By Hans M. Kristensen

Last week I was in New York to brief two panels at the Third Session of the Preparatory Committee for the 2015 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (phew).

The first panel was on “Current Status of Rebuilding and Modernizing the United States Warheads and Nuclear Weapons Complex,” an NGO side event organized on May 1^st by the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF). While describing the U.S. programs, I got permission from the organizers to cover the modernization programs of all the nuclear-armed states. Quite a mouthful but it puts the U.S. efforts better in context and shows that nuclear weapon modernization is global challenge for the NPT.

The second panel was on “The Future of the B61: Perspectives From the United States and Europe.” This GNO side event was organized by the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation on May 2^nd. In my briefing I focused on providing factual information about the status and details of the B61 life-extension program, which more than a simple life-extension will produce the first guided, standoff nuclear bomb in the U.S. inventory, and significantly enhance NATO’s nuclear posture in Europe.

The two NGO side events were two of dozens organized by NGOs, in addition to the more official side events organized by governments and international organizations.

The 2014 PREPCOM is also the event where the United States last week disclosed that the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile has only shrunk by 309 warheads since 2009, far less than what many people had anticipated given Barack Obama’s speeches about “dramatic” and “bold” reductions and promises to “put an end to Cold War thinking.”

Yet in disclosing the size and history of its nuclear weapons stockpile and how many nuclear warheads have been dismantled each year, the United States has done something that no other nuclear-armed state has ever done, but all of them should do. Without such transparency, modernizations create mistrust, rumors, exaggerations, and worst-case planning that fuel larger-than-necessary defense spending and undermine everyone’s security.

For the 185 non-nuclear weapon states that have signed on to the NPT and renounced nuclear weapons in return of the promise made by the five nuclear-weapons states party to the treaty (China, France, Russia, United Kingdom, and the United States) “to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to the cessation of the nuclear arms race at early date and to nuclear disarmament,” endless modernization of the nuclear forces by those same five nuclear weapons-states obviously calls into question their intension to fulfill the promise they made 45 years ago. Some of the nuclear modernizations underway are officially described as intended to operate into the 2080s – further into the future than the NPT and the nuclear era have lasted so far.

Download two briefings listed above: briefing 1 | briefing 2

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

By Hans M. Kristensen

After a transparency hiatus of four years, the Obama administration has declassified the size of its nuclear weapons stockpile: 4,804 warheads as of September 2013.

The new stockpile size is 309 warheads fewer than the 5,113 warheads that the administration in 2010 reported were in the stockpile as of September 2009.

The new number of 4,804 warheads is 154 warheads more than Norris and I have in our latest Nuclear Notebook, in which we estimated a stockpile of 4,650 warheads. That estimate was, in part, based on the statement by Donald Cook, the NNSA administrator for defense programs, who in an email in February 2013 informed us that the reduction had been “approximately 85%” since 1967.

The new State Department announcement also mentions the “85 percent reduction,” although the 4,804 warheads actually correspond to a reduction of approximately 84 percent from the peak of 31,255 warheads in 1967.  We thought 154 additional warheads had been retired, but apparently that will take a little longer.

What the declassification does not include, unfortunately, is a number for how many retired warheads are awaiting dismantlement. That number includes “several thousand” warheads, according to the fact sheet; we estimate approximately 2,500.

Timing is Everything

The declassification is timed with the opening in New York of the third preparatory committee meeting for the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. As a declared nuclear-weapon state party to the treaty, the United States needs to be able to demonstrate that it is living up to its obligations under the treaty’s Article VI to “pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date….”

Since President Barack Obama took office in 2009, the record shows the United States has:

* Reduced the nuclear stockpile by 309 warheads (roughly equivalent to the size of the entire French nuclear stockpile);

* Dismantled 1,204 retired warheads (more than the nuclear weapons inventories of France, China, Britain, Pakistan, India, Israel, and North Korea combined);

* Negotiated and signed the New START Treaty, limiting U.S. and Russian deployed strategic warheads to 1,550 by 2018, down from the 2,200 limit of the 2002 Moscow Treaty.

For the other nuclear-weapon states that have signed the NPT (Britain, China, France, and Russia) Britain and France have disclosed some stockpile numbers, although they were single year numbers and not the stockpile history like that of the United States. Both should disclose more complete histories of their nuclear stockpiles and dismantlements.

China and Russia have not disclosed anything but need to become more transparent about their stockpiles.

Implications

It is good to see that the administration has decided to declassify the stockpile and dismantlement numbers after 2009. It provides and official record that the United States is making progress (although slowly) in reducing its inventory of nuclear warheads.

Yet only 309 warheads fewer in four years! Not exactly the “dramatic” reductions promised by Barack Obama during the 2008 election campaign.

In fact, the numbers demonstrate one, for the Obama administration, uncomfortable fact: it has yet to make a noticeable dent in the stockpile. Big stockpile reductions over the past 30 years have all happened during Republican presidents (see table above). Although the Clinton administration dismantled over 11,000 retired nuclear warheads, it did not make significant reductions in the remaining stockpile or the number of warheads deployed on launchers. After the W Bush administration cut the stockpile nearly in half and offloaded more than half of the warheads deployed on strategic launchers, the Obama administration’s policies so far have had only a modest effect on the size of the stockpile and the number of warheads deployed on strategic launchers.

