(Updated May 9, 2007)

At the beginning of 2007, Russia maintained approximately 5,600 operational nuclear warheads for delivery by ballistic missiles, aircraft, cruise missiles and torpedoes, according to the latest Nuclear Notebook published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. The Russian Notebook, which is written by Hans M. Kristensen of FAS and Robert S. Norris of NRDC, breaks down the Russian arsenal into roughly 3,300 warheads for delivery by strategic weapon systems and 2,300 warheads for delivery by tactical systems.

In addition to operational warheads, the Notebook estimates that Russia has a stock of roughly 9,400 warheads intended as a reserve or awaiting dismantlement, for a total stockpile of approximately 15,000 warheads.

The Importance of Arms Control (Section below updated May 9, 2007)

Russia and the United States apparently have decided not to extend the START agreement when it expires in 2009. The demise of the treaty will effect the number of warheads deployed on Russia’s ICBMs. Russia has already announced its intention to change the warhead loading on its Topol-M ICBMs.

Had START been extended, Russia’s arsenal of deployed strategic nuclear warheads would likely have declined to approximately 2,040 warheads by 2015 and roughly 1,590 warheads by 2030.

Once the treaty expires, however, and the Topol-M is equipped with three warheads (MIRVs, Multiple Independently Targeted Reentry Vehicles), the arsenal will reach roughly 2,210 warheads in 2015. Deployment of the silo-based Topol-M apparently will finish in 2020, in which case the warhead level will fall to approximately 1,810 warheads by 2030, depending on missile production rates for the mobile version of the Topol-M (see figure below).

Col. Gen. Nikolai Solovtsov, the commander of the Russian Strategic Rocket Forces (SRF), declared in December 2006 and again in May 2007 that Russia will begin to substitute the single warheads on Topol-M ICBMs with multiple warheads after START expires in 2009. He did not specify if that includes both the silo-based and mobile Topol-Ms. If only the silo-based Topol M is MIRVed, then Russia would have some 2,140 strategic warheads in 2015 and approximately 1,690 warheads deployed by 2030.

Current plans will leave Russia with roughly 146 ICBMs by 2015, a significant reduction from the 489 it had at the beginning of 2007, less than half of what the United States plans to have at that time. Russian planning also takes into consideration the Chinese posture, and the U.S. Air Force reported in March 2006 that work may be underway on a new strategic missile that can be deployed in both land-based and sea-based versions.

Russia apparently no longer believes it is necessary to maintain the same number of nuclear warheads as its potential adversaries, but still sees a significant strategic force as necessary. “For us,” President Vladimir Putin said in May 2006, “this idea of maintaining the strategic balance will mean that our strategic deterrence forces must be capable of destroying any potential aggressor, no matter what modern weapons systems this aggressor possesses.”

A Need For Additional Arms Control

Russia is currently, like the United States, making the decisions that will shape the long-term size and composition of its nuclear forces. Seventeen years after the Cold War ended, those decisions are still closely tied to the size and composition of the U.S. nuclear posture.

Putin proposed in June 2006 that START be replaced with a new treaty, and warned that “the stagnation we see today in the area of disarmament is of particular concern.” Although talks are underway with Washington on how to administer the strategic relationship after 2009, START apparently will not be extended.

The governments of both countries urgently need to articulate and decide on a new phase of arms control that will replace the open-ended, ad hoc nuclear planning of today with a framework for how to get to very low numbers with the medium-term goal of concluding the nuclear era.

Background: Russian Nuclear Forces 2007 | Status of World Nuclear Forces |

Despite frequent complains about lack of transparency in Chinese military planning, a new report from the Office of Naval Intelligence – recently described in the Washington Times and subsequently released to the Federation of American Scientists in response to a Freedom of Information Act request – boasts a high degree of knowledge about meticulous details of the Chinese navy’s operations, training, personnel and regulations.

The details in the report China’s Navy 2007 are many but unfortunately largely superfluous to the main answers many want to hear from the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) and other intelligence agencies: How are Chinese naval forces and operations evolving, and what do the changes mean?

Questionable Reporting

Unfortunately, some have already (mis)used the ONI report to hype fear that China is rising and out to get us. One example is the Washington Times, which last week described the report findings in a highly selective manner. Despite many unknowns about China’s military modernization and intentions, the paper’s description only included excerpts that indicate a threat or worrisome development. Moreover, the paper appears to have distorted the ONI report’s description of the Chinese submarine force’s importance: “China’s submarine forces are given ‘first priority’ of all branches of the navy, it states.”

But that’s not what the ONI report states. In fact, “first priority” as quoted by the Washington Times does not appear in the report at all. What the report says is very different: “The PLA Navy’s submarine forces…are generally listed as first in protocol order among the PLAN’s five branches.”

