A Department of Defense (DOD) report on Russian nuclear forces, conducted in coordination with the Director of National Intelligence and sent to Congress in May 2012, concludes that even the most worst-case scenario of a Russian surprise disarming first strike against the United States would have “little to no effect” on the U.S. ability to retaliate with a devastating strike against Russia.

I know, even thinking about scenarios such as this sounds like an echo from the Cold War, but the Obama administration has actually come under attack from some for considering further reductions of U.S. nuclear forces when Russia and others are modernizing their forces. The point would be, presumably, that reducing while others are modernizing would somehow give them an advantage over the United States.

But the DOD report concludes that Russia “would not be able to achieve a militarily significant advantage by any plausible expansion of its strategic nuclear forces, even in a cheating or breakout scenario under the New START Treaty” (emphasis added).

The conclusions are important because the report come after Vladimir Putin earlier this year announced plans to produce “over 400” new nuclear missiles during the next decade. Putin’s plan follows the Obama administration’s plan to spend more than $200 billion over the next decade to modernize U.S. strategic forces and weapons factories.

The conclusions may also hint at some of the findings of the Obama administration’s ongoing (but delayed and secret) review of U.S. nuclear targeting policy.

No Effects on Strategic Stability

The DOD report – Report on the Strategic Nuclear Forces of the Russian Federation Pursuant to Section 1240 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012 – was obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. It describes the U.S. intelligence community’s projection for the likely development of Russian nuclear forces through 2017 and 2022, the timelines of the New START Treaty, and possible implications for U.S. national security and strategic stability.

Much of the report’s content was deleted before release – including general and widely reported factual information about Russian nuclear weapons systems that is not classified. But the important concluding section that describes the effects of possible shifts in the number and composition of Russian nuclear forces on strategic stability was released in its entirety.

As long as a sufficient number of U.S. SSBNs are at sea, strategic stability is intact even with significantly greater Russian nuclear forces, the DOD says.

.
The section “Effects on Strategic Stability” begins by defining that stability in the strategic nuclear relationship between the United States and the Russian Federation depends upon the assured capability of each side to deliver a sufficient number of nuclear warheads to inflict unacceptable damage on the other side, even with an opponent attempting a disarming first strike.

Consequently, the report concludes, “the only Russian shift in its nuclear forces that could undermine the basic framework of mutual deterrence that exists between the United States and the Russian Federation is a scenario that enables Russia to deny the United States the assured ability to respond against a substantial number of highly valued Russian targets following a Russian attempt at a disarming first strike” (emphasis added). The DOD concludes that such a first strike scenario “will most likely not occur.”

But even if it did and Russia deployed additional strategic warheads to conduct a disarming first strike, even significantly above the New START Treaty limits, DOD concludes that it “would have little to no effects on the U.S. assured second-strike capabilities that underwrite our strategic deterrence posture” (emphasis added).

In fact, the DOD report states, the “Russian Federation…would not be able to achieve a militarily significant advantage by any plausible expansion of its strategic nuclear forces, even in a cheating or breakout scenario under the New START Treaty, primarily because of the inherent survivability of the planned U.S. Strategic force structure, particularly the OHIO-class ballistic missile submarines, a number of which are at sea at any given time.” (more…)

Reductions under the New START Treaty have gotten off to a very slow start

.
By Hans M. Kristensen

More than a year and a half after the New START Treaty between the United States and Russia entered into force on January 5, 2011, one thing is clear: they are not in a hurry to reduce their nuclear forces.

Earlier today the fourth batch of so-called aggregate data was released by the U.S. State Department. It shows that the United States and Russia since January 5, 2011, have reduced their accountable deployed strategic delivery vehicles by 76 and 30, respectively. Parts of those numbers are fluctuations due to delivery platforms entering or leaving maintenance. The U.S. number obscures the fact that it involves destruction of some of three dozen old B-52G bombers that still count as deployed even though they were retired two decades ago. The Russian number obscures replacement of older missiles with new ones on a less than one-for-one basis.

During the same period, the United States and Russia have reduced their number of accountable deployed strategic warheads by 78 and 38, respectively. Much of these numbers are fluctuations due to delivery platform maintenance and it is not clear that either country has made any explicit warhead reductions yet under the treaty. In any case, 38-78 warheads don’t amount to much out of the approximately 5,000 nuclear warheads the two countries retain in each of their respective nuclear stockpiles.

With 1,499 accountable warheads on 491 deployed strategic delivery vehicles, Russia is already well below the treaty limit and is only required to scrap 84 non-deployed delivery vehicles before the treaty enters into effect in six years on February 5, 2018.

The United States is well above the Russian force level, with 1,722 accountable warheads on 806 deployed strategic delivery vehicles. Over the next six years, it will have to remove 96 deployed delivery vehicles with 172 accountable warheads, and scrap 234 non-deployed platforms.

The U.S. posture appears even more bloated when considering that the Pentagon retains a large reserve of non-deployed warheads intended to increase the loading on the missiles in a crisis.

Russia does not have such an upload capacity. And even President Putin’s promised increased missile production over the next decade will not be able to offset the expected continued decline in the Russian triad that will result form the retirement of four old ICBM and SLBM systems over the next decade-plus.

This nuclear force structure asymmetry must be addressed in the next round of U.S.-Russian strategic nuclear talks. But even before such talks get underway, reductions can and should be made. There is simply no reason for the Pentagon to stretch reductions of excess nuclear forces through 2017. Forces slated for retirement should be removed from service now and the reserve of upload warheads should be trimmed. Doing so is good planning. Not only is it expensive (and stupid) to keep more nuclear forces than needed. But a bloated force structure provides unhelpful justification for those in the Russian establishment who argue for increasing missile production and deploying new missiles.

See previous analysis of New START data:

1. Second Batch of New START Data Released
2. US Releases Full New START Data

This publication was made possible by a grant from Carnegie Corporation of New York and Ploughshares Fund. The statements made and views expressed are solely the responsibility of the author.

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta meets with New Zealand Defense Minister Jonathan Coleman, in a first step to normalize relations between the two countries nearly 30 years after the U.S. punished New Zealand for its ban on nuclear weapons.

.
By Hans M. Kristensen

Hat tip to the Obama administration for doing the right and honorable thing: breaking with outdated Reagan administration policy and sending Defense Secretary Leon Panetta to New Zealand and ease restrictions on New Zealand naval visits to U.S. military bases.