One reason is that the Obama administration has been opposed by a Republican Congress that has fought against nuclear reductions. But it is also because the administration itself has reaffirmed long-standing nuclear policy, protected the force structure, and emphasized modernizations of nuclear forces.

One would hope that the administration during its final four years would be bolder and seek to implement more reductions without Congressional approval of a new treaty. Clearly, much more can be done. Russia is already well below the New START limits and its nuclear forces are expected to decline further even without a follow-on treaty. Both Russia and the United States need to cut defense spending and both still have nuclear arsenals that are vastly in excess of national security needs.

By Hans M. Kristensen

Robert Norris and I have made an update to our Nuclear Notebook on the B61 nuclear bomb family. Kind of an arcane title but that cozy-feeling title is what the nuclear weapon designers call that half a dozen different types of B61 nuclear weapons that were derived from the original design.

And it’s kind of timely, because the Obama administration is about to give birth to the newest member of the B61 family: the B61-12. And this is a real golden baby estimated at about $10 billion.

A Shrinking Family

The B61 family has lost a lot of members over the years. Nine of the fifteen total variations have been retired or canceled. The remaining five versions currently in the stockpile were built in 1979-1998.

Although based on the same basic warhead design first developed in the 1960s, the capabilities of the remaining version vary considerably with explosive yields ranging from 0.1 kilotons to a whopping 400 kilotons – more than 30 times as powerful as the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima in 1945.

Now the Obama administration has proposed that four of the remaining versions (B61-4, B61-7, B61-10, and B61-11) can be retired if the last version – the B61-4 – is converted into a guided standoff nuclear bomb. An even larger bomb, the B83-1, can also be retired, they say (even though its retirement was planned anyway).

The sales pitch is as arcane as the family name: building a new bomb is good for disarmament.

But most of the B61 bombs and the B83 could probably be retired anyway for the simple reason that deterrence no longer requires six different ways of dropping a nuclear bomb from an aircraft. A much simpler and cheaper life-extended version of the B61-7 could probably do the job.

Implications

The new B61-12 will be capable of holding at risk the same targets as current gravity bombs in the US stockpile (apparently even those currently covered by the B61-11 nuclear earth-penetrator that the Air Force no longer needs), but it will able to do so more effectively and with less yield (thus less collateral damage and radioactive fallout) that the existing bombs.

Congress rejected Air Force requests for new, low-yield, precision-guided nuclear weapons in the 1990s because of concern that such weapons would be seen as more usable than larger strategic warheads. With the B61-12, which will have several low-yield options, the military appears to obtain a guided low-yield nuclear strike capability after all.

In Europe, the effect of the B61-12 will be even more profound because its increased accuracy essentially will add high-yield targeting capability to NATO’s non-strategic arsenal. When mated with the stealthy F-35A fighter-bomber planned for Europe in the mid-2020s, the B61-12 will represent a considerable enhancement of NATO’s nuclear posture in Europe.

How they’re going to spin that development at the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference in New York next year will be interesting so see. But the B61-12 program is part of a global technological nuclear arms race with nuclear weapon modernization programs underway in all the nuclear-armed states that is in stark contrast to the wishes of the overwhelming number of countries on this planet to see the “cessation of the nuclear arms race at early date and to nuclear disarmament,” as enshrined in the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (more about that in the May issue of Arms Control Today).

Download the B61 Family article here.

For previous articles about the B61-12, click here.

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

By Hans M. Kristensen

Additional design details of the new B61-12 guided standoff nuclear bomb are emerging with new images. The image above shows a full-scale B61-12 model hanging in a wind tunnel at Arnold Air Force Base.

The test “uncovered a previously uncharacterized physical phenomenon,” according to Sandia National Laboratories, that would affect weapons performance.

Apparently a reference to the interaction between weapons spin rocket motors and the new guided tail kit assembly. Existing B61 models do not have the guided tail kit and are less accurate than the B61-12.

The spin rocket motors were previously developed to stabilize the aerodynamic behavior of B61 bombs during descent. Previous wind tunnel tests of those weapons had revealed a so-called “counter torque” effect where plumes from the rocket motors worked against the fin performance, counteracting the torque from the motors and reducing the vehicle spin rate.

Because the B61-12 will be enhanced with a new guided tail kit to improve its accuracy, the wind tunnel test was necessary to determine how the new tail interacts with the spin rocket motors.

The wind tunnel image also shows the new guided tail kit in greater detail than seen before, including the four maneuverable fins that are controlled by an Internal Navigation System. In addition to improving accuracy, the fins also give the B61-12 a limited standoff capability. Current B61 versions do not have Internal Navigation System or standoff capability.

The NNSA budget request for FY2015 includes $643 million for development of the B61-12, which is expected to cost $8 billion to $10 billion to develop and produce. Two B61 hydrodynamic shots were conducted in 2013. The Air Force budget request includes nearly $200 million for development of the guided tail kit, estimated at more than $1 billion. Several hundred millions more are required to integrate the B61-12 on five different aircraft, including Belgian, Dutch, German, Italian and Turkish fighter-bombers. An estimated 480 B61-12 bombs are planned, with first production unit in 2020.