Being listed first in the protocol order is not the same as being the “first priority” of all the navy branches. According to the RAND Cooperation’s reference book The People’s Liberation Army as Organization:

What the ONI Report Does (and Doesn’t) Say

In contrast with the threat-focused style of the Washington Times reporting, the ONI report purports to have a much broader objective to “better understand the world’s fastest growing maritime power and its means of naval action and thereby foster a better understanding of China’s Navy.” The report observes up front that the enhanced naval power sought by China “is meant to answer global changes in the nature of warfare and domestic concerns about continued economic prosperity.” The drive to build a military component to protect the means of economic development, ONI states, “is one of the most prevalent historical reasons for building a blue water naval capability.”

Part of what has triggered the Chinese modernization is the extraordinary military capabilities that the United States have developed and deployed and demonstrated over the past two decades. The point is not that the United States is to blame and China just an innocent victim, but that all military modernization influences potential adversaries.

To that end the most interesting aspect about the ONI report may not be so much what it says but what it leaves out. Missing are many of the key developments that most concern US military planners and lawmakers, and many of the developments that are ignored by those who hype the Chinese “threat.”

For example, the ONI report does not include new information about the size of the Chinese navy. Instead it reprints a brief overview from the 2006 DOD report Military Power of the People’s Republic of China. Nor does the ONI report describe the construction of several new types of submarines, including the Type 093 nuclear-powered attack submarine and the Type 094 ballistic missile submarine.

Likewise, the ONI report begins with reprinting portions of two Chinese government documents, one of which states that the Chinese navy’s “capability of nuclear counter-attacks has also been enhanced.” This refers to China’s current possession of a single Xia-class ballistic missile submarine, but the ONI leaves out any information about what that enhancement actually is.

The other Chinese government statement used describes that the Chinese navy is “enhancing its capabilities in…nuclear counterattacks.” This is a hint that China is building a new class (Type 094 or Jin-class) of ballistic missile submarines that will be equipped with the long-range Julang-2 ballistic missile. Yet the ONI report does not give any details about the status of those programs much less what they mean for the Chinese navy or Chinese intentions.

In addition, the ONI report contains a very detailed description of the various categories of training used by the Chinese submarine force, yet it doesn’t mention submarine patrols with one word. The omission is curious because the report describes that Chinese submarines in the late 1970s began conducting independent sustained operations in the Pacific, and that “long-range navigation training is an important overall type of training for submarines.” So why leave out the important fact that the number of patrols have declined since 2000 rather than increased with the acquisition of more capable submarines?

To that end, the ONI report describes how the “basic hands-on and crisis-management training for strategic-missile submarines that cannot be conducted while the submarine is navigating underwater for long periods of time must be conducted on shore.” Yet it leaves out the important piece of information that China’s missile submarine Xia has never conducted a patrol.

Apparently, too little transparency is not only a problem in the Chinese military.

Balanced Reporting

One week before the Washington Times hyped the ONI report, the nominated commander of Pacific Command, Admiral Timothy J. Keating, testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee where he dismissed alarmist reports of recent gains in Chinese submarine development.

“If the reports are fairly accurate, they are well behind us technologically. We enjoy significant advantages across the spectrum of defensive and offensive systems, in particular undersea warfare,” he said according to Taipei Times. In an interview with the paper, Keating added: “Should it become necessary for us to put our forces [in harm’s way], the development of Chinese submarines are [sic] a concern to us, but it is hardly an insurmountable concern.”

Admiral Keating’s testimony was not covered by the Washington Times.

Breaking the cycle of military modernizations that trigger military modernizations is perhaps the biggest challenge in US-Chinese relations. Balanced reporting is another.

Background: China’s Navy 2007 | China Naval Modernization | FAS/NRDC Report

“It is not true,” British Defence Secretary Des Browne insisted during an interview with BBC radio, that a new fuze planned for British nuclear warheads and reported by the Guardian will increase their military capability. The plan to replace the fuze “was reported to the [Parliament’s] Select Committee in 2005 and is not an upgrading of the system; it is merely making sure that the system works to its maximum efficiency,” Mr. Browne says.

The minister is either being ignorant or economical with the truth. According to numerous statements made by US officials over the past decade, the very purpose of replacing the fuze is – in stark contrast to Mr. Browne’s assurance – to give the weapon improved military capabilities it did not have before.

The matter, which is controversial now because Britain is debating whether to build a new generation of nuclear-armed submarines, concerns the Mk4 reentry vehicle on Trident D5 missiles deployed on British (and US) ballistic missile submarines. The cone-shaped Mk4 contains the nuclear explosive package itself and is designed to protect it from the fierce heat created during reentry of the Earth’s atmosphere toward the target. A small fuze at the tip of the Mk4 measures the altitude and detonates the explosive package at the right “height of burst” to create the maximum pressure to ensure destruction of the target. The new fuze will increase the “maximum efficiency” significantly and give the British Trident submarines hard target kill capability for the first time.