The move shows that Washington after nearly 30 years of punishing the small South Pacific nation for its ban against nuclear weapons may finally have come to its senses and decided to end the vendetta in the interest of more important issues.

The New Zealand defense minister made it quite clear that the move does not mean a change to New Zealand’s policy of denying nuclear warships access to its harbors. “New Zealand has made it very clear that the policy remains unchanged and will remain unchanged.”

Whether (or how soon) the move will result in a resumption of U.S. naval visits to New Zealand remains to be seen. The U.S. Navy still has two policies that would appear to prevent this. One is a “one-fleet” policy that holds that if any U.S. ships are restricted from an area, it will refrain from sending any ships there. The other is the Neither Confirm Nor Deny Policy (NCND), which prohibits disclosing if a warship carries nuclear weapons or not, a leftover from the Cold War when stuff like that was important.

These policies leave an irritant in place that doesn’t need to be there. It seems that both countries can makes modifications to their policies to allow normal military relations to resume.

Cold War Policy in Need of Change

Panetta’s visit to New Zealand is the first by a U.S. defense secretary in 30 years since the gong ho nuclear policy of the Reagan administration threw New Zealand out of the Australia-New Zealand-US (ANZUS) alliance for refusing to accept visits by nuclear-armed warships to its ports. The treatment of New Zealand was intended as a warning to countries not to dare enforce their non-nuclear policies. As former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Leslie Gelb diplomatically put it in the New York Times at the time: “Unless we hold our allies’ feet to the fire over ship visits and nuclear deployments, one will run away and then the next.”

At the core of the dispute is the so-called Neither Confirm Nor Deny Policy (NCND), according to which the U.S. will not reveal – directly or indirectly – whether nuclear weapons are present on a warship, an aircraft, or on a base. The policy emerged in the 1950s as a way to counter anti-nuclear and left wing demonstrations in Europe during port visits. Later it was re-coined as a way to protect ships against terrorist attacks and to complicate Soviet military planning. Spin aside, the central objective was always to ensure unfettered access for U.S. warships to foreign ports – no matter the nuclear policy of the host country. (For a chronology of the NCND policy, see: The Neither Confirm Nor Deny Policy: Nuclear Diplomacy at Work).

During the Cold War, U.S. warships bristled with non-strategic nuclear weapons. Bombs, anti-submarine rockets, air-defense missiles, land-attack cruise missiles, depth bombs and torpedoes were continuously at sea onboard aircraft carriers, cruisers, destroyers, frigates, supply ships and attack submarines. Every single day some of them sailed into foreign ports around the world. The deployment war part of a global posture against the Soviet Union, which also deployed non-strategic nuclear weapons on its fleet (Britain and France had similar postures).

The NCND was a brilliant diplomatic arrangement. The host country could have whatever nuclear policy it wanted and the United States could continue to visit its ports with nuclear-armed warships. The only problem with the NCND was that it put allied governments with non-nuclear policies in an unreasonable dilemma: one, reject the visit or ask the United States to deny that the ship carried nuclear weapons; or, two, turn a blind eye and accept that nuclear weapons come in on warships once in a while.

That dilemma is the dirty little secret of the NCND: It required not just that the United States was ambiguous about the weapons loadout, but also that the host country accepted ambiguity about the armament. For the host country to accept ambiguity was, of course, incompatible with a policy that prohibited nuclear weapons on its territory.

New Zealand was the first allied country that refused to accept that ambiguity. It did so in 1984 by adopting a law that prohibited access for nuclear-armed and nuclear-propelled vessels. The law did not demand that the United States confirm or deny whether there were nuclear weapons on the ships (that is a widespread misperception); it only required the New Zealand government in its own right to make a determination and announce its decision. But such an announcement was incompatible with the NCND, which required the host country to keep quiet about what it knew.

The USS Buchanan (DDG-14) arrives in Sydney, Australia, in March 1985 after it was barred from visiting New Zealand.

When the U.S. wanted to send a warship to New Zealand in the spring of 1985, it could have sent a warship that was not nuclear-capable (in fact, the News Zealand government asked the U.S. to do so, but it refused). But that would not have fully tested New Zealand’s adherence to the NCND. So the Reagan administration decided to send the guided missile destroyer USS Buchannan (DDG-14), which was equipped to carry nuclear ASROC missiles. This visit was to be followed by several other ships, some of which most likely carried nuclear weapons.

The New Zealand government turned down the request and the Reagan administration retaliated by throwing New Zealand out of the ANZUS alliance, curtailing intelligence sharing, and prohibiting New Zealand warships from visiting U.S. military and Cost Guard facilities in the region. In effect, the Reagan administration chose to sacrifice an ally in a part of the world where the military implications were limited to prevent the anti-nuclear “allergy” from spreading to other more vital parts of the world.

The strategy failed. In 1988, the nuclear port visits issue triggered an election in Denmark, and in 1990 the Swedish governing party decided to enforce Sweden’s ban against nuclear weapons on its territory after a study determined that U.S. warships routinely carried nuclear weapons into Swedish ports despite the ban.

Instead of a tool for protecting nuclear warships and ensuring allied security, the NCND policy became a lightening rod for political controversy and soured relations with U.S. allies all over the world. Whenever a nuclear-capable warship sailed into a foreign port on a “goodwill visit,” the thorny issue of whether it carried nuclear weapons and the host government being seen as turning a blind eye to violations of its own non-nuclear policy overshadowed the goodwill the U.S. and the host government were trying to demonstrate.

Today the policy continues even though it is hopelessly outdated and counterproductive. All non-strategic nuclear weapons were removed from U.S. surface ships and attack submarines by the first Bush administration in 1992 – effectively rendering the nuclear port visit issue moot. Moreover, the Clinton administration decided in 1994 to denuclearize all U.S. surface ships. The only remaining non-strategic naval nuclear weapon – the Tomahawk land-attack cruise missile (TLAM/N) – has been stored on land since 1992 and is now being scrapped. (Russia has also offloaded its naval non-strategic nuclear weapons and Britain has completely eliminated its inventory.)

