Nuclear ‘First Use’ and Where We Are Today

By Walter Pincus

Pulitzer Prize Winning Journalist Walter Pincus is a contributing senior national security columnist for The Cipher Brief. He spent forty years at The Washington Post, writing on topics that ranged from nuclear weapons to politics. He is the author of Blown to Hell: America's Deadly Betrayal of the Marshall Islanders. Pincus won an Emmy in 1981 and was the recipient of the Arthur Ross Award from the American Academy for Diplomacy in 2010.  He was also a team member for a Pulitzer Prize in 2002 and the George Polk Award in 1978.  

OPINION — The Biden 2022 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), now in preparation, should focus on cutting un-needed nuclear weapons, and possibly reducing others. It should avoid trying to narrow nuclear declaratory policy. Rather it should go back to the ambiguous language that existed prior to the Trump administration fiddling with that language. Why create diplomatic problems abroad or election issues at home by adopting a “no first use” policy for nuclear weapons, or even President Biden’s suggested “sole purpose use” to deter others from using them?

The Chinese have adopted a “no first use” policy and we don’t believe them, so why would they or anyone believe whatever the U.S. says given the thousands of bombs and missile warheads the U.S. has, and is modernizing?

On the other hand, the American public and perhaps even the on-looking world want to see firm, understandable direction from the White House in the 2022 NPR when it comes out early next year as part of the broader Biden National Defense Strategy.

Biden’s 2021 Interim National Security Strategic Guidance, released by the White House last March, echoed words that Candidate Biden wrote in January 2020’s Foreign Affairs: A Biden administration would seek to “re-establish [its] credibility as a leader in arms control” and “take steps to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in [U.S.] national security strategy,” his article said.

My suggested first step would be to announce the return from deployment of the U.S. strategic submarines carrying sub-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) that are armed with new W-76-2 so-called low-yield warheads. Next, unload the W-76-2s, replace them with normal W-76s, and return the submarines to active service.

Dismantle the W-76-2s. Then make clear to the public what a terrible idea it was to begin with. Deliver a public statement about it.

Who would know a launched SLBM coming out of the ocean toward Russia, China or even North Korea was carrying a high-yield or low-yield warhead? And even the low-yield has the explosive power of half-a-Hiroshima bomb and the probability of contaminating a good-size city with long-lasting, radioactive fallout for years if it exploded near the ground.

In fact, what nuclear armed country would wait until an SLBM warhead or warheads hit its homeland before responding in some fashion?

Another step to take is to announce the retirement of B83-1s, one-megaton (the explosive equivalent of one million tons of TNT), thermonuclear bombs, the largest in the arsenal. The Obama administration in 2014, announced that it would retire the almost 40-year-old weapon, and replace it with a newer, more accurate tactical nuclear bomb with a lower yield, the B61-12. However, the Trump administration kept the B83-1 alive, claiming the replacement hadn’t arrived yet.

The first B61-12s are scheduled to be produced in 2022, so there is no need next year to spend a planned $98.5 million to begin extending the life of some 100 B83-1s that are in the stockpile.


The Cipher Brief hosts private briefings with the world’s most experienced national and global security experts.  Become a member today.


Another reduction step would be to end the development of a new, nuclear Sea-Launched Cruise Missile (SLCM).

The Trump administration supported development of this new version of a nuclear SLCM, which had been withdrawn from deployment in 1991 by President George H.W. Bush at the time he eliminated other so-called tactical nuclear weapons.

The Trump’s 2018 NPR justified reviving such a weapon, saying a low-yield warhead on a “SLCM will not require or rely on host nation support to provide deterrent effect. They will provide additional diversity in platforms, range, and survivability, and a valuable hedge against future nuclear ‘break out’ scenarios.”

The U.S. doesn’t need yet another low-yield tactical nuclear weapon. There are B-61 tactical nuclear bombs with “dial-a-kiloton” yields in both Europe and the Pacific arenas. In addition, the U.S. has air-launched cruise missiles with a new version on the way.

Navy Secretary Thomas Harker has begun the process of eliminating the new SLCM. In a June 4, 2021 memo that describes the Navy program objectives for fiscal 2023, Harker wrote as guidance: “Defund Sea-Launched Cruise Missile – Nuclear development effort.”

The Navy had $5.2 million in its fiscal 2022 budget originally and it remained in the fiscal 2022 Defense Authorization Bill as passed by both the House and Senate. Now there is no need to spend that money, although Congress still may cut it out of the fiscal 2022 appropriation bill.

The NPR also should clarify the need for, and therefore the future of the so-called W93, a new warhead in concept development (costing $53 million in fiscal 2021) supposedly to be the Navy’s Sub-Launched Ballistic Missile (SLBM) for the 2040s and beyond. Another $72 million is planned for fiscal 2022.

I should point out, as the Los Alamos National Laboratory did in an article last summer, that the W93 “is the 93rd nuclear weapon design being considered for the [U.S.] stockpile. Since 1945, when the United States first developed nuclear weapons, only 63 [nuclear] weapons designs have made it into the stockpile.”

Think of that for a minute. Over the past 76 years, the U.S. has produced and deployed for a time, 63 different nuclear weapons from its stockpile.  And its designers are still looking for new ones. Today there are reportedly seven different types of nuclear weapons among some 3,750 nuclear warheads and bombs deployed and in the nation’s stockpile. Of that number, as of October 2021 – 1,357 strategic warheads and bombs were deployed among 14 strategic nuclear submarines, on 400 ICBMs in silos, and at strategic bomber air bases, according to the State Department.

Do we need more, or could we do with less?


Go beyond the headlines with expert perspectives on today’s news with The Cipher Brief’s Daily Open-Source Podcast.  Listen here or wherever you listen to podcasts.


Another problem for the 2022 NPR is what to do about planning for the future production of new, so-called plutonium pits, the triggers for thermonuclear weapons.

Panels of leading U.S. scientists have found in the past, that these triggers can last anywhere from 85 to more than 100 years. Nevertheless, during the Trump administration there was concern with pits that were older than 80 years, which led to worry over the time needed to produce new, safe facilities for building new plutonium pits.

The tentative plan was to be able to produce 80 pits a year by 2030, with 30 pits to be produced at Los Alamos National Laboratory and another 50 at the government’s Savannah River, South Carolina facility. No one believed those goals could be reached, given the complexity of the facilities needed and the ever-increasing projected costs.

 “Based on our latest information, we assess that meeting the 2030 [deadline] … is not going to be achievable,” Charles Verdon, acting head of the National Nuclear Security Administration, told Congress on June 10. Verdon suggested that 2035 might be a more realistic target date: 14 years away.

That tentative 80-pit plan was based on needing 2,000 nuclear warheads projecting out to the