
you cite (300 versus 3,000). China's nuclear modernization is
qualitatively impressive, however.
The report intended to emphasize that China's future participation
in future nuclear arms control is very important. The thrust of the
report is that it is critically important to broaden the scope of
nuclear arms control to include China and other nuclear weapons
countries. The historical bilateral framework served its purpose but
multilateral nuclear negotiations must be initiated soon to address
effectively the multitude of nuclear risks and threats that lie outside
the U.S.-Russian relationship. Although there are reasons to believe
that China would participate in such multilateral talks, there
doubtless exists some internal interests that oppose entering into a
nuclear disarmament process. Thus we should not assume but rather test
China's willingness to join the process. Our commission considered, and
did not reject, the notion of linking the very deep cuts in U.S. and
Russian arsenals to China's commitment to constrain its arsenal. We
were and remain open to ideas for drawing China into the process.
Question. I am concerned that tactical nuclear weapons are not
thoroughly discussed in your report. While the New START treaty
strengthened nuclear nonproliferation efforts, it did not address the
significant disparity between the number of nonstrategic nuclear
weapons in Russia's stockpile compared to our own. Your report,
likewise, describes the value of tactical nuclear weapons as
``virtually nil'' to U.S. operational plans. The Perry-Schlesinger
Strategic Posture Commission reported that Russia had an estimated
3,800 tactical nuclear weapons remaining in its arsenal, but you
advocate that Russia should be encouraged to move these weapons into
storage as part of a future agreement.
Given the lack of any meaningful dialogue with Russia on tactical
nuclear weapons during the New START negotiations, what confidence do
you have that Russia would accede to discuss tactical weapons, or their
removal as a tactical tool from operational bases, in the next round of
disarmament talks?
Answer. A previously published Global Zero report by a different
commission composed of highly experienced European, Russian, and
American members (including former senior military members) thoroughly
examined the issues surrounding U.S.-NATO and Russian tactical nuclear
weapons deployed on the European continent. It discusses the diminished
role of U.S.-NATO tactical weapons after the end of the cold war, and
recommended their complete withdrawal from combat bases to central
storage in tandem with comparable Russian re-location. (See http://
www.globalzero.org/files/gz_nato-russia_commission_report_-_en.pdf.)
The report to which I testified before your subcommittee considers
the omission of tactical nuclear weapons from the U.S.-Russian nuclear
talks to be a very serious deficiency in need of rectification for the
next round. Our view is that future talks should be comprehensive and
include all categories of weapons--strategic deployed, strategic
reserve, and tactical--in an effort to regulate the total number of
nuclear weapons in each arsenal while allowing each side the freedom to
mix these categories in whatever fashion they deem best suited to their
national security interests.
Russia's primary concern today is conflict on her borders and
Russia's perceived conventional inferiority in some scenarios (e.g.
conflict with China) increases the importance of tactical nuclear
weapons for foiling an enemy attack. Russia's tactical nuclear arsenal
is thus much larger than the U.S. arsenal. Russia will be very cautious
in cutting its active tactical stockpile--the size of which is
uncertain given the deficiency noted above that to date excludes them
from regulation and verification. (Estimates in the range of 1,500-
2,000 active weapons appear to be reasonable.) However, it is clear to
me that Russia does not need thousands of tactical nuclear weapons to
perform this mission. A recent Russian study conducted in response to
the Global Zero report, chaired by a former Chief of Staff of the
Russian Strategic Rocket Forces, indicated that Russia could safely
reduce to 500 total active tactical nuclear weapons. This number is
comparable to the size of today's U.S. tactical nuclear arsenal. In
exchange for deep cuts in Russia's tactical arsenal, the United States
could deeply cut our nondeployed strategic stockpile, which greatly
outnumbers Russia's reserve strategic stockpile. Whether or not a deal
along these lines could be negotiated remains to be determined, but our
study concluded that such an approach has merit and promise.
CONCLUSION OF HEARING
Senator Feinstein. Well, let me then say thank you all very
much. I think it's been a very interesting morning. I'm very
grateful both for your mind and your willingness to be here and
share your thoughts with us. So thank you.
The hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:31 a.m., Wednesday, July 25, the hearing
was concluded, and the subcommittee was recessed, to reconvene
subject to the call of the Chair.]
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