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Chicken Little Panics: Russia Plus One Nuke

Last week, the State Department published its New START Treaty Aggregate Numbers of Strategic Offensive Arms report, and it’s got wild-eyed defense spending enthusiasts up in a different sort of arms. About what, you might ask? As of September 1, Russia has more deployed strategic nuclear warheads than the United States for the first time since 2000.

One more, or 0.00061% more warheads, that is.

The report shows that the Russian Federation has 1,643 deployed strategic nuclear warheads — precisely one more than the United States’ 1,642 warheads. The strategic significance of this disparity is, well, zero–except to provide an excuse for nuclear hawks to cry for more nuclear weapons.  

The current situation reminds one of the chaos that ensues in the 1966 movie The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming over a false alarm about a Russian invasion of New England.

The Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty signed by Russia and the US entered into force in February 2011.
Since then, Russia has increased its deployed warheads by 144, while the US has drawn down its force from 1,722 to 1,642. The treaty obliges both countries to limit their deployed strategic nuclear warheads to 1,550 by 2018.

The Washington Times columnist Bill Gertz led the Chicken Little Caucus, writing in The Washington Times, “Russia has more deployed nuclear warheads than U.S.“ Yes indeed, by one. We should surrender immediately.

The article quotes former Pentagon strategic weapons analyst Mark Schneider saying, “All U.S. numbers have declined since New START entered into force…The fact that this is happening reflects the ineffectiveness of the Obama administration’s approach to New START.”

What? You mean the Obama Administration is reducing nuclear weapons as called for by a treaty to reduce nuclear weapons? What kind of logic is that?

If the purpose of the treaty is to reduce the U.S. and Russia’s nuclear weapons stockpiles, the decline in the U.S. arsenal to which Schneider refers as ‘ineffective’ is, in fact, quite effective. In fact, it’s in accordance with fulfilling our treaty obligations.

Another important fact:  this miniscule numerical superiority of Russia’s arsenal is temporary. According to Hans Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists, “…these changes do not reflect a build-up of the Russian nuclear arsenal. The increase results from the deployment of new missiles and fluctuations caused by existing launchers moving in and out of overhaul.”

You know when you go to the doctor for a 3:00pm check-up and you’re two pounds heavier than you were yesterday morning? Imagine these warhead stockpile numbers as your post-lunch, jeans-on weigh-in. The U.S. just went for the salad.

The big picture significance of Russia’s one extra nuclear warhead is the ongoing confrontation between Russia and the U.S. since the Russian seizure of Crimea and its invasion of Ukraine. While Putin talks big about nuclear weapons, both countries have arsenals far beyond any necessary to deter a nuclear war or to respond to a nuclear attack. Many experts argue that 100 or 500 nuclear weapons would be more than an adequate nuclear deterrent – or destroyer of worlds.

In 1983 Carl Sagan said, “Imagine a room awash with gasoline. And there are two implacable enemies in that room. One of them has 9,000 matches, the other has 7,000 matches. Each of them is concerned about who’s ahead.”

Today it’s more like 1,642 matches to 1,643, but the metaphor is just as applicable.

Nuclear Security Enterprise Struggles with the Issues it was Created to Solve

Nuclear weapons spending has become a hot-button issue in recent years, particularly as it becomes increasingly clear that our budget cannot sustain the current nuclear modernization strategy. Those in favor of upgrades argue that in order to reduce nuclear weapons numbers while maintaining our deterrent capability, modernization is key. This myopic view of spending on nuke upgrades fails to bring key internal and external inadequacies into view, and instead undermines the legitimacy of our future deterrent strategy.  

By not keeping an eye on internal inadequacies and by perpetuating a culture of complacency, our nuclear weapons management reputation has been tarnished, likely affecting the way our allies and enemies see our future deterrent capability.

Background
In the late 1990s, the Department of Energy fell victim to cost overruns and security issues. At the urging of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, Congress created a new semi-autonomous entity in 1999 called the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). By creating a separate governing body, the security and overhead could be streamlined to minimize gaps in security and duplication in oversight.

However, while the role of NNSA has remained the same—to oversee our nation’s nuclear weapons management, development, and nonproliferation and nuclear security efforts—the entity itself has run into the same budgetary and security issues that it was created to solve.

Where we stand today
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has criticized NNSA’s inefficiencies, structure, and cost/security balance for years without change. In one of the latest attempts to create positive momentum, the Congressional Advisory Panel on the Governance of the Nuclear Security Enterprise, created in 2013, released its interim report in March.

The Panel reports that NNSA is doing relatively well on the physical management and modernization side. It states that, “Stockpile Stewardship has succeeded in sustaining confidence in our nuclear deterrent.” But it also reports that NNSA is not focusing enough on the culture, hierarchy, and vision of the Enterprise, which has led to mistrust, confusion, and ineffective, reactionary solutions. “This is not time for complacency about the nuclear deterrent,” says the panel, “our allies depend on these forces and capabilities for extended deterrence and could well pursue their own nuclear weapon capabilities if they perceive the US commitment or competency to be weakening.”

