Tom Collina and Kingston Reif, who published an op-ed in the Nov. 3 issue about nuclear weapons, are responsible arms control advocates. We need from them less about the Cold War and more on 21st century arms control.
They did get this one correct: "…Cold War threats and budgets that sustained the stockpile in the past are long gone." Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama have shifted US nuclear posture, planning and even employment guidance away from the Cold War construct and toward 21st century threats, including rogue states, terrorists and proliferation of weaponizable uranium and plutonium.
The United States has reduced its stockpile by 85 percent and permanently shut down its Cold War complex for producing weapons grade uranium and plutonium, even as Russia and China modernize and expand their nuclear arsenals.
Nevertheless, their commentary perpetuates the myth that the US nuclear enterprise is stuck in the Cold War. Their proposed unilateral nuclear weapons reductions are dangerous. Let me address two of the strawmen they set up.
Collina and Reif implicitly recognize the fact that the US, alone among nuclear armed states, has taken an acquisition holiday in its nuclear arsenal. But their proposal for a less ambitious modernization program is fraught with risk. We can acknowledge any number of urgent threats that the defense budget could be robbed to address, but only one type of weapon threatens our very existence: nuclear weapons.
Moreover, it's not so easy to shift funds from nuclear programs to conventional weapons. Much of the nuclear arsenal modernization program is in the Department of Energy, unreachable to the DoD. For example, DoE's National Nuclear Security Administration will spend upwards of $8 billion between now and 2028 to modernize the B-61 bomb.
Collina and Reif acknowledge this weapon needs to be refurbished but assert that it can be scaled back to save $4 billion. This money is controlled by the House and Senate Energy committees, not the Armed Services committees. So when money is made available to these committees, either by reductions in nuclear weapons programs or by transfer from the Defense Department, those funds cannot be reprogrammed to conventional weapons.
Likewise, the impositions of the Budget Control Act prohibit the transfer of funds across programs. Thus, in 2013, the Air Force grounded 13 combat squadrons because it had no money to fly them, while at the same time the Congress directed the Air Force to make $10 million available to support the National Commission on the Structure of the Air Force.
As the National Defense Panel reported, the problem is not with defense budget priorities; it is that defense budgets are too low.
Their second strawman is the notion that the US could retreat to a minimal deterrence posture. I don't know if 1,550 or 1,000 operationally deployed strategic weapons are sufficient. Maybe we could negotiate with the Russians to go down to 1,000 but that's not very likely. Moreover, the Russians maintain thousands of non-strategic nuclear weapons that our allies perceive as an existential threat. Our arsenal must also assure allies that it can deter for them as well as for us.
The greatest myth Collina and Reif perpetuate is that nuclear weapons are hugely expensive. They are not. During the Cold War, nuclear deterrence was far cheaper than conventional defense. The Air Force spends less than 5 percent of its budget to provide two legs of the strategic nuclear triad, all of its extended deterrent and most of the nuclear command, control and communications infrastructure.
The proposed $70 billion cut would be a unilateral reduction that would make the world safer only for more conventional wars and tempt adversaries who already contemplate launching a first strike.
We would not be able to maintain a continuous at-sea survivable nuclear deterrent with less than 12 Ohio-class replacement submarines. Delaying bomber replacement would violate everything we know about defense acquisition; stretching out a program only increases cost. And canceling the nuclear cruise missile program would eliminate a capability to reach targets in an anti-access/area-denial environment.
We need arms control experts to stop jousting with imagined giants, return to their roots and develop 21st century approaches to arms control. Here are some suggestions:
■ Persuade North Korea to return to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
■ Convince Russia to reduce its massive arsenal of non-strategic nuclear weapons and comply with its Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty obligations.
■ Move forward on a no-kidding fissile material cut-off treaty in the UN Conference on Disarmament.
■ Expand on the success of the Proliferation Security Initiative
■ Weigh in with analysis on emerging efforts to develop a ban on all land-based missiles.
Solutions to these threats rest as much in arms control as in weapons. Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev took arms controllers' well-developed approaches and eliminated an entire class of weapons. We'll figure out a way to afford nuclear weapon modernization. We need the Tom Collinas and Kingston Reifs of today to put their minds to the hard work of shaping arms control approaches that will work in the 21st century. ■
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Blackwell is special adviser to the assistant chief of staff for strategic deterrence and nuclear integration, headquarters, US Air Force. These views represent only those of the author.