The B61-12 will also be integrated on the new F-35A Lightning II aircraft by 2025. The combination of the guided standoff B61-12 with the stealthy fifth-generation F-35A fighter-bomber will significantly improve the military capabilities of NATO’s nuclear posture in Europe.

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

By Hans M. Kristensen

After four years of internal deliberations, the U.S. Air Force has decided to empty 50 Minuteman III ICBMs from 50 of the nation’s 450 ICBM silos. Instead of destroying the empty silos, however, they will be kept “warm” to allow reloading the missiles in the future if necessary.

The decision to retain the silos rather than destroy them is in sharp contrast to the destruction of 100 empty silos currently underway at Malmstrom AFB and F.E. Warren AFB. Those silos were emptied of Minuteman and MX ICBMs in 2005-2008 by the Bush administration and are scheduled to be destroyed by 2016.

A New Development

The Obama administration’s decision to retain the silos 50 silos “reduced” under the New START treaty instead of destroying them is a disappointing new development that threatens to weaken New START treaty implementation and the administration’s arms reduction profile. And it appears to be a new development.

A chart in a DOD’s unclassified report to Congress shows that the plan to retain the 50 non-operational ICBM launchers is different than the treaty implementation efforts so far, which have been designed to “eliminate” non-operational launchers.

Indeed, a senior defense official told the Associated Press that the Pentagon had never before structured its ICBM force with a substantial number of missiles in standby status.

Reducing Force Structure Flexibility

The decision to retain the 50 empty silos is also puzzling because it reduces U.S. flexibility to maintain the remaining nuclear forces under the New START limit. The treaty stipulates that the United States and Russia each can only have 700 deployed launchers and 100 non-deployed launchers. But the 50 empty silos will count against the total limit, essentially eating up half of the 100 non-deployed launcher limit and reducing the number of spaces available for missiles and bombers in overhaul.

If, for example, two SSBNs (with 40 missiles), two ICBMs, and eight bombers were undergoing maintenance at the same time, no additional launchers could be removed from deployed status for maintenance unless the deployed force was reduced below 700 launchers. This is not inconceivable. In September 2013, for example, 76 SLBM launchers and 21 B-2A/B-52H bombers (a total of 97 launchers) were counted as non-deployed.

Why the administration would accept such constraints on the flexibility of the U.S. nuclear force posture simply to satisfy the demands of the so-called ICBM caucus in Congress is baffling.

The Reductions

With the DOD New START force structure decision, the future force is now set. The DOD report includes the table below (note: a column with the 2014 deployed launchers has been added to improve comparison), which is also reproduced in a fact sheet (with some corrections and additional information about bombers):

Other than the decision to retain, rather than dismantle, the excess 50 ICBM silos, there are no real surprises. The reductions in actual nuclear forces are very modest. Moreover, the June 2013 Nuclear Weapons Employment Strategy of the United States, which is intended to look beyond 2018, ordered no additional force structure reductions below the New START limits, yet determined that the United States could meet its national and international obligations with up to one-third fewer deployed weapons (1,100 warheads on 470 launchers).

Strategic Implications

What would be the scenario in which the United States would have to redeploy missiles in the extra 50 “warm” silos that the administration has decided to retain? Notwithstanding the crisis in Ukraine, it is hard to envision one.

Unlike the United States, Russia is already well below the New START limit and currently has about 140 ICBMs in silos and another 170 on mobile launchers for a total force of a little over 300 missiles. Despite Russian deployment of new missiles, this ICBM force is likely to drop well below 300 by the early 2020s.

Moreover, the Pentagon determined in 2012 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).

To compensate for the ICBM launcher imbalance and maintain some degree of overall parity with the U.S. arsenal, Russia is deploying more warheads on each of its ICBMs.

This top-heavy posture is bad for strategic stability. It is in the U.S. national security interest to reduce this disparity to increase strategic stability between the world’s two largest nuclear powers. The decision to retain excess ICBM silos instead of destroying them contributes to a Russian misperception that the United States is intent on retaining a strategic advantage and a breakout capability from the New START treaty to quickly increase its deployed nuclear forces if necessary.

The administration can and should change its decision and destroy the ICBM silos that are emptied under New START.

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

By Hans M. Kristensen

The latest aggregate data released by the US State Department for the New START treaty show that Russia has increased its counted deployed strategic nuclear forces over the past six months.

The data show that Russia increased its deployed launchers by 25 from 473 to 498, and the warheads attributed to those launchers increased by 112 from 1,400 to 1,512 compared with the previous count in September 2013.

During the same period, the United States decreased its number of deployed launchers by 31 from 809 to 778, and the warheads attributed to those launchers decreased by 103 from 1,688 to 1,585.

The increase of the Russian count does not indicate that its in increasing its strategic nuclear forces but reflects fluctuations in the number of launchers and their attributed warheads at the time of the count. At the time of the previous data release in September 2013, the United States appeared to have increased its forces. But that was also an anomaly reflecting temporary fluctuations in the deployed force.

Both countries are slowly reducing their strategic nuclear weapons to meet the New START treaty limit by 2018 of no more than 1,550 strategic warheads on 700 deployed launchers. Russia has been below the treaty warhead limit since 2012 and was below the launcher limit even before the treaty was signed. The United States has yet to reduce below the treaty limit.

