FAS Strategic Security Blog

Gen. V.K. Singh

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By Hans M. Kristensen

India’s nuclear weapons “are not for warfighting,” the chief of India’s army said Sunday at the Army Day Parade. The weapons have “a strategic capability and that is where it should end,” General V. K. Singh declared.

The rejection of nuclear warfighting ideas is a welcoming development in the debate over the role of nuclear weapons in South Asia. Pakistan’s military’s description of its new snort-range NASR missile as a “shoot and scoot…quick response system” has rightly raised concerns about the potential early use of nuclear weapons in a conflict.

NASR is one of several new nuclear weapon systems that are nearing deployment with warheads from a Pakistani stockpile that has nearly doubled since 2005.

India is also increasing its arsenal and already has short-range missiles with nuclear capability: the land-based Prithvi has been in operation for a decade, and a naval version (Dhanush) is under development. But India’s posture seems focused on getting its medium-range Agni II in operation, developing longer-range versions to target China, and building a limited submarine-based nuclear capability.

If Gen. Singh’s rejection of nuclear warfighting is reflected in India’s future nuclear posture, two important things will have been achieved: rejection of the mindless tit-for-tat philosophy that otherwise dominates nuclear posturing; and limiting the scenarios where nuclear weapons otherwise could come into use. The rejection also has importance for other nuclear weapon states, where some have called for making nuclear weapons more “tailored” to limited regional scenarios.

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.

The Obama administration gets a medal for disclosing its New START treaty numbers.

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By Hans M. Kristensen [updated 12 Dec 2011 with new bomber information]

Anyone familiar with my writings knows that I don’t hand out medals to the nuclear weapon states very often. But the Obama administration deserves one after the U.S. State Department’s recent release of the full U.S. aggregate data under the New START treaty.

The release breaks with the initial practice under the treaty of only publishing overall nuclear force category numbers, and re-establishes the U.S. practice from the previous START treaty of providing maximum disclosure of the strategic forces counted by the treaty. This is a good development that has gone totally unnoticed in the news media.

The pressure is now squarely on Russia to follow suit and publish its New START aggregate data as well. Continue reading »

A study from Georgetown University incorrectly suggests that China has 3,000 nuclear weapons.The estimate is off by an order of magnitude.

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By Hans M. Kristensen

Only the Chinese government knows how many nuclear weapons China has. As in most other nuclear weapon states, the number is a closely held secret. Even so, it is possible to make best estimates of the approximate size that benefit the public debate.

A recent example of how not to make an estimate is the study recently published by the Asia Arms Control Project at Georgetown University. The study (China’s Underground Great Wall: Challenge for Nuclear Arms Control) suggests that China may have as many as 3,000 nuclear weapons.

Although we don’t know exactly how many nuclear weapons China has, we are pretty sure that it doesn’t have 3,000. In fact, the Georgetown University estimate appears to be off by an order of magnitude. Continue reading »

New article published in Arms Control Today

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By Hans M. Kristensen

The latest issue of Arms Control Today includes a new article by Robert Norris and myself about the nuclear targeting review that is currently underway in the Obama administration.

In ordering the review, formally known as the Post-NPR Review, President Obama has asked the military to review and revise U.S. nuclear strategy and guidance on the roles and missions of nuclear weapons, including potential changes in targeting requirements and alert postures, in preparation for the next round of nuclear reductions beyond the New START treaty with Russia.

Our article describes the bureaucratic labyrinth the review will go through before new presidential guidance emerges to change the U.S. nuclear war plan. To that end, we offer a wide range of suggestions for how the review could reduce the requirements for U.S. nuclear forces to “put an end to Cold War thinking,” as President Obama said in his Prague speech in 2009.

Note: accessing the article requires subscription to Arms Control Today.

Further information: Obama and the Nuclear War Plan (FAS, 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.

Hans Kristensen with B53 Bomb

By Katie Colten and Hans Kristensen

[Modifed] Today, one of the largest weapons in the United States nuclear weapons arsenal, the B53, will be dismantled at the Pantex Plant in Amarillo, Texas. Developed during the Cold War and deployed in 1962, this bomb weighs as much as a minivan and has an explosive yield of nine megatons, equivalent to 750 Hiroshima bombs.

Retired from the arsenal in 1997, the dismantlement of the B53 marks the end of the era of large, multi-megaton bombs, a hallmark of the Cold War. The largest-yield warhead in the U.S. stockpile today is the B83 bomb, which has a maximum yield of 1.2 Megatons.

Administration officials have been busy spinning the dismantlement as proof of the administration’s commitment to nuclear disarmament and as vindication of its plan to spend billions of extra dollars to modernize the nuclear weapons production complex. Continue reading »

New START aggregate numbers have been published by the United States and Russia.

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By Hans M. Kristensen

The latest New START treaty aggregate numbers of strategic arms, which was quietly released by the State Department earlier last week, shows modest reductions and important changes in U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear forces.

Most surprisingly, the data shows that Russia has increased its number of deployed strategic nuclear warheads and is now again above the New START limit.

Because of the limited format of the released aggregate numbers, however, the changes are not explained or apparent. As a result, though not yet one year old, the New START treaty is already beginning to increase uncertainty about the status of U.S. and Russian nuclear forces. Continue reading »

FAS joined 48 organizations in signing a letter to United States Representatives asking them to cosign Representative Markey’s letter to members of the Super Committee. Markey’s letter urges Super Committee members to increase U.S. security by reducing spending on outdated and unaffordable nuclear weapons programs.

Additionally, this support letter offers specific suggestions to Congress on how to scale back new nuclear weapons programs and help close the budget deficit. Continue reading »

There are not many public pictures showing the U.S. ballistic missile submarine visits to South Korea. This one apparently shows the USS John Marshall (SSBN-611) in Chinhae in 1979. The submarine carried 16 Polaris A3 missiles with a total of 48 200-kt warheads.

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By Hans M. Kristensen

Back in the late-1970s, U.S. nuclear-armed ballistic missile submarines suddenly started conducting port visits to South Korea. For a few years the boomers arrived at a steady rate, almost every month, sometimes 2-3 visits per month. Then, in 1981, the visits stopped and the boomers haven’t been back since.

At the time the visits began, the United States also had several hundred nuclear weapons deployed on land in South Korea, but the submarine visits apparently were needed to further demonstrate that the United States was prepared to defend the south against an attack from the north.

After North Korea’s nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009, shelling of South Korean territory and the sinking of one of its warships, there have been reports recently that an increasing number of South Koreans want the United States to deploy nuclear weapons in South Korea again, after the last such weapons were withdrawn in 1991. They think it is necessary to deter North Korea.

Some analysts have even suggested that the United States should develop an improved nuclear earth penetrator to better threaten North Korean deeply buried targets, an idea that was previously proposed the Bush administration but rejected by Congress. Continue reading »

The British Cold War stockpile was bigger than previously thought but will be the smallest of the five original nuclear weapons states by the mid-2020s.     Click image for bigger version

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By Hans M. Kristensen

Britain’s disclosure last year of the size of its nuclear weapons stockpile shows, when combined with official information released earlier, that its Cold War nuclear stockpile was bigger than previously thought – more than 500 nuclear warheads in the 1970s.

Since then, Britain has reduced its stockpile by more than half to approximately 225 warheads and has decided to reduce it further to 180 warheads by the mid-2020s, a reduction of two-thirds compared with the Cold War level.

Modernization and continuous deployment at sea continues, however, and current plans might ironically lead to an increase in the number of warheads carried on each operational missile.

This and more is described in our latest Nuclear Notebook published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

See also: Previous British Nuclear Notebook from 2005

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.