Restoration of Normal Relations is Possible

There is nothing that prevents restoration of normal U.S.-New Zealand military relations. Yet even though the non-strategic nuclear weapons have been offloaded and the U.S. surface fleet denuclearized, there are still Cold War warriors inside the bureaucracies who argue that it is necessary to maintain ambiguity about what U.S. warships carry and that no warship should sail where others are rejected.

Likewise, given that the U.S. surface fleet has been denuclearized and the last non-strategic naval nuclear weapon is being retired, there is no problem in the New Zealand government ascertaining – even publicly – that visiting U.S. warships do not carry nuclear weapons.

The policies that required nuclear ambiguity for warship visits to New Zealand are unnecessary and counterproductive and should be abolished. Hopefully they will not prevail for long. It is only a matter of time before U.S. warships begin visiting New Zealand again and Panetta must order the navy to stop pretending ambiguity where there is none: U.S. warships no longer carry nuclear weapons.

In the meantime, the U.S. embassy in Wellington might want to update its fact sheet on New Zealand-U.S. relations, which doesn’t seem to have caught up with Panetta’s visit:

“New Zealand’s legislation prohibiting visits of nuclear-powered ships continues to preclude a bilateral security alliance with the U.S. The legislation enjoys broad public and political support in New Zealand. The United States would welcome New Zealand’s reassessment of its legislation to permit that country’s return to full ANZUS cooperation.” (Emphasis added).

I think that ship has sailed.

By Hans M. Kristensen

The disclosure during yesterday’s Senate Appropriations Subcommittee hearing that the cost of the B61 Life Extension Program (LEP) is significantly greater that even the most recent cost overruns calls into question the ability of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) to manage the program and should call into question the B61 LEP itself.

If these cost overruns were in the private sector, heads would roll and the program would probably be canceled.

At the hearing yesterday, Senator Dianne Feinstein revealed that NNSA recently told her that the $4 billion cost estimate they provided in the FY2011 Stockpile Stewardship Management Plan was too low and that they would need $4 billion more to complete the program. Two months ago I reported that the cost had increased to $6 billion.

NNSA’s new cost estimate is already being challenged, this time by the Pentagon’s Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation (CAPE) office, which only a few days ago increased the estimate by another $2 billion to a whopping $10 billion.

But get this: the already too high B61 LEP cost estimate does not include other pricy elements of the B61 modernization program. In addition to the LEP itself comes a new guided tail kit assembly that the Air Force is developing to increase the accuracy of the B61. The cost estimate for that tail kit has recently increased by 50 percent from $800 million to $1.2 billion.

Add to that the cost of equipping the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter with the capability to carry the new weapons, recently estimated at around $340 million. If the LEP and tail kit increases mentioned above are any indication, however, then the cost of equipping the F-35 with nuclear capability is also likely to increase.

The escalating costs may eventually make the B61 LEP the most expensive nuclear weapons program (per warhead unit) in the U.S. arsenal. Already the projected B61 LEP cost far exceeds the cost of the W76 LEP, which probably involves three times as many warheads as will produced by the B61 LEP. As Nick Roth points out, the new $10 billion estimate is equivalent to two-thirds of what NNSA planned to spend on life extending all the other warhead types in the US arsenal over the next twenty years!

The precise number of B61-12 planned is still a secret. My take currently is around 400. If so, that would mean each B61-12 bomb would cost $28 million (including cost of tail kit).

Because of the way the B61 LEP has been presented, many have the impression that the program will life-extend all four versions of the B61. In reality, only one of the four versions will be life-extended: the B61-4. It may cannibalize components from the other three (B61-3/7/10), but the heart of the new B61-12 is the B61-4 nuclear explosive package. Instead of the simple chart that STRATCOM has been circulating, the following chart more accurately illustrates the process:

 

Implications and Recommendations.

The fact that the B61-12 will use the B61-4 nuclear explosive package obviously limits the number of B61-12s that can be built to the number of B61-4 that were originally produced. That number is about 660. But most of those have been retired and only about 200 are thought to be left in the DOD stockpile. If B61-12 production is to exceed 200, then it would have to also use warheads from retired B61-4s. Given that the B61-12 will not be carried on the B-52 bomber, that B-2 bombers are probably not allocated a maximum load of weapons (they also carry others), and that the stockpile in Europe is likely to decrease within the next decade, it seems reasonable to assume a B61-12 stockpile of around 400 weapons. But the number is secret – not because it matters to national security but because it is nuclear.

The escalating cost of the B61 LEP adds to NNSA’s abysmal record of underestimating costs of nuclear weapons programs. It follows enormous budget overruns of the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement – Nuclear Facility (CMRR-NF) at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, and the Uranium Processing Facility (UPF) at the Y-12 National Security Complex at Oak Ridge in Tennessee.

As mentioned above, if these cost overruns happened in the private sector, heads would roll and the program would probably be canceled.

Apart from poor planning, the B61 LEP cost escalation is probably also fueled by planners that appear to be drunk on promises of increased nuclear funding and political commitments to nuclear modernization. The result is an overly ambitious program that instead of doing basic life-extension of existing designs is trying to add exotic features and components to the weapon that was originally tested. And the planned B61-12 is not even the most ambitious version the planners had asked for (they were not allowed to add multi-point safety and optical firing sets), which would have been even more expensive.

If poor planning is not the reason, then NNSA must be working under the assumption that costs should be underestimated when seeking initial program approval from Congress because the taxpayers will have to pay for the cost increase later on anyway. To her credit, Senator Feinstein is pushing for greater program control and told Aviation Week that the cost escalation will trigger additional congressional scrutiny. “We have to find a way to stop this from happening. …We’ve asked that we receive monthly reports, that one person be put in charge. … The purpose of that is to make people solve problems quickly, before they are left and they just continue to grow.”

The B61 LEP is not the only or necessarily most complex LEP on the horizon. NNSA and DOD are already planning the W78 LEP and envision building a “common” warhead that can be used on both ICBMs and SLBMs. Such a warhead is not currently in the stockpile. Although the design is still being worked out, it could combine W78 and W88 features and use a plutonium pit from a third warhead – the W87. If you’re worried about B61 LEP costs, just wait for the W78 LEP! Is Congress prepared to authorize $10 billion-plus per exotic LEP versus more basic LEPs?