Since the treaty was signed in 2010, the United States has reduced its counted strategic forces by 104 deployed launchers and 215 warheads; Russia has reduced its counted force by 23 launchers and  25 warheads. The reductions are modest compared with the two countries total inventories of nuclear warheads: Approximately 4,650 stockpiled warheads for the United States (with another 2,700 awaiting dismantlement) and 4,300 stockpiled warheads for Russia (with another 3,500 awaiting dismantlement).

Details of the Russian increase and US decrease are yet unclear because neither country reveals the details of the changes at the time of the release of the aggregate data. In about six months, the United States will publish a declassified overview of its forces; Russia does not publish a detailed overview of its strategic forces.

For analysis of the previous New START data, see: /blogs/security/2013/10/newstartsep2013/

Detailed nuclear force overviews are available here: Russia | United States

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

By Hans M. Kristensen

The US Air Force budget request for Fiscal Year 2015 shows that integration of the B61-12 on NATO F-16 and Tornado aircraft will start in 2015 for completion in 2017 and 2018.

The integration marks the beginning of a significant enhancement of the military capability of NATO’s nuclear posture in Europe and comes only three years after NATO in 2012 said its current nuclear posture meets its security requirements and that it was working to create the conditions for a world without nuclear weapons.

The integration will take place on Belgian, Dutch, and Turkish F-16A/B and on German and Italian PA-200 Tornado fighter-bombers. It is unknown if US and NATO F-16s happen simultaneously or US aircraft are first, but the process will last four years between 2015 and 2018. Integration of German and Italian Tornados will take a little over two years (see graph below).

The B61-12 will also be integrated on USAF F-15E (integration began last year), F-16C/D, and B-2A aircraft, and later on the F-35A Lightning II. The F-35A will later replace the F-16s. The US Air Force plans to equip all F-35s in Europe with nuclear capability by 2024.

In addition to the US Air Force, the nuclear-capable F-35A will be supplied to the Dutch, Italian, Turkish, and possibly Belgian air forces.

From the mid-2020s, the B61-12 will also be integrated on the next-generation heavy bomber (LRS-B) planned by the US Air Force.

The integration work includes software upgrades on the legacy aircraft, operational flight tests, and full weapon integration. Development of the guided tail kit is well underway in reparations for operational tests. Seven flight tests are planned for 2015. The nuclear warhead and some non-nuclear components won’t be ready until the end of the decade. The first complete B61-12 is scheduled for 2020.

Through 2019, the integration efforts are scheduled to cost more than $1 billion. Another $154 million is needed to improve security at the nuclear bases in Europe.

Integration of US nuclear weapons onto aircraft of non-nuclear weapon states that have signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and promised “not to receive the transfer from any transferor whatsoever of nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices or of control over such weapons or explosive devices directly, or indirectly,” is, to say the least, problematic.

The arrangement of equipping non-nuclear NATO allies with the capability and role to deliver US nuclear weapons was in place before the NPT entered into effect and was accepted by the NPT regime during the Cold War. But for NATO to continue this arrangement contradicts the non-proliferation standards that the member countries are trying to promote in the post-Cold War world.

How scattering enhanced nuclear bombs across Europe in five non-nuclear countries will enable “bold reductions” in US and Russian non-strategic nuclear weapons in Europe and help create the conditions for a world without nuclear weapons is another question.

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

By Hans M. Kristensen

The cost of securing U.S. non-strategic nuclear weapons deployed in Europe is expected to nearly double to meet increased U.S. security standards, according to the Pentagon’s FY2015 budget request.

According to the Department of Defense NATO Security Investment Program , NATO has invested over $80 Million since 2000 to secure nuclear weapons storage sites in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Turkey.

But according to the Department of Defense budget request, new U.S. security standards will require another $154 million to further beef up security at six bases in the five countries.

After a US Air Force Blue Ribbon Review in 2008 discovered that “most” U.S. nuclear weapons sites in Europe did not meet U.S. security requirements, the Dutch government denied there were security problems.

Yet more than $63 million of the over $80 million spent on improving security since 2000 were spent in 2011-2012 – apparently in response to the Blue Ribbon Review findings and other issues.

The additional $154 million suggests that the upgrades in 2011-2012 did not fix all the security issues at the European nuclear bases.

The budget document – which also comes close to officially confirming the deployment of nuclear weapons in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Turkey – states:

NATO funds infrastructure required to store special weapons within secure sites and facilities. Since 2000, NATO has invested over $80 million in infrastructure improvements in storage sites in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Turkey. Another $154 million will be invested in these sites for security improvements to meet with stringent new U.S. standards.

In addition to the growing security costs, the United States spends approximately $100 million per year to deploy 184 nuclear B61 bombs in the five NATO countries. And it plans to spend an additional $10 billion on modernizing the B61 bombs and hundreds of millions on integrating the weapons on the new F-35A Lightning fighter-bomber.

No doubt the United States and NATO have more urgent defense needs to spend that money on than non-strategic nuclear weapons.

Additional background: Briefing on B61 bomb and deployment in Europe

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

By Hans M. Kristensen

The U.S. government has published the first images of the Air Force’s new B61-12 nuclear bomb. The images for the first time show the new guided tail kit that will provide new military capabilities in violation of the Nuclear Posture Review.