US Statements About Enhanced Capability

Unlike the British government, US officials and agencies have been very clear that the new fuze is not merely a replacement but a significant upgrade that will give the Mk4 significant military capabilities. The Department of Energy’s Stockpile Stewardship and Management Plan from 1997 stated that the whole purpose of developing a new fuze in the first place was to “enable [the] W76 to take advantage of [the] higher accuracy of the D5 missile.”

At about the same time, the head of the US Navy’s Strategic Systems Command, Rear Admiral George P. Nanos, explained in The Submarine Review that the “capability for the [existing] Mk4…is not very impressive by today’s standards, largely because the Mk4 was never given a fuze that made it capable of placing the burst at the right height to hold other than urban industrial targets at risk.” But “with the accuracy of D5 and Mk4, just by changing the fuse in the Mk4 re-entry body, you get a significant improvement,” Admiral Nanos stated. In fact, “the Mk4, with a modified fuze and Trident II accuracy, can meet the original D5 hard target requirement.”

For US war planners, this improvement was necessary because the main US hard target killer, the MX Peacekeeper ICBMs with high-yield W87 warheads, were being retired as a result of the never-ratified 1992 START II treaty and the 2002 Moscow Treaty (SORT). The last Peacekeeper stood down in 2005. Some of the W87 are now being backfitted unto the Minuteman III ICBMs with a new guidance system to retain ICBM hard target kill capability. The Navy has a dedicated hard target kill W88 warhead on some of its D5 missiles, but with the new fuze on the W76-1/Mk4A the hard target kill capability will increase significantly. The first W76-1/Mk4A is scheduled to be delivered in September 2007.

Implications for British Deterrence

Admiral Nanos’ statement implies that British Trident submarines have never had hard target kill capability “because the Mk4 was never given a fuze that made it capable of placing the burst at the right height to hold other than urban industrial targets at risk.” With the new fuze, however, the British Trident submarines “can meet the original D5 hard target requirement,” and hold at risk the full range of targets.

So why does the British upgrade come now? After all, British nuclear submarines have cruised the oceans for decades with less capable fuzes and still ensured, so it has been said, Britain’s survival and made “significant contributions” to NATO’s deterrence.

There are several possibilities. British nuclear planners may have successfully argued that they need more accurate nuclear weapons to better deter potential adversaries. That is the dynamic the created in the Trident system during the Cold War. Since then, Britain has moved from a Soviet-focused deterrent to a “Goldilocks doctrine” today aimed against three incremental sizes of adversaries: Russia, “rogue” states, and terrorists.

Another possibility is that it may be a result of Britain not having an independent deterrent. Rather than designing and building its nuclear missiles itself, British leases them from the US missile inventory. The warhead installed on the “British” missiles is believed to be a modified – but very similar – version of the American W76. But the reentry vehicle that contains the explosive package appears to be the same: the Mk4. And since the US is upgrading its Mk4 to the Mk4A with the new fuze, Britain may simply have gotten the new capability with its existing lease.

Whatever the reason, the British government’s denial is clearly flawed. If the government believes so strongly that a nuclear deterrent is still necessary, why be so timid about its new capability? After all, what is the new capability good for if the potential adversaries can’t be told about it? And if the British government believes in the nuclear deterrent, then it has to play the deterrence role and be honest about it, and not – as it does now – pretend to be a nuclear disarmer while secretly enhancing its nuclear weapons capabilities.

The U.S. Air Force has decided to retire the Advanced Cruise Missile, the most modern and capable nuclear cruise missile in the U.S. arsenal, according to information obtained by the Federation of American Scientists.

The decision affects approximately 400 ACMs (AGM-129A) currently deployed at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota and Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana. Each missile carries a W80-1 warhead with a yield of 5-150 kilotons. The ACM is designed for delivery by B-52H strategic bombers.

FAS analyst Hans Kristensen noticed elimination of funding for the ACM in the Air Force’s FY2008 budget request, and a subsequent email to the Air Force confirmed the decision to retire the weapon system. The Air Force has not announced when the retirement will be completed, but it appears to be within the next year.

The decision to retire the ACM is part of the reduction of strategic nuclear warheads under the 2002 SORT agreement (Moscow Treaty), which limits U.S. and Russian operationally deployed strategic nuclear warheads to a maximum of 2,200 by 2012. To meet the treaty limit, the United States already has reduced the number of nuclear warheads on sea-launched ballistic missiles and is in the middle of a download of warheads from land-based ballistic missiles. Confirmation of the ACM retirement is the first public statement about a reduction of warheads on the bomber force.

The ACM is one of two nuclear cruise missiles in the U.S. arsenal, but the only nuclear cruise missile built with stealth technology to evade radar detection. The ACM, which has hard target kill capability, was produced by General Dynamics between 1987 and 1993. The initial plan was to produced nearly 1,500 missiles but the program was cut back to 460 missiles in 1991. The Air Force has not decided what to do with the retired ACM airframes, but is exploring alternative uses such as converting them to carry conventional warheads or use in missile tests.