In other words, by focusing on nuclear weapons’ physical structure without also putting substantial effort into repairing the NNSA’s rocky foundation, we may very well be damaging the future of our security and the legitimacy of our nuclear deterrent. This sentiment is echoed by the panel’s key finding that “[t]he current viability of our nuclear deterrent is not in question. At the same time, the existing governance structures and practices are most certainly inefficient and in some instances ineffective, putting the entire Enterprise at risk over the long term.”

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) weighs in

From September 2012 to May 2014, the GAO conducted an examination of DOE/NNSA 2009 – 2012 security reforms and the implementation of these reforms aimed at improving the security enterprise. The main conclusion of the May 2014 report was that while the NNSA has made efforts toward improvement, they have not been enough, have not been implemented evenly across sites, and there has not been diligent record keeping of quantifiable progress. The report states, the “efforts to-date have not prevented several serious security incidents” and “the goals for security appear to be less clearly defined and less focused than previous attempts at security reform.”

One of the worst and perhaps most well-known security breaches during this period was at the Y-12 National Security Complex. Protestors including a nun, Sister Megan Rice, were able to use simple bolt cutters to reach a restricted area that contained highly enriched uranium (HEU). The consequent DOE report cited a litany of inadequacies leading up to the incident including “troubling displays of ineptitude…, misunderstanding of security protocols, poor communications, and weaknesses in contract and resource management.”

Finally, the GAO says that “without developing a clear vision and path forward for its security program,” the NNSA risks further deterioration of inter-agency collaboration, NNSA/nuclear laboratory trust, physical security, and of the organizational health of our security enterprise.

The bright side

The new Under Secretary for Nuclear Security and NNSA Administrator, Frank G. Klotz, responded to the GAO report in a three-paragraph letter stating that the “NNSA agrees with the GAO’s recommendation and has already initiated  an effort to develop a security roadmap for NNSA.” The “road map” Klotz refers to has an estimated due date of December 31, 2014.

Beyond this anticipated course of action, Klotz’s presence itself might be a guiding light for positive change. Klotz is a retired Air Force Lieutenant General who has made safety and security his top priority in his new post. Additionally, Klotz has experience streamlining nuclear weapons control and amending faulty security systems, having successfully led Global Strike Command from 2009 to 2011, the team that was created to rectify issues with the Air Force’s management of nuclear weapons.

The NNSA’s mission and success are vital to our national security. Perhaps Klotz’s experience and commitment coupled with a new, forward-looking vision will drive the NNSA’s internal structure towards balance and more effective policies.

Where Should We Hide Our Nukes?

In the late 1970’s and1980’s, the Carter and Reagan administrations considered mobile options for the MX missile then being developed. At that time, Council for a Livable World put together a list of some 37 basing options. These plans were all reject…

Mobile-Basing: Can’t Keep a Bad Idea Down

During the Reagan presidency in the 1980’s, our military looked into alternative basing options for our nuclear missiles to prevent the theoretical possibility of their being targeted and destroyed by the Soviet Union.  After exploring over 30 basing options and hearing loud objections from some of the President’s most enthusiastic supporters in Nevada and Utah to spreading missiles across theirs states, the Pentagon decided that plunking missiles in fixed silos was perfectly safe.

Never mind!

Instead, our national security leaders decided that a combination of nuclear weapons on submarines and on bombers made mobile nuclear weapons on land unnecessary for maintaining a secure nuclear deterrent.

But sometimes in the Pentagon, you can’t keep a bad idea down, even though alternative options were discarded as too expensive and unwieldy.

According to Lt. Gen. James Kowalski, the U.S. Strategic Command Deputy Commander, the US should further pursue a “hybrid” and “flexible” future for our ground-based nuclear deterrent. The reasoning:  make it harder for enemies to destroy our land-based missiles.

A recent report by RAND Corp has explored these issues and found mobile basing wanting.

This report on the future of the US’s Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs), which was sponsored by the Air Force, undermines the validity of some of the justifications for alternative basing options.

In terms of survivability, the only country capable of threatening the US’s ICBM deterrence is Russia. This threat was always unlikely at the height of the Cold War; a huge nuclear strike targeting many hundreds of ICBM’s would not only leave untouched bombers in the air and submarines but would cause a nuclear holocaust threatening all life on this planet.

The RAND report further suggests that a combination of arms control reductions and de-escalation policies since the Cold War have made an all-out nuclear attack even more strategically ineffective and statistically improbable.  

Oh, and by the way, those nuclear subs and nuclear bombers can continue to provide flexible strike capabilities; a mobile land-based system would be added cost with no added value.

And the increased costs would be considerable. While no concrete plans for updating and modernizing the ICBMs have been released, RAND estimates costs over the next 39 years could reach $199 billion for a rail-based system and $219 billion for a road-based system. These far exceed the more pragmatic “indefinite, incremental modernization plan” which would cost $60-$90 billion to maintain and update our current missiles and silos over that same period. Clearly these would be hefty additions to an already inflated nuclear budget; one that many military minds agree is too large and too expensive.

While deliberation and study are important, the US Air Force should not return to a policy option previously and appropriately rejected.