But apart from money, the escalating B61 LEP costs must also raise questions about the importance of the mission. While the strategic mission on the B-2 strategic bomber is probably not in doubt, the non-strategic mission certainly should be. Under current plans, the B61-12 will be fitted onto four tactical aircraft – F-15E Strike Eagle, F-16 Falcon, F-35A Lightning and PA-200 Tornado. There are no important or urgent threats that require the United States to equip all these tactical aircraft with the new bomb. But the modernization will increase the military capability of NATO’s nuclear posture, not exactly in sync with the pledges from the White House and NATO to reduce the role of nuclear weapons and not increase military capabilities during LEPs.

And the few NATO officials that have either misunderstood their security requirements or been lobbied by nuclear cold warriors to support continued deployment of tactical nuclear weapons in Europe need to be debriefed – or asked to pay their share. That would certainly end the deployment quickly.

Whatever the best way forward, the U.S. should phase out its remaining non-strategic nuclear weapons, delay and redesign the B61 LEP, and focus its resources on maintaining the strategic nuclear weapons and conventional forces that are actually needed for U.S. and allied security in the foreseeable future.

This publication was made possible by a grant from Carnegie Corporation of New York and Ploughshares Fund. The statements made and views expressed are solely the responsibility of the author.

By Hans M. Kristensen

The U.S. State Department today released the full (unclassified) aggregate data for U.S. strategic nuclear forces as counted under the New START treaty. The data shows only very modest reductions of deployed strategic nuclear weapons over the past six months.

The full U.S. aggregate data follows the joint and much more limited overall U.S. and Russian aggregate numbers released in March 2012. Under the previous START treaty, the United States used to make Russian data available, but accepted Russia’s demand during the New START negotiations to no longer release their data.

The joint aggregate data and the full U.S. aggregate data are released at different times and not all information is made reality available on the Internet. Therefore, a full compilation of the data is made available here.

Overall U.S. Posture

The New START data attributes 1,737 warheads to 812 deployed ICBMs, SLBMs, and heavy bombers as of March 1, 2012. This is a reduction of 53 deployed warheads and 10 deployed delivery vehicles compared with the previous data set from September 2011.

A large number of non-deployed missiles and launchers that could be deployed are not attributed warheads.

The data shows that the United States will have to eliminate 289 launchers over the next six years to be in compliance with the treaty limit of 700 deployed and non-deployed launchers by 2018. Fifty-six of these will come from reducing the number of launch tubes per SSBN from 24 to 20, roughly 80 from stripping B-52Gs and nearly half of the B-52Hs of their nuclear capability, possibly retiring 50 ICBMs, and destroying about 100 old ICBM silos.

The released data does not contain a breakdown of how the 1,737 deployed warheads are distributed across the three legs of the Triad. But because the bomber number is now disclosed and each bomber counts as one warhead, and because between 450 and 500 warheads remain on the ICBMs, it appears that the deployed SLBMs carried 1,112 to 1,165 warheads, or about two-thirds of the total number of warheads counted by New START.

Just to remind readers: the New START numbers do not represent the total number of nuclear weapons in the U.S. arsenal – only about a third. The total military stockpile is just under 5,000 warheads, with several thousand additional retired (but still intact) warheads awaiting dismantlement. For an overview, see this article.

Ballistic Missile Submarines

The New START data shows that the United States as of March 1, 2012, had 241 Trident II SLBMs onboard its SSBN fleet. That is a reduction of eight SLBMs compared with the New START data from September 2011, but it doesn’t reflect an actual reduction in missiles on deployable submarines but a fluctuation in the number of missiles onboard SSBNs during loadout. Each SSBN has 24 missile tubes for a maximum loadout of 288 missiles, but at the time of the New START count two SSBNs were empty and two only partially loaded. With an estimated 1,140 warheads on the SLBMs, that translates to an average of 4-5 warheads per missile.

It is widely assumed that 12 out of 14 SSBNs normally are deployed, but two sets of aggregate New START data both indicate that the force ready for deployment at any given time may be closer to 10. This ratio can fluctuate significantly and in average 64 percent (8-9) of the SSBNs are at sea with roughly 920 warheads. Up to five of those subs are on alert with 120 missiles carrying an estimated 540 warheads – enough to obliterate every major city on the face of the earth.

Of the eight SSBNs based at Bangor (Kitsap) Submarine Base in Washington, the New START data indicates that two were out of commission on March 11, 2012: one had empty missile tubes – possibly because it was in dry dock – and another was only partially loaded – possibly because it was in the middle of a missile exchange when the count occurred. This means that six SSBNs at the base were loaded with Trident II D5 missiles carrying some 650 warheads at the time of the New START count.

For the six SSBNs based at Kings Bay Submarine Base in Georgia, the New START data shows that 97 missiles were deployed on March 1, 2012. That number is enough to load four SSBNs, with a fifth boat partially loaded. The 96 Trident II SLBMs on four SSBNs carried an estimated 430 warheads.

The New START data indicates that the U.S. Navy has not yet begun to reduce the number of missile tubes on each SSBN. The number will be reduced from 24 to 20 before the New START enters into effect in 2018.

Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles

The New START data shows that the United States deployed 449 Minuteman III ICBMs as of March 1, 2012. That is one more than on September 1, 2011. Most were at the three launch bases, but a significant number were in storage at maintenance and storage facilities in Utah. That included 58 MX Peacekeeper ICBMs retired in 2003-2005 but which have not been destroyed.

The New START data does not show how many warheads were loaded on the 449 deployed ICBMs, but the number is thought to be nearly 500. The 2010 NPR decided to “de-MIRV” the ICBM force, an unfortunately choice of words because the force will be downloaded to one warhead per missile, but retain the capability to re-MIRV if necessary. Downloading might have begun, but the status is unclear.

Heavy Bombers

The New START data shows that the U.S. Air Force possessed 147 B-2 and B-52 bombers as of March 1, 2012. Of these, 122 were counted as deployed, a reduction of three compared with September 2011.

Unfortunately the bomber data is misleading because it counts 36 retired B-52G bombers stored at Davis Monthan AFB in Arizona as “deployed” at Minot AFB in North Dakota. The miscount is the result of a counting rule in the treaty, which says that bombers can only be deployed at certain bases. As a result, the 36 retired B-52Gs are listed in the treaty as deployed at Minot AFB – even though there are no B-52Gs at that base. According to Air Force Global Strike Command, “There are no B-52Gs at Minot AFB, N.D…In accordance with accounting requirements, we have them assigned to Minot and as visiting David Monthan.” The actual number of heavy bombers should more accurately be listed as 86 B-2A and B-52H, with another 61 non-deployed (including the 36 at Davis Monthan AFB.

All of these bombers carry equipment that makes them accountable under New START, but only a portion of them are actually involved in the nuclear mission. Of the 20 B-2s and 91 B-52s, 18 and 76, respectively, are nuclear-capable, although only about 60 of those are thought to be nuclear tasked at any given time. None of the aircraft are loaded with nuclear weapons under normal circumstances but are attributed a fake count under New START of only one nuclear weapon per aircraft even though each B-2 and B-52s can carry up to 16 and 20 nuclear weapons, respectively. Roughly 1,000 nuclear bombs and cruise missiles are in storage for use by these bombers. Stripping excess B-52Hs and the remaining B-52Gs of their nuclear equipment will be necessary to get down to 60 counted nuclear bombers by 2018.

Conclusions and Recommendations

The New START data released by the State Department continues the decision made last year to release the full U.S. unclassified aggregate numbers, an important policy that benefits nuclear transparency and counters misunderstandings and rumors. In parallel with the data comes a busy treaty implementation effort and inspection schedule that reassures the United States and Russia that each side is abiding by the terms of the treaty. Now we need Russia to follow the U.S. example and also release its full unclassified data under New START.

The latest data set shows that the U.S. reduction of its deployed strategic nuclear warheads over the past six months has been modest: 53 warheads. The reduction is so modest that it might not reflect a cut as much as a fluctuation in the number of deployed weapons at any given time due to maintenance of delivery systems. While there have been some reductions of non-deployed and retired weapon systems, there is no indication from the New START data that the United States has yet begun to reduce its deployed strategic nuclear weapons.

Those reductions are scheduled to come, however, over the next five years as the New START treaty limits of 1,550 deployed strategic warheads and 700 deployed strategic delivery vehicles are to be met in February 2018. Despite the high cost of maintaining unnecessary weapon systems, 18 months after the New START treaty entered into force the Pentagon does not seem to be in a hurry to meet the treaty limits.

Download the full New START data here.

This publication was made possible by a grant from Carnegie Corporation of New York and Ploughshares Fund. The statements made and views expressed are solely the responsibility of the author.

 

The expected cost of the B61 Life-Extension Program has increased by 50 percent to $6 billion

.
By Hans M. Kristensen

The expected cost of the B61 Life-Extension Program (LEP) has increased by 50 percent to $6 billion dollars, according to U.S. government sources.

Only one year ago, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) estimated in its Stockpile Stewardship and Management Program report to Congress that the cost of the program would be approximately $4 billion.

The escalating cost of the program – and concern that NNSA does not have an effective plan for managing it – has caused Congress to cap spending on the B61 LEP by 60 percent in 2012 and 100 percent in 2013. The Pentagon’s Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation (CAPE) office is currently evaluating NNSA’s cost estimate and is expected to release its assessment in July. After that, NNSA is expected to release a validated cost, schedule and scope estimate for the B61 LEP, a precondition for Congress releasing the program funds for Phase 6.3 of the program.

Ambitious Program

Beyond mismanagement, the 50 percent increase is due to the ambitious modifications that NNSA, the nuclear laboratories, and the Pentagon say are needed to extend the life of the bomb.

That includes new use-control and safety features to increase the surety of what is already the most safe warhead design in the stockpile. Several warhead design options were proposed, ranging from a simple life-extension with the current features to a significantly altered design with new optical wiring and multi-point safety. The Nuclear Weapons Council in December chose the second-most ambitious design without optical wiring and multi-point safety.

Expectation for the ambitious B61-12 program has already spawned a hiring frenzy at Sandia National Laboratory for a program that dwarfs the W76 LEP, the ongoing production of one of the navy’s Trident missile warheads. “It is the largest effort in more than 30 years, the largest, probably, since the original development of the B61-3,4,” according to the head of the B61 LEP at Sandia.

Program Justification

The Pentagon is promoting the consolidation of four B61 versions into the B61-12 as an effort to increase efficiency and lowering costs. But we have yet to see the budget justification for that and it is not clear how much of the savings will come from consolidation or from simply reducing the overall number of B61s in the stockpile. Already the consolidation part is turning out to be much more expensive than we were led to believe.

The B61 LEP was catapulted forward by the April 2010 Nuclear Posture Review, which committed – before a validated cost, schedule and scope estimate had been developed – the United States to conduct a “full scope” B61 LEP. That commitment came as part of a “deal” that promised significant investments in nuclear weapons modernization in return for Congressional approval of the New START treaty.

The Mission

The administration says that the B61 LEP is needed to provide nuclear extended deterrence to NATO allies and to continue a gravity bomb capability on the B-2 stealth bomber. According to the U.S. Air Force, the B61-12 is “critical” to “deterrence of adversaries in a regional context, and support of our extended deterrence commitments.”

But privately, U.S. Air Force officials do not see a need to continue the deployment in Europe, where the United States currently deploys nearly 200 B61-3/4 bombs in 87 aircraft shelters at six bases in five countries. And although the NATO Summit later this month is expected to endorse – for now – continuation of the current nuclear posture in Europe, none of the European allies appear to be willing to pay for continuing the mission.

Extended deterrence can be provided with other means and the B61-12 is not the only U.S. air-delivered nuclear weapon system. Indeed, the U.S. Air Force currently has seven different nuclear weapons for delivery by five different delivery platforms. After completion of the B61-12 program, the Air Force will still have four different nuclear weapons for delivery by five different aircraft.

The U.S. Air Force has six different nuclear weapons for delivery by five different aircraft. After the B61 LEP it will still have four weapons for five aircraft.

.
Why so many different ways of delivering a nuclear weapon from the sky is needed for deterrence is anyone’s guess. The nuclear redundancy in the bomber leg is significantly greater than for ICBMs and SLBMs and appears to be the result of a combination of a left-over Cold War mission in Europe and requirements developed by warfighters to hold a variety of targets at risk in a variety of different ways.

Conclusions

After having spent hundreds of millions of dollars between 2006 and 2010 on extending the service life of the secondary of the B61-7 (and adding new spin-rocket motors to improve performance), NNSA and DOD are now planning to scrap the weapon and replace it with the $6 billion B61-12.

Although the cost estimate of the B61 LEP has increased by 50 percent over the past year, the $6 billion price tag is only part of the cost. The new guided tail kit the Air Force is developing to increase the accuracy of the B61-12 is expected to cost about $800 million. And the cost of making the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter capable of delivering the bomb is estimated to add another $340 million.

After having spent hundreds of millions of dollars on refurbishing the B61-7, NNSA now plans to scrap the weapon and replace it with the B61-12.

.
The anticipated cost of the B61-12 program is now greater than the high-end cost estimate for the CMRR-NF, the plutonium pit production factory planned at Los Alamos that the Senate recently decided to mothball for at least five years due to its high cost. Or if that is not impressive enough, the cost of the B61 LEP is comparable to what NNSA plans to spend on sustaining the entire active stockpile for the next decade.

This level of nuclear cost increase and mismanagement is neither justifiable nor sustainable. It shouldn’t be normally, but it certainly isn’t in the current financial crisis. And all of this to sustain a nuclear deployment is Europe that may well end before the B61 LEP is completed and a nuclear capability on the B-2 bomber that already carries another nuclear bomb.

The current B61-12 program should be stopped and reassessed to reduce cost and scope. Congress has already asked the JASONs to examine the scope of the program and provide an assessment of any major concerns. In the meantime, the mission in Europe should temporarily be sustained with a much more basic life-extension program while the administration works to convince NATO to agree to a withdrawal of the remaining U.S. nuclear weapons from Europe. The nuclear capability of the B-2 bomber should be limited to what it already carries.

See also report: Non-Strategic Nuclear Weapons

This publication was made possible by a grant from Carnegie Corporation of New York and Ploughshares Fund. The statements made and views expressed are solely the responsibility of the author.

A new report describes U.S. and Russian non-strategic nuclear weapons

.
By Hans M. Kristensen

A new report estimates that Russia and the United States combined have a total of roughly 2,800 nuclear warheads assigned to their non-strategic nuclear forces. Several thousands more have been retired and are awaiting dismantlement.

The report comes shortly before the NATO Summit in Chicago on 20-21 May, where the alliance is expected to approve the conclusions of a year-long Deterrence and Defense Posture Review that will, among other things, determine the “appropriate mix” of nuclear and non-nuclear forces in Europe. It marks the 20-year anniversary of the Presidential Unilateral Initiatives in the early 1990s that resulted in sweeping reductions of non-strategic nuclear weapons.

Twenty years later, the new report Non-Strategic Nuclear Weapons estimates that U.S. and Russian non-strategic nuclear forces are deployed at nearly 100 bases across Russia, Europe and the United States. The nuclear warheads assigned to these forces are in central storage, except nearly 200 bombs that the U.S. Air Force forward-deploys in almost 90 underground vaults inside aircraft shelters at six bases in five European countries.

The report concludes that excessive and outdated secrecy about non-strategic nuclear weapons inventories, characteristics, locations, missions and dismantlements have created unnecessary and counterproductive uncertainty, suspicion and worst-case assumptions that undermine relations between Russia and NATO.

Russia and the United States and NATO can and should increase transparency of their non-strategic nuclear forces by disclosing overall numbers, storage locations, delivery vehicles, and how much of their total inventories have been retired and are awaiting dismantlement.

The report concludes that unilateral reductions have been, by far, the most effective means to reducing the number and role of non-strategic nuclear weapons. Yet now the two sides appear to be holding on to the remaining weapons to have something to bargain with in a future treaty to reduce non-strategic nuclear weapons.

NATO has decided that any further reductions in U.S. nuclear weapons in Europe must take into account the larger Russian arsenal, and Russia has announced that it will not discuss reductions in its non-strategic nuclear forces unless the U.S. withdraws its non-strategic nuclear bombs from Europe. Combined, these positions appear to obstruct reductions rather facilitate reductions. Russian reductions should be a goal, not a precondition, for further NATO reductions.

Download the full report here: /_docs/Non_Strategic_Nuclear_Weapons.pdf

Slides from briefing at U.S. Senate are here: /programs/ssp/nukes/publications1/Brief2012_TacNukes.pdf

See also our Nuclear Notebooks on the total nuclear arsenals of Russia and the United States.

This publication was made possible by a grant from Carnegie Corporation of New York and Ploughshares Fund. The statements made and views expressed are solely the responsibility of the author.

On May 20-21, 28 NATO member countries will convene in Chicago to approve the conclusions of a year-long Deterrence and Defense Posture Review (DDPR). Among other issues, the review will determine the number and role of the U.S. non-strategic nuclear weapons deployed in Europe and how NATO might work to reduce its nuclear posture as well as Russia’s inventory of such weapons in the future.

Lack of transparency fuels mistrust and worst-case assumptions and the concerns some eastern NATO countries have about Russia have been used to prevent a withdrawal of the remaining U.S. nuclear weapons from Europe. The DDPR is expected to endorse the current deployment in Europe.

A new FAS report (PDF) concludes that non-strategic nuclear weapons are neither the reason nor the solution for Europe’s security issues today but that lack of political leadership has allowed bureaucrats to give these weapons a legitimacy they don’t possess and shouldn’t have.

Download Full Report

Despite an outcry from congressional republicans and conservatives against the Obama administration’s plans to reduce nuclear weapons, Republican presidents have been the big disarmers in the post-Cold War era.                                        Click graph for larger version

.
By Hans M. Kristensen

A recent report by the Associated Press that the administration is considering deep cuts in U.S. nuclear forces has Congressional Republicans and frequent critics of nuclear reductions up in arms.

The AP report quoted “a former government official and a congressional staffer” saying the administration is studying options for the next round of arms control talk with Russia that envision reducing the number of deployed strategic warheads to 1,000-1,100, 700-800, and 300-400.

Congressional Republicans and right-wing institutions have criticized the administration for preparing reckless unilateral cuts that jeopardize U.S. security.

As it turns out, Republican presidents have been the biggest nuclear reducers in the post-Cold War era. Republican presidents seem to have a thing for 50 percent nuclear reductions.