The Air Force also has an inventory of approximately 1,300 older Air Launched Cruise Missiles (AGM-86B), which also carry the 80-1 warhead. The Air Launched Cruise Missile (ALCM) has just completed a life-extension program, and funding continues through 2013. It is estimated that the ALCM force will be reduced by two-thirds over the next five years.

The United States currently has total stockpile of nearly 9,900 nuclear warheads, of which roughly 4,700 are operationally deployed. Approximately 2,000 warheads are in the Responsive Force, a reserve of extra warheads available to increase the operational force if necessary. The remaining 3,000 warheads are scheduled to be dismantled. After the reductions under the SORT agreement are completed in 2012, the United States will still have a nuclear stockpile of nearly 6,000 warheads.

Background: Status of World Nuclear Forces

The Defense Threat Reduction Agency announced today that it has canceled the controversial Divine Strake experiment.

A 700 tons chemical explosion at the Nevada Test Site was intended to provide data for calibration of nuclear and conventional weapons against underground targets. Local fear that the explosion would kick up and disperse radioactive material from the ground – as well concern about Divine Strake’s role in calibrating the use of low-yield nuclear weapons against underground targets – prompted members of Congress to raise questions about Divine Strake.

The Federation of American Scientists was the first to obtain and publish confirmation from DTRA that Divine Strake was the same experiment described in the FY2006 and FY2007 DTRA budget requests as intended to “improve the warfighter’s confidence in selecting the smallest proper nuclear yield necessary to destroy underground facilities while minimizing collateral damage.” DTRA public affairs officials subsequently denied Divine Strake had any connection to nuclear missions, but were later contradicted by senior DTRA officials saying that it was nuclear related.

Background: Divine Strake

China’s entire submarine fleet conducted only two patrols in 2006, according to information declassified by the U.S. Navy and obtained by the Federation of American Scientists under the Freedom of Information Act. The low patrol rate follows a drop from an all-time high of only six patrols in 2000 to none in 2005. China’s single sea-launched ballistic missile submarine Xia, the data shows, has never conducted a deterrent patrol.

The low level of Chinese submarine patrols is a curious contrast to warnings by the Pentagon, some private institutes and news media that China is expanding its submarine operations deeper into the Pacific. Although Chinese submarines occasionally venture into the waters around Japan and Taiwan, the fleet is surprisingly inactive.

Since 1981, the first year for which patrol data is available, the Chinese submarine force has conducted an average of less than two patrols per year. The highest number of annual patrols conducted since 1981 was six patrols in 2000. In four years (1982, 1990, 1993 and 2005), no patrols were conducted at all. Over the 25-year period, the trend is that patrols have only increased from one per year to approximately 2.8 patrols per year.

Chinese Submarine Patrols 1981-2006

The entire Chinese submarine fleet conducts less than three patrols per year on average. The ballistic missile submarine Xia has never conducted a deterrent patrol.

So What is a Patrol?

The Navy has refused to tell FAS what a “patrol” is, saying doing so “would divulge methods and sources.” So interpretation of the data comes with a great deal of uncertainty. But the Defense Department’s unclassified Dictionary of Military Terms (JP 1-02) and earlier versions provide some hints by listing the following five definitions:

* Antisubmarine patrol: The systematic and continuing investigation of an
area or along a line to detect or hamper submarines, used when the direction
of submarine movement can be established.

* Inshore patrol: A naval defense patrol operating generally within a naval
defense coastal area and comprising all elements of harbor defenses, the
coastal lookout system, patrol craft supporting bases, aircraft, and Coast
Guard stations.

* Offshore patrol: A naval defense patrol operating in the outer areas of
navigable coastal waters. It is a part of the naval local defense forces
consisting of naval ships and aircraft and operates outside those areas
assigned to the inshore patrol.

* Patrol: A detachment of ground, sea, or air forces sent out for the purpose
of gathering information or carrying out a destructive, harassing, mopping up,
or security mission.

* Submarine patrol area: A restricted area established to allow submarine
operations: a. unimpeded by the operation of, or possible attack from, friendly
forces in wartime; b. without submerged mutual interference in peacetime.

If one assumes that U.S. Naval Intelligence’s use of the term “patrol” follows the DOD’s definitions, then the declassified patrol data suggests that Chinese general purpose submarines in 2006 twice conducted investigations to detect other submarines, participated in naval defense operations in coastal or outside coastal areas, or deployed for the purpose of gathering information or harassing. That implies an almost dormant submarine fleet.

The Song Incident

One of the two patrols conducted in 2006 appears to have been the widely reported surfacing of a Song-class diesel-electric submarine near the U.S. aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk in the South China Sea. The news media and pundits dramatized the incident as an example of China expanding its submarine operations, the Chinese government downplayed the reports as inaccurate, and the Pentagon said the media made too much of the incident.

“The bottom line is that […] they’re deploying them further and more frequently,” Defense News quoted an expert on the Chinese Navy at the National Defense University saying. China might even have a decisive submarine surge capability in 20 years, another pundit argued. “They are building a blue-water navy,” yet another expert warned. A politician in Taiwan thought it raises questions about “whether the U.S. in losing its military edge in the Western Pacific,” and commentators in both Taipei and Washington concluded that the incident showed that Taiwan needs to buy more submarines.

The Pentagon’s 2006 report Military Power of the People’s Republic of China stated that China was working on establishing a “first” or “second island chain” strategy for its naval forces, and that “Chinese forces have increased operations beyond China’s borders and coastal waters.” This may be the case for surface ships, but to illustrate the development the Pentagon highlighted “the highly publicized 2004 intrusion of a HAN-class nuclear submarine in Japanese territorial waters during operations far into the western Pacific Ocean.” DOD did not mention that the intrusion was one of only three patrols conducted by the entire Chinese submarine force in 2004, and that no patrols at all were conducted in 2005.

The U.S.-China Commission established by Congress after reports about Chinese spying, stated in 2006 that China is pursuing measures to try to “control” the seas in the Western Pacific, although “controlling” the seas is a daunting technological and operational task, and that China continues to “expand” its submarine force.

The Shrinking Chinese Submarine Fleet

Although China is modernizing its submarine force, it is not “expanding” it. Since the mid-1980s, the force has been in steady decline from nearly 120 boats to roughly 55 operational submarines today. The U.S. Navy expects the force will level out around 40 boats in the next decade.

The Shrinking Chinese Submarine Fleet

The Chinese submarine fleet has declined by approximately 50 percent since the mid-1980s, mainly due to retirement of old and obsolete classes. Construction of new classes is underway but is not anticipated to lead to an increase, as the U.S. Navy expects the fleet will level out at around 40 submarines in the next decade.

The decline of the submarine fleet is part of a transition where large older classes are being phased out and replaced with newer but less numerous submarine classes. The new submarines are more capable than the ones they replace, but the modernization has not resulted in an increase in the number of submarine patrols. On the contrary, during the period between 2000 and 2006, when China acquired a dozen new Kilo and Song class submarines, the number of patrols declined from six to two (with no patrols at all in 2005).

Implications

The implications of the low patrol rate are significant. The total operational experience for the entire Chinese submarine force is only 49 patrols in 25 years, corresponding to each submarine conducting an average of one patrol every third year.

As a result, Chinese submarine crews appear to have relatively little operational experience and consequently limited skills in operating their boats safely and competently. It suggests that the tactical skills that would be needed for the Chinese submarine force to operate effectively in a war may be limited.

China continues – at least for now – to use its submarine force as a coastal defense force.

Background: Chinese Nuclear Forces and U.S. Nuclear War Planning

(Updated January 26, 2007)

British Vanguard-class ballistic missile submarines have at least 15 years more service life in them, and the U.K. government does not have to make a decision now on whether to replace them with a new class of submarines, Richard Garwin told BBC radio Tuesday.

Garwin, who is a member of the Federation of American Scientists Board of Directors and a long-term adviser to the U.S. government on defense matters, is in Britain to testify before the House of Commons Defence Select Committee on the future of Britain’s nuclear deterrent.

The U.K. government announced on December 4, 2006, that it had decided to replace its current Vanguard-class sea-launched ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs) with a new class to enter operation in 2024. If approved by the parliament, the plan would extend Britain’s nuclear era into the 2050s.

According to the U.K. government, a decision to build a new new class must be made now because the Vanguard-class SSBNs only have a have a design life of 25 years. But Garwin says that the submarines have a minimum design life of 25 years, which can be extended by at least another 15 years. A decision made now is premature and unwise, Garwin told BBC, because the large Trident missiles may not be necessary 15 years from now.

New additions: Garwin testimony / House of Lords debate

Background: BBC Today | Garwin Archive at FAS | Britain’s Next Nuclear Era

(Updated January 3, 2007)

North Korea may have gotten all the attention, but all the nuclear weapon states were busy flight-testing ballistic missiles for their nuclear weapons during 2006. According to a preliminary count, eight countries launched more than 28 ballistic missiles of 23 types in 26 different events.

Unlike the failed North Korean Taepo Dong 2 launch, most other ballistic missile tests were successful. Russia and India also experienced missile failures, but the United States demonstrated a very reliable capability including the 117th consecutive successful launch of the Trident II D5 sea-launched ballistic missile.

The busy ballistic missile flight testing represents yet another double standard in international security, and suggests that initiatives are needed to limit not only proliferating countries from developing ballistic missiles but also find ways to curtail the programs of the existing nuclear powers.

The ballistic missile flight tests involved weapons ranging from 10-warhead intercontinental ballistic missiles down to single-warhead short-range ballistic missiles. Most of the flight tests, however, involved long-range ballistic missiles and the United States, Russia and France also launched sea-launched ballistic missiles (see table below).

The Putin government’s reaffirmation of the importance of strategic nuclear forces to Russian national security was tainted by the failure of three consecutive launches of the new Bulava missile, but tests of five other missile types shows that Russia still has effective missile forces.

Along with China, Russia’s efforts continue to have an important influence on U.S. nuclear planning, and the eight Minuteman III and Trident II missiles launched in 2006 were intended to ensure a nuclear capability second to none. The first ICBM flight-test signaled the start of the deployment of the W87 warhead on the Minuteman III force.

China’s launch of the (very) long-awaited DF-31 ICBM and India’s attempts to test launch the Agni III raised new concerns because of the role the weapons likely will play in the two countries’ targeting of each other. But during a visit to India in June 2006, U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Peter Pace, downplayed at least the Indian issue saying other countries in the region also have tested missiles. In a statement that North Korea would probably find useful to use, Gen. Pace explained that “the fact that a country is testing something like a missile is not destabilizing” as long as it is “designed for defense, and then are intended for use for defense, and they have competence in their ability to use those weapons for defense, it is a stabilizing event.”

But since all “defensive” ballistic missiles have very offensive capabilities, and since no nation plans it defense based on intentions and statements anyway but on the offensive capabilities of potential adversaries, Gen. Pace’s explanation seemed disingenuous and out of sync with the warnings about North Korean, Iranian and Chinese ballistic missile developments.

The Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) seeks to limit the proliferation of ballistic missiles, but that vision seems undercut by the busy ballistic missile launch schedule demonstrated by the nuclear weapon states in 2006. Some MTCR member countries have launched the International Code of Conduct Against Ballistic Missile Proliferation initiative in an attempt to establish a norm against ballistic missiles, and have called on all countries to show greater restraint in their own development of ballistic missiles capable of delivering weapons of mass destruction and to reduce their existing missile arsenals if possible.

All the nuclear weapons states portray their own nuclear ballistic missile developments as stabalizing and fully in compliance with their pledge under the Non-Proliferation Treaty to pursue nuclear disarmament in good faith. But fast-flying ballistic missiles are inherently destablizing because of their vulnerability to attack may trigger use early on in a conflict. And the busy missile testing in 2006 suggests that the “good faith” is wearing a little thin.

On Monday, President Bush signed into law the Henry J. Hyde United States and India Nuclear Cooperation Promotion Act of 2006. The Federation of American Scientists strongly supports better ties—economic, cultural, technical, even security ties—with India. Specifically with energy production, there are many ways in which U.S. know-how could help India and the technology flow is not all one way, for example, India is, along with the United States, one of the world’s leaders in wind energy. But India made tacit acceptance of their nuclear weapons program the price of better relations. The Federation strongly opposed the nuclear deal because of the proliferation implications. We organized petitions to Congress. Thirty seven Nobel Prize winners from our Board of Sponsors signed a letter to the Congressional leadership opposing the agreement. We had a press conference where Michael Krepon and Len Weiss argued against the agreement and we released the Nobelist letter. In the end, however, the president and the Congress seem to have accepted the price set by India and here we are.
(more…)

Hans Kristensen has just posted an excellent analysis of the new Defense Science Board (DSB) report Nuclear Capabilities. The report presents what is known to the military as a “target rich environment” so we might make a few more comments over the next couple of days.

I want to focus here on the section, starting on p. 2, entitled “Some Entrenched Views on Nuclear Capabilities.” I will leave to the reader the analysis of the word “entrenched.” This section of the DSB report sets up some straw men and then knocks them down. But the straw is a bit tougher than they think.
(more…)

The Defense Science Board concludes in a new report that the United States has lost its “national consensus” on what the nation’s nuclear deterrent should look like and the role it should serve. The consensus has been replaced by an “entrenchment” of “sharp differences” of opinion. Therefore, urgent action is needed by the White House and senior leaders to “engage more directly to articulate the persuasive case” for how modern nuclear weapons serve U.S. national security policy.

U.S. nuclear policy has come to a crossroad because the current formula is no longer sustainable.

Perhaps not coincidently, the DSB report comes as the administration is preparing to persuade Congress to pay for a new nuclear weapons complex (Complex 2030) to resume production of nuclear weapons for the first since since the end of the Cold War. To that end, the report presents a wide range of recommendations for how to revitalize the U.S. nuclear posture.

Recommendations for nuclear weapons policy and forces include:

1. Leaders should declare “unequivocally and frequently” that nukes are still needed.
2. Establish a Red Team to look for nuclear enemies.
3. Establish a Deterrence Team to figure out how to better deter current and future adversaries.
4. The missile defense under construction is inadequate to deal with countermeasures and needs to be upgraded.
5. Accelerate development of “a credible Nuclear Leg of the Strike Triad.”
6. Figure out what to do with nuclear forces beyond the SORT treaty, but hedge (it is now called “remain reversible”) against negative developments in Russian and China.
7. Modernize the command and control system.
8. The Nuclear Weapons Council should establish a policy that no single warhead type makes up more than 20 percent of the deployed stockpile (i.e., the stockpile should consist of at least five different warhead types).
9. RRW-1, as the first Reliable Replacement Warhead prototype is called, should be a full weapons program.

Recommendations for the nuclear weapons production complex include:

1. Produce “a predetermined number of RRW-class warheads” per year by 2012.
2. Create a National Nuclear Weapons Agency to support Complex 2030.
3. Retain all three nuclear weapons labs.
4. The Secretary of Defense should figure out which is easier: sustain the current quantities and diversity of nuclear weapons or build new ones.
5. Create an Assistant Secretary of Defense for Strategic Weapons with a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear Weapons.
6. Get congressional approval to appoint the Deputy Secretary of Defense as the Nuclear Weapons Council and make the commander of STRATCOM a member of the Nuclear Weapons Council.

Yet Another RRW Vision?

One of the surprises in the report is that the DSB seems to have a different long-term vision for the RRW than the administration. A drawing in the DSB report shows how the composition of nuclear warheads would change with the introduction of RRWs. The drawing a future mix of equal numbers of RRWs and existing life-extended warheads (see figure below).

That vision is very different from the one presented by the Secretary of Energy, Secretary of Defense, and the Nuclear Weapons Council in their joint interim RRW report to Congress in March 2006. A drawing in that report showed a future mix of warheads where RRWs would replace all life-extended warhead types (see figure below).

Analysis

The DSB report comes across as an attempt to “resell” the 2001 Nuclear Posture Review. It is a report on the defensive that suggests that critics of Cold War nuclear policy and excessive capabilities have had a considerable impact on U.S. nuclear policy and the mood inside the administration and Congress.

A major shortfall of the report is this: Despite lamenting that new thinking is urgently needed, the DSB report offers no new ideas for why it is necessary to revitalize the nuclear posture, except the arguments made in the 2001 Nuclear Posture Review and the 2004 DSB report on the future of strategic forces. Instead of defining the new agenda, the DSB report appears to be defending the current agenda.

This is perhaps not surprising considering that the entire DSB Task Force consisted of people from the nuclear labs, major defense contractors and conservative think tanks. Some were even the architects of the 2001 Nuclear Posture Review. All advisors are from the Pentagon, the nuclear agencies, and the nuclear labs. The DSB report’s primary conclusion is that new thinking is needed, but the list of participants and briefings received strongly suggests that no attempt was made to think “outside the box.”

The failure to involve others and new ideas is perhaps the worst enemy of U.S. nuclear policy, not to mention a disfavor to national and international security.

Background: Defense Science Report | US Nuclear Guidance

After having spent the last several years sending diplomats to Teheran to try to persuade Iran not to develop nuclear weapons, the British government announced Monday that it plans to renew its own nuclear arsenal.

If approved by the parliament, Monday’s decision means that the United Kingdom will extend its nuclear deterrent beyond 2050, essentially doubling the timeline of its own nuclear era.

Doing so is entirely consistent with the United Kingdom’s international obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and with a policy that favors complete elimination of nuclear weapons, the government insisted in a fact sheet, because the British nuclear arsenal today is smaller than during the Cold War, and because the Treaty does not say exactly when nuclear disarmament has to be accomplished. In fact, the new plan has “the right balance,” the government claims, between working for a world free of nuclear weapons and keeping those weapons.

The Reduction

Probably in acknowledgment that it will be a hard sell domestically and internationally, the $40 billion nuclear plan was sweetened with an announcement that Britain will reduce the number of “operationally available warheads” from fewer than 200 today to fewer than 160 at some future date.

The gesture is somewhat hollow, however, because Britain only has enough Trident D5 missiles to arm three of its four SSBNs with a maximum of 144 warheads anyway. The Blair government previously decided in 1998 to purchase only 58 missiles instead of 65. Since then, eight missiles have been used in operational test launches, leaving 50 missiles in the inventory – barely enough to fill the tubes of three SSBNs.

The British government has stated that the single SSBN on patrol at any given time carries “up to 48” warheads, a statement that partly reflects that some of the missiles have been given a “substrategic” mission, probably with only one warhead each. Depending on the number of substrategic mission missiles carried, the actual loading of the patrolling submarine probably is 36-44 warheads. Assuming a similar loading for the other two SSBNs for which there are missiles available, the estimated number of warheads needed for the British SSBN fleet since the substrategic mission first became operational in 1996 is 108-132 warheads.

The announcement to retain “fewer than 160” operationally available warheads seems to reflect this existing reality rather than an additional operational reduction. But it raises the question why the British government for the past eight years has retained 20 percent more warheads than it actually needed.

The Catch

The plan to replace the submarines comes with a catch: Half-way through their service-life, the missiles will expire, necessitating further investment to purchase new missiles and possibly also new warheads. The U.K. government has already received, the White Paper states, assurance from the U.S. government that Britain can be a partner if the United States later decides to build a successor to the D5 missile, and that such a missile will be compatible, or can be made compatible, with Britain’s new SSBNs.

The Warheads

The type of warhead deployed on Britain’s D5 missiles will last at least into the 2020, according to the White Paper. But the U.K. government says it doesn’t yet know whether the warhead can be “refurbished” to last longer, or whether it will be necessary to develop a replacement warhead. The next Parliament will have to make that decision, the government says, an option that of course will be harder to reject if a decision has already been made to build the new submarines.

How British are the warheads on the British SSBN fleet? The Ministry of Defence stated in a fact sheet that the warheads on the D5 missiles were “designed and manufactured in the U.K.” Even so, rumors have persisted for years that the warheads are in fact modified U.S. W76 warheads.

Now a U.S. Department of Energy document – declassified after eight years of processing – directly links the warhead designs on U.S. and U.K. Trident missiles. The document shows that the “U.K. Trident System,” as the British warhead modification is called, is similar enough to the U.S. W76 warhead to make up an integral part of the W76 engineering, design and evaluation schedule (see figure below).

Specifically, the document shows that between 1999 and 2001, work on five of 13 “W76 needs” involved the “U.K. Trident System.” These activities included vibration and point shock models, impulse models, impulse and point shock tests, vibration tests, as well as “TSR [thermostructural response] and Blast Models.”

The activities listed in the chronology are contained in a detailed database that “maps the requirements and capabilities for replacement subsystem and component modeling development, test, and production to the specific organizations tasked with meeting these requirements.”

The “U.K. Trident System” is thought to consist of a 100-kiloton thermonuclear warhead encased in a cone-shaped U.S. Mark-4 reentry vehicle. The W76 is the most numerous warhead (approximately 3,200) in the U.S. stockpile. Built between 1978 and 1988, about a third of the W76s are being modified as the W76-1 (see figure below) and equipped with a new fuze with ground-burst capability to “enable the W76 to take advantage of the higher accuracy of the D5” against harder targets. Delivery of the first W76-1 is scheduled for 2007 and the last in 2012. The W76 is also the first warhead scheduled to be modified under the proposed Reliable Replacement Warhead program.

The Nuclear Mission

The U.K. government presents several specific military and political justifications for why it intends to double Britain’s nuclear era.

One is that none of the other nuclear weapon states are even considering getting rid of their nuclear weapons, but instead are modernizing – some even increasing – their nuclear arsenals.

Another justification is that North Korea and Iran are pursuing nuclear weapons too, and that some countries might even “sponsor nuclear terrorism from their soil.”

Finally, the world is an uncertain and risky place, the White Paper concludes, and adds that it is “not possible to accurately predict the global security environment over the next 20 to 50 years.”

Those who question that these justifications are sufficient to retain the nuclear deterrent, Prime Minister Tony Blair writes in the foreword of the White Paper, “need to explain why disarmament by the U.K. would help our security.”

Analysis

The White Paper fails to identify a specific, urgent mission for British nuclear weapons. Instead, the justification to keep them seems like a little of everything: A couple of Cold War leftovers (Russia is still looming on the horizon and China might rise), a little sheep mentality (the other nuclear powers won’t give them up either), a little mission-creep (we might have to use them against proliferators), and a little hype (a role against terrorists). All of this is wrapped in the popular post-Cold War mantra that claims that the world suddenly is very uncertain and impossible to predict. As Prime Minister Tony Blair told the Parliament Monday:

“It is just that, in the final analysis, the risk of giving up something that has been one of the mainstrays of our security since the war [World War II], and moreover doing so when the one certain thing about our world today is its uncertainty, is not a risk I feel we can reasonably take.” The world has changed “beyond recognition,” and “it is precisely because we could not have recognized then, the world we live in now, that it would not be wise to predict the unpredictable in the times to come.”

Of course, it is one thing to argue that Britain needs a nuclear bomb in the basement or a mothballed nuclear production capability just in case. It is quite another to claim that strategic submarines need to continue to hide deep in the oceans much like they did during the Cold War without an urgent threat against the survival of the nation.

That’s for the U.K. Parliament to debate in the next months, followed – presumably – by a decision whether to approve the government’s plan sometime in 2007.

Background: MOD White Paper and Fact Sheets | British Nuclear Forces, 2005