The tail kit will increase the accuracy of the bomb and enable it to be used against targets that today require bombs with higher yields.

The guided tail kit is also capable of supporting new military missions and will, according to the former USAF Chief of Staff, affect the way strike planners think about how to use the weapon in a war.

The new guided weapon will be deployed to Europe, replacing nearly 200 non-guided nuclear B61 bombs currently deployed in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Turkey.

Military Characteristics

The images show significant changes to the rear end of the bomb where the tail wing section has been completely replaced and the internal parachute removed. The length of the B61-12 appears to be very similar to the existing B61 (except B61-11 which is longer) although possibly a little bit shorter (see below).

The new guided tail kit will not use GPS (global positioning system) but is thought to use an Internal Guidance System (INS). The precise accuracy is not known, but conventional bombs using INS can achieve an accuracy of 30 meters or less. Even if it were a little less for the B61-12, it is still a significant improvement of the 110-180 meters accuracy that nuclear gravity bombs normally achieve in test drops.

The tail kit will also provide the B61 with a “modest standoff capability” by enabling it to glide toward its target, another military capability the B61 doesn’t have today.

Inside the bomb, non-nuclear components will be refurbished or replaced. In the nuclear explosives package the B61-4 primary (pit) will be reused and the secondary remanufactured. Detonators will be replaced with a design used in the W88 warhead, conventional Insensitive High Explosives will be remanufactured, and a new Gas Transfer System will be installed to increase the performance margin of the primary.

The B61-4 warhead used in the B61-12 has four selectable yields of 0.3, 5, 10, and 50 kilotons. LEPs are not allowed to increase the yield of warheads but GAO disclosed in 2011 that STRATCOM “expressed a requirement for a different yield [and that] U.S. European Command and SHAPE [Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe] agreed to the proposal.” It is unknown if the different yield is a modification of one of the three lower yield options or an increase of the maximum yield. During another upgrade of the B61-7 bomb to the B61-11 earth-penetrator, the yield was increased from 360 kilotons to 400 kilotons.

Although increasing safety and security were prominent justifications for securing Congressional funding for the B61-12, enhancements to the safety and security of the new bomb are apparently modest. More exotic technologies such as multi-point safety and optical detonators were rejected.

The complex upgrades add up to the most expensive U.S. nuclear bomb project ever – currently estimated at approximately $10 billion for 400-500 bombs.

Political Implications

Enhancing military capabilities of nuclear weapons (accuracy and yield) is controversial and Government officials in the United States and European capitals are trying to dodge the issue. The 2010 Nuclear Posture Review Report explicitly promised  that “Life Extension Programs…will not support new military missions or provide for new military capability capabilities.” But the guided tail kit is a new military capability and so is a different explosive yield.

Military and government officials will privately admit to the change but the public line is that this is a simple life-extension of the existing B61 with no new military capabilities.

During a recent visit to Europe where I briefed the Dutch and Belgian parliaments on the status and implications of the B61 modernization, parliamentarians were concerned that this kind of clandestine nuclear modernization under the guise of life-extension is unacceptable at the national level and counterproductive at the international level. They said they had not been informed about the upcoming deployment of improved nuclear capabilities in their countries. Their governments’ position is that there is no improvement and therefore no need to inform anyone. But one Dutch government official told me in so many words that they haven’t actually checked but trust the United States would not introduce improved nuclear bombs in Europe without telling the allies. A Dutch parliamentarian said he knew for sure that the improved capability is known within the ministry of defense.

The parliamentarians were also concerned that improving the military capabilities sends the wrong message about NATO’s nuclear policy, in particular its promise to reduce nuclear weapons in Europe and seeking to create the conditions for a world without nuclear weapons. Deploying a new guided nuclear bomb on a new stealthy F-35 fighter-bomber in Europe will make it hard for NATO to argue that Russia should reduce and not improve its non-strategic nuclear posture.

Many NATO countries quietly favor a withdrawal of the U.S. nuclear weapons from Europe but feel hamstrung by NATO policy, which mistakenly confuses generic security concerns of some eastern European allies with a need for nuclear weapons in Europe. The security concerns obviously must be addressed but not with fake assurance by tactical nuclear bombs that are the least likely to ever be used in response to the kinds of security challenges that face Europe today.

NATO decided in 2012 “that the Alliance’s nuclear force posture currently meets the criteria for an effective deterrence and defense posture.” If so, why enhance it with guided B61-12 nuclear bombs and F-35 stealth fighter-bombers?

Additional information: previous articles about the B61-12

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

 

With the Sochi Olympics set to start on February 6^th there has been an escalating concern about security threats to the Games. There are hunts for female suicide bombers (“black widows”), video threats from militant groups, etc., all of which have triggered a massive Russian security response, including statements by President Putin insuring the safety of the Games.

Many of the security concerns are raised by the proximity of Sochi  to Chechnya and relate to the threats expressed by Chechen leader Doku Umarov who exhorted Islamic militants to disrupt the Olympics.

In the past weeks the region has seen Islamic militants claims that they carried out two recent suicide bombings in Volgorad which tragically killed 34 people and injured scores of others. Volgograd is about 425 miles from Sochi and although the media stresses the proximity it is a considerable distance.

(more…)

By Hans M. Kristensen

The former U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff, General Norton Schwartz, confirmed last week that the B61-12 nuclear bomb planned by the Obama administration will have improved military capabilities to attack targets with greater accuracy and less radioactive fallout.

The confirmation comes two and a half years after an FAS publication first described the increased accuracy of the B61-12 and its implications for nuclear targeting in general and the deployment of U.S. nuclear weapons in Europe in particular.

The confirmation is important because the 2010 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) pledged that nuclear warhead “Life Extension Programs…will not support new military missions or provide for new military capabilities.”

In addition to violating the NPR pledge, enhancing the nuclear capability contradicts U.S. and NATO goals of reducing the role of nuclear weapons and could undermine efforts to persuade Russia to reduce its non-strategic nuclear weapons posture.

Confirmation of the enhanced military capability of the B61-12 also complicates the political situation of the NATO allies (Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Turkey) that currently host U.S. nuclear weapons because the governments will have to explain to their parliaments and public why they would agree to increase the military capability.

Desired Military Capability

General Schwartz’s confirmation came during a conference organized by the Stimson Center in response to a question from Steven Young (video time 49:15) whether the relatively low yield and increased accuracy of the B61-12 in terms of targeting planning would change the way the military thinks about how to use the weapon.

General Schwartz’s answer was both clear and blunt: “Without a doubt. Improved accuracy and lower yield is a desired military capability. Without a question.”

When asked whether that would result in a different target set or just make the existing weapon better, General Schwartz said: “It would have both effects.”

General Schwartz said that the B61 tail kit “has benefits from an employment standpoint that many consider stabilizing.” I later asked him what he meant by that and his reply was that critics (myself included) claim that the increased accuracy and lower yield options could make the B61-12 more attractive to use because of reduced collateral damage and radioactive fallout. But he said he believed that the opposite would be the case; that the enhanced capabilities would enhance deterrence and make use less likely because adversaries would be more convinced that the United States is willing to use nuclear weapons if necessary.

Military Implications

“Nuclear capable aircraft may have many advantages. Accuracy (as compared to other systems) is not one of them,” the Joint Staff argued in 2004 during drafting of the Doctrine for joint Nuclear Operations. Test drops of U.S. nuclear bombs normally achieve an accuracy of 110-170 meters, which is insufficient to hold underground targets at risk except with very large yield. The designated nuclear earth-penetrator (B61-11) has a 400-kiloton warhead to be effective. Therefore, increasing the accuracy of the B61 to enhance targeting and reduce collateral damage are, as General Schwartz put it at the conference, desired military capabilities.

Increasing the accuracy broadens the type of targets that the B61 can be used to attack. The effect is most profound against underground targets that require ground burst and cratering to be damaged by the chock wave. Against a relatively small, heavy, well-designed, underground structure, severe damage is achieved when the target is within 1.25 the radius of the visible crater created by the nuclear detonation. Light damage is achieved at 2.5 radii. For a yield of 50 kt – the estimated maximum yield of the B61-12, the apparent crater radii vary from 30 meters (hard dry rock) to 68 meters (wet soil). Therefore an improvement in accuracy from 100-plus meter CEP (the current estimated accuracy of the B61) down to 30-plus meter CEP (assuming INS guidance for the B61-12) improves the kill probability against these targets significantly by achieving a greater likelihood of cratering the target during a bombing run. Put simply, the increased accuracy essentially puts the CEP inside the crater (see illustration below).

Cratering targets is dirty business because a nuclear detonation on or near the surface kicks up large amounts of radioactive material. With poor accuracy, strike planners would have to choose a relatively high selectable yield to have sufficient confidence that the target would be damaged. The higher the yield, the greater the radioactive fallout.

With the increased accuracy of the B61-12 the strike planners will be able to select a lower yield and still achieve the same (or even better) damage to the underground target. Using lower yields will significantly reduce collateral damage by reducing the radioactive fallout that civilians would be exposed to after an attack. The difference in fallout from a 360-kiloton B61-7 surface burst compared with a B61-12 using a 10-kiloton selective yield option is significant (see map below).

No U.S. president would find it easy to authorize use of nuclear weapon. Apart from the implications of ending nearly 70 years of non-use of nuclear weapons and the international political ramifications, anticipated collateral damage serves as an important constraint on potential use of nuclear weapons. Some analysts have argued that higher yield nuclear weapons are less suitable to deter regional adversaries and that lower yield weapons are needed in today’s security environment. The collateral damage from high-yield weapons could “self-deter” a U.S. president from authorizing an attack.

There is to my knowledge no evidence that potential adversaries are counting on being able to get away with using nuclear weapons because the United States is self-deterred. Moreover, all gravity bombs and cruise missiles currently in the U.S. nuclear arsenal have low-yield options. But poor accuracy and collateral damage have limited their potential use to military planners in some scenarios. The improved accuracy of the B61-12 appears at least partly intended to close that gap.

Implications for NATO

For NATO, the improved accuracy has particularly important implications because the B61-12 is a more effective weapon that the B61-3 and B61-4 currently deployed in Europe.

The United States has never before deployed guided nuclear bombs in Europe but with the increased accuracy of the B61-12 and combined with the future deployment of the F-35A Lightning II stealth fighter-bomber to Europe, it is clear that NATO is up for quite a nuclear facelift.

Initially the old NATO F-16A/B and Tornado PA-200 aircraft that currently serve in the nuclear strike mission will not be able to make use of the increased accuracy of the B61-12, according to U.S. Air Force officials. The reason is that the aircraft computers are not capable of “talking to” the new digital bomb. As a result, the guided tail kit on the B61-12 for Belgian, Dutch, German, Italian and Turkish F-16s and Tornados will initially be “locked” as a “dumb” bomb. Once these countries transition to the F-35 aircraft, however, the enhanced targeting capability will become operational also in these countries.

The Dutch parliament recently approved purchase of the F-35 to replace the F-16, but a resolution adopted by the lower house stated that the F-35 could not have a capability to deliver nuclear weapons. The Dutch government recently rejected the decision saying the Netherlands cannot unilaterally withdraw from the NATO nuclear strike mission.

It is one thing to extend the existing nuclear capabilities in Europe; improving the capabilities, however, appears to go beyond the 2012 Deterrence and Defense Posture Review, which decided that “the Alliance’s nuclear posture currently meets the criteria for an effective deterrence and defense posture.” It is unclear how improving the nuclear posture in Europe will help create the conditions for a world free of nuclear weapons.

It is also unclear how improving the nuclear posture in Europe fits with NATO’s arms control goal to seek reductions in Russian non-strategic nuclear weapons in Europe. Instead, the increased military capabilities provided by the B61-12 and F-35 would appear to signal to Russia that it is acceptable for it to enhance its non-strategic nuclear posture in Europe as well.

Such considerations ought to be well behind us more than two decades after the end of the Cold War but continue to tie down posture planning and political signaling.

See also: B61 LEP: Increasing NATO Nuclear Capability and Precision Low-Yield Nuclear Strikes

This publication was made possible by grants from the New-Land Foundation and Ploughshares Fund. The statements made and views expressed are solely the responsibility of the author.

By Hans M. Kristensen

A new Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report – Options For Reducing the Deficit: 2014-2023 – proposes reducing the Navy’s fleet of Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines from the 14 boats today to 8 in 2020. That would save $11 billion in 2015-2023, and another $30 billion during the 2030s from buying four fewer Ohio replacement submarines.

The Navy has already drawn its line in the sand, insisting that the current force level of 14 SSBNs is needed until 2026 and that the next-generation SSBN class must include 12 boats.

But the Navy can’t afford that, nor can the United States, and the Obama administration’s new nuclear weapons employment guidance – issued with STRATCOM’s blessing – indicates that the United States could, in fact, reduce the SSBN fleet to eight boats. Here is how.

New START Treaty Force Level

Under the New START treaty the United States plans to deploy 640 ballistic missiles loaded with 1490 warheads (1,550 warheads minus the 60 weapons artificially attributed to bombers that don’t carry nuclear weapons on a daily basis). Of that, the SSBN fleet will account for 240 missiles and 1090 warheads (see table below).

The analysis for the new guidance – formally known as Presidential Policy Decision 24 – determined that the United State could safely reduce its deployed nuclear weapons by up to one-third below the New START level. But even though the current posture therefore is bloated and significantly in excess of what’s needed to ensure the security of the United States and its allies and partners, the military plans to retain the New START force structure until Russia agrees to the reductions in a new treaty.

Yet Russia is already well below the New START treaty force level (-227 launchers and -150 warheads); the United States currently deploys 336 launchers more than Russia (!). Moreover, the Russian missile force is expected to decline even further from 428 to around 400 missiles by the early 2020s – even without a new treaty. Unlike U.S. missiles, however, the Russian missiles don’t have extra warhead spaces; they’re loaded to capacity to keep some degree of treaty parity with the United States.

Making The Cut

The table above includes two future force structure options: a New Guidance option based on the “up to one-third” cut in deployed strategic forces recommended by the Obama administration’s new nuclear weapons employment guidance; and an “Alternative” posture reduced to eight SSBNs as proposed by CBO.

Under the New Guidance posture, the SSBN fleet would carry 690 warheads, a reduction of 400 warheads below what’s planned under the New START treaty. The 192 SLBMs (assuming 16 per next-generation SSBN) would have nearly 850 extra warhead spaces (upload capacity), more than enough to increase the deployed warhead level back to today’s posture if necessary, and more than enough to hedge against a hypothetical failure of the entire ICBM force. In fact, the New Guidance posture would enable the SSBN force to carry almost all the warheads allowed under the New START treaty.

Under the Alternative posture, the SSBN fleet would also carry 690 warheads but there would be 64 fewer SLBMs. Those SLBMs would have “only” 334 extra warhead spaces, but still enough to hedge against a hypothetical failure of the ICBM force. In fact, the SLBMs would have enough capacity to carry almost the entire deployed warhead level recommended by the new employment guidance.

The Navy’s SSBN force structure plan will begin retiring the Ohio-class SSBNs in 2026 at a rate of one per year until the last boat is retired in 2039. The first next-generation ballistic missile submarine (currently known as SSBNX) is scheduled to begin construction in 2021, be completed in 2028, and sail on its first deterrent patrol in 2031. Additional SSBNXs will be added at a rate of one boat per year until the fleet reaches 12 by 2042 (see figure below).

The Navy’s schedule creates three fluctuations in the SSBN fleet. The first occurs in 2019-2020 where the number of operational SSBNs will increase from 12 to 14 as a result of the two newest boats (USS Wyoming (SSBN-742) and USS Louisiana (SSBN-743)) completing their mid-life reactor refueling overhauls. That is in excess of national security needs so at that time the Navy will probably retire the two oldest boats (USS Henry M. Jackson (SSBN-730) and USS Alabama (SSBN-731)) eight years early to keep the fleet at 12 operational SSBNs (this doesn’t show in the Navy’s plan).

The second fluctuation in the Navy’s schedule occurs in 2027-2030 when the number of operational SSBNs will drop to 10 as a result of the retirement of the first four Ohio-class SSBNs and the decision in 2012 to delay the first SSBNX by two years. As it turns out, that doesn’t matter because no more than 10 SSBNs are normally deployed anyway.

The third fluctuation in the Navy’s schedule occurs in 2041-2042 when the number of operational SSBNXs increases from 10 to 12 as the last two boats join the fleet. This is an odd development because there obviously is no reason to increase the fleet to 12 SSBNXs in the 2040s if the Navy has been doing just fine with 10 boats in the 2030s. This also suggests that the fleet could in fact be reduced to 12 boats today of which 10 would be operational. To do that the Navy could retire two SSBNs immediately and two more in 2019-2020 when the last refueling overhauls have are completed.

To reduce the SSBN fleet to eight boats as proposed by CBO, the Navy would retire the six oldest Ohio-class SSBNs at a rate of one per year in 2015-2020. At that point the last Ohio-class reactor refueling will have been completed, making all remaining SSBNs operationally available. A quicker schedule would be to retire four SSBNs in 2014 and the next two in 2019-2020. That would bring the fleet to eight operational boats immediately instead of over seven years and allow procurement of the first SSBNX to be delayed another two years (see figure above).

Reducing to eight SSBNs would obviously necessitate changes in the operations of the SSBN force. The Navy’s 12 operational SSBNs conduct 28 deterrent patrols per year, or an average of 2.3 patrols per submarine. The annual number of patrols has decline significantly over the past decade, indicating that the Navy is operating more SSBNs than it needs. Each patrol lasts on average 70 days and occasionally over 100 days. To retain the current patrol level with only eight SSBNs, each boat would have to conduct 3.5 patrols per year. Between 1988 and 2005, each SSBN did conduct that many patrols per year, so it is technically possible.

Moreover, of the 10 or so SSBNs that are at sea at any given time, about half (4-5) are thought to be on “hard alert” in pre-designated patrol areas, within required range of their targets, and ready to launch their missiles 15 minutes after receiving a launch order. A fleet of eight operational SSBNs could probably maintain six boats at sea at any given time, of which perhaps 3-4 boats could be on alert.

Finally, reducing the SSBN fleet to eight boats seems reasonable because no other country currently plans to operate more than eight SSBNs (see table). The United States today operates more SSBNs than any other country. And NATO’s three nuclear weapon states currently operate a total of 22 SSBNs, twice as many as Russia. China and India are also building SSBNs but they’re far less capable and not yet operational.

Conclusions and Recommendations

The Navy could and should reduce its SSBN fleet from 14 to eight boats as proposed by CBO. Doing so would shed excess capacity, help prepare the nuclear force level recommended by the new nuclear weapons employment policy, better match the force levels of other countries, and save billions of dollars. There are several reasons why this is possible:

First, the decision to go to 10 operational SSBNs in the 2030s suggests that the Navy is currently operating too many SSBNs and could immediately retire the two oldest Ohio-class SSBNs.

Second, the decision to build a new SSBN fleet with 144 fewer SLBM launch tubes than the current SSBN fleet is a blatant admission that the current force is significantly in excess of national security needs.

Third, the acknowledgement in November 2011 by former STRATCOM commander Gen. Robert Kehler that the reduction of 144 missile tubes “did not assume any specific changes to targeting or employment guidance” suggests there’s a significant over-capacity in the current SSBN fleet.

Fourth, it is highly unlikely that presidential nuclear guidance three decades from now – when the planned 12-boat SSBNX fleet becomes operational – will not have further reduced the nuclear arsenal and operational requirement significantly.

Fifth, reducing the SSBN fleet now would allow significant additional cost savings: $11 billion in 2015-2023 (and $30 billion more in the 2030s) from reduced ship building according to CBO; completing the W76-1 production earlier with 500 fewer warheads; $7 billion from reducing production of the life-extended Trident missile (D5LE) by 112 missiles; operational savings from retiring six Ohio-class SSBNs early; and by reducing the warhead production capacity requirement for the expensive Uranium Production Facility and Chemistry and Metallurgy Research facilities.

Sixth, reducing the SSBN fleet would help reduce the growing disparity between U.S. and Russian strategic missiles. This destabilizing trend keeps Russia in a worst-case planning mindset suspicious of U.S. intensions, drives large warhead loadings on each Russian missile, and wastes billions of dollars and rubles on maintaining larger-than-needed strategic nuclear force postures.

Change is always hard, but a reduction of the SSBN fleet would be a win for all.

This publication was made possible by grants from the New-Land Foundation and Ploughshares Fund. The statements made and views expressed are solely the responsibility of the author.