During the George H.W. Bush presidency from 1989-1993, the size of the U.S. nuclear stockpile was cut by nearly 50 percent from 22,217 to 11,511 warheads. The number of deployed strategic warheads dropped from 12,300 to 7,114, or 42 percent, during the same period.

Likewise, during the George W. Bush presidency from 2001-2009, the stockpile was cut by nearly 50 percent from 10,526 to 5,113 warheads. The number of deployed strategic warheads was cut by 65 percent from 5,668 to 1,968 warheads.

A reduction to 1,000-1,100 would be about 30 percent below the New START treaty limit, a drop similar to the 30 percent reduction between the New START treaty and the Moscow Treaty ceiling of 2,200 warheads. A reduction to 300-400 would be a reduction of approximately 77 percent – right up there with the Bush cuts of the past two decades.

Those Bushies must have been reckless liberals in disguise.

Outside Congress, conservative institutions and analysts rally against the administration’s nuclear review saying it’s done in the wrong way, no one will follow, and the U.S. is not modernizing its nuclear forces like other nuclear powers.

A Heritage Foundation blog post mischaracterizes the reduced force levels being studied as “unilateral” cuts and says “there is ample historical evidence” that unilateral reductions will not cause other nuclear powers to follow.

But while there may be no guarantee that other nuclear powers will follow, there certainly is ample historical evidence that they have done so in the past. The unilateral presidential initiative by president George H.W. Bush in 1991 canceled nuclear modernizations, withdrew nonstrategic nuclear weapons from overseas locations and the fleet, retired strategic weapon systems, and stood down bombers from alert with nuclear weapons onboard. The Soviet Union and later Russia followed with significant reductions of their own – reductions that directly benefitted U.S. national security and that of its allies. Britain and France later followed with their own unilateral reductions.

Although I don’t think the current review is about unilateral reductions but about developing potential options for the next round of negotiations with Russia, unilateral initiatives can jumpstart a process by cutting through the fog of naysayers.

The Heritage blog also mischaracterizes the United States as “the only country without a substantial nuclear weapons modernization program.” That’s quite a stretch given that the U.S. has recently converted four SSBNs to carry the Trident II D5 SLBM, has just finished modernizing its Minuteman III ICBM force and replacing the W62 warhead with the more powerful W87, has full-scale production underway of the W76-1 warhead, is preparing full-scaled production of the new B61-12 bomb, is producing a nuclear-capable F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, is studying a new common warhead for ICBMs and SLBMs, is designing a new class of 12 SSBNs, is designing a new long-range bomber, is studying a replacement for the Minuteman III ICBM, and is building new or modernized nuclear weapons production facilities.

That looks like a pretty busy modernization effort to me.

Similarly, an article in The Washington Free Beacon warns that the deepest cut being considered “would leave Pentagon with fewer warheads than China.” Not so. The 300-400 option is for deployed strategic warheads, not the total arsenal. China’s total arsenal includes about 240 warheads, none of which are deployed.

The same article also quotes an unnamed congressional official saying that no president in the past ever told the Pentagon to conduct a review based on specific numbers of warheads. “In the past, the way it worked was, ‘tell me what the world is like and then tell me what the force should be,’” the official said. “That is not happening in this review.”

Well, in this review, as in other reviews intended to reduce nuclear forces, the process begins with the White House asking the Pentagon to examine the options for lower levels. Of course the military is asked to examine implications of a certain range of options; Pentagon reviews have a tendency to be worst-case and the force levels higher than strictly needed. The nice round numbers of arms control treaties are shaped by 1) presidential intent, 2) force structure analysis, and 3) they have to be lower than the previous treaty limit.

During the 1990s, for example, STRATCOM conducted a series of force structure studies in response to – and in anticipation of – future reductions. STRATCOM was created partly to get around the Air Force-Navy rivalry and create a single voice for nuclear force structure analysis. But STRATCOM’s analysis obviously is focused on the needs of the warfighter to meet presidential guidance. As such, there is a tendency to protect force structure and avoid cutting too much too fast. That’s to be expected but it shows that one cannot simply leave it to the military to define what the force should be; it should be an interactive and inter-agency process because the proper nuclear posture is not – and should not be – simply a military matter.

So even if the United States were to cut it’s number of deployed strategic warheads to the lowest number said to be under consideration, those 300-400 warheads would be still more than enough to threaten destruction of Russia. Thousands of additional non-deployed warheads would be in reserve to upload if necessary. Requirements for greater numbers of deployed warheads only emerge when warfighters are asked to use them to hold at risk other nuclear forces, command and control facilities, political and military leadership targets, and war-supporting industry in a myriad of different strike scenarios.

If the administration could convince the Kremlin that it is in Russia’s interest to reduce as well, both countries would be better off.

Further reading:

• “Perspectives on the 2013 Budget Request and President Obama’s Guidance on the Future of the U.S. Nuclear Weapons Program,” briefing to the Fourth Nuclear Deterrence Summit, February 15, 2011.
• “Reviewing Nuclear Guidance: Putting Obama’s Words Into Action,” Arms Control Today, November 2011.

See also: Ivan Oelrich, “Obama’s ‘Radical’ Option for America’s Nuclear Future,” The Atlantic, February 20, 2012.

This publication was made possible by a grant from Carnegie Corporation of New York and Ploughshares Fund. The statements made and views expressed are solely the responsibility of the author.

By Hans M. Kristensen

It is worth your time reading Joe Cirincione’s article in Foreign Affairs: Obama’s Turn on Nuclear Weapons.

And I’m not just saying this because Joe is president of the Ploughshares Fund, one of my funders. He does a great job in describing the Obama administration’s ongoing nuclear targeting review and its place in the life of the administration with the myriads of policy issues and special interests that limit the president’s options in fulfilling the nuclear disarmament vision he presented in Prague in 2009.

That vision, as I wrote last week, was not visible in the Pentagon’s preview of it FY2013 defense budget request. It is an oversight that must be fixed. The defense budget must be in sync with U.S. nuclear policy, which now requires concrete steps to reduce the numbers and role of nuclear weapons.

For more background on the targeting review and the strategic nuclear war plan, see:

* Reviewing Nuclear Guidance: Putting Obama’s Words Into Action (November 2011)
* Obama and the Nuclear War Plan (February 2010)

This publication was made possible by a grant from Carnegie Corporation of New York and Ploughshares Fund. The statements made and views expressed are solely the responsibility of the author.

The new defense budget has “no cuts” in nuclear forces.

.
By Hans M. Kristensen

“There are no cuts made in the nuclear force in this budget.” That clear statement was made yesterday by deputy defense secretary Ashton Carter during the Pentagon’s briefing on the defense budget request for Fiscal Year 2013.

We’ll have to see what’s hidden in the budget documents once they are released next month, but the statement is disappointing for anyone who had hopes that the administration’s promises about “concrete steps” to reduce the number and role of nuclear weapons and to “put an end to Cold War thinking” would actually be reflected in the new defense budget.

Not so for the FY13 budget. Other than a decision to delay work for two years on the next generation ballistic missile submarine, the Defense Budget Priorities and Choices report released yesterday does not list any nuclear reductions; neither previously announced nor new ones.

But one year after the New START treaty entered into effect and 18 months after the Nuclear Posture Review was completed, it would have made sense to include some nuclear cuts in this budget – especially because this budget includes programming for future budget years through 2017, only one year before the New START treaty has to be implemented. Specifically, the Pentagon should have explained how (and how soon) it will achieve the previously announced plans to:

• Reduce the number of nuclear bombers to 60 deployed aircraft;
• Reduce the number of ICBMs to no more than 420 deployed missiles;
• Reduce the number of SLBMs to no more than 240 deployed missiles;
• Retire the nuclear Tomahawk cruise missile.

Why wait? Demonstrating that the U.S. is not only talking about reducing its nuclear forces but also doing so through near term defense budget cuts would have been an important signal to other nuclear weapon states whose militaries are waiting to see what has changed in the U.S. nuclear posture. It would also have been an important signal to the countries in the international nuclear nonproliferation regime that will convene in May to prepare for the next review of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, countries whose support we need to strengthen the nonproliferation regime.

Instead, the administration might now have to spend a good part of the next year saying: “Trust us, we’re working on it.”

And it is working on it. The most important effort is the review currently underway within the administration of the requirements for targeting and alert levels of nuclear forces – requirements that determine the force level. The review may well decide additional reductions beyond New START.

In a hint to what might come, the new defense strategic guidance published in early January stated: “It is possible that our deterrence goals can be achieved with a smaller nuclear force, which would reduce the number of nuclear weapons in our inventory as well as their role in U.S. national security strategy.” (Emphasis in original.)

The Defense Budget Priorities and Choices document appears to reaffirm this by stating that the White House review “will address the potential for maintaining our deterrent with a different nuclear force.”

Once the deterrence review is completed, it is important that the White House explains to the world what it has decided and doesn’t leave it to leaks and vague comments by anonymous officials to determine what the international perception of the direction of the U.S. nuclear posture will be.

This publication was made possible by a grant from Carnegie Corporation of New York and Ploughshares Fund. The statements made and views expressed are solely the responsibility of the author.

By Hans M. Kristensen

The Obama administration today presented a new defense strategy that it says is needed to realign U.S. military forces and doctrine with the reductions in combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as the new fiscal constraints created by the financial crisis.

There are few details in the new strategy for how this will be done but more will come in the Fiscal Year 2013 defense budget request expected in early February.

On nuclear forces the new strategy reaffirms the commitment to maintain a “safe, secure, and effective” nuclear arsenal as long as nuclear weapons exist. “We will field nuclear forces that can under any circumstances confront an adversary with the prospect of unacceptable damage, both to deter potential adversaries and to assure U.S. allies and other security partners that they can count on America’s security commitments.” The strategy appears heavily focused on the Pacific region and the Middle East. China and Iran, more so than North Korea, appear to be the primary potential adversaries, although Russian is by far the largest potential nuclear adversary.

In Prague in 2009, President Obama forcefully committed the United States “to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons,” that it was necessary to “ignore the voices who tell us that the world cannot change,” that the “United States will take concrete steps toward a world without nuclear weapons,” and that “To put and end to Cold War thinking, we will reduce the role of nuclear weapons in our national security strategy….” The New START treaty requires some reductions in deployed strategic forces, and the 2010 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) reaffirmed the commitment to nuclear disarmament and further reducing the role of nuclear weapons.

The new defense strategy language comes across as somewhat timid, stating only: “It is possible that our deterrence goals can be achieved with a smaller nuclear force, which would reduce the number of nuclear weapons in our inventory as well as their role in U.S. national security strategy.” This language presumably reflects the preliminary findings of the administration’s so-called Post-NPR Analysis, an ongoing effort within the administration to make “preparations for the next round of nuclear reductions” with Russia through “potential changes in targeting requirements and alert postures.”

FAS has long argued that U.S. nuclear forces can and should be reduced further and that a sufficient nuclear deterrent can be maintained with far fewer weapons, lower operational readiness, and by changing the presidential guidance for how the military is required to plan for the potential use of nuclear weapons.

In Europe, which was the focus of U.S. strategy during the Cold War, FAS has argued that the demise of the Soviet threat and the fundamentally different security challenges requiring NATO’s attention today permit the withdrawal of the remaining U.S. nuclear weapons from Europe. The new U.S. defense strategy concludes that the changed security landscape allows changes in the European posture that, while maintaining the US security commitment to NATO, require development of a smarter posture that is better suited to meet the challenges of today’s world. Whether this language envisions a withdrawal of non-strategic nuclear weapons from Europe remains to be seen, but it appears to make make it harder to justify continued deployment.

It is important that the commitment in the new defense strategy to maintaining a nuclear deterrent does not overshadow the equally important commitment to reducing the size and role of nuclear forces. The clear message to other nuclear weapons states must be that the emphasis of U.S. policy is the nuclear disarmament trajectory described in Prague and that it is in their interest to follow the lead. Billions of dollars can be saved over the next decade by reducing the nuclear forces and removing nuclear doctrine further from the warfighting thinking that characterized the Cold War and which is still prevalent in today’s planning. That, not indefinite nuclear modernizations, ought to be the priority for the 21st century.

Further reading: “Reviewing Nuclear Guidance: Putting Obama’s Words Into Action,” Arms Control Today, November 2011

This publication was made possible by a grant from Carnegie Corporation of New York and Ploughshares Fund. The statements made and views expressed are solely the responsibility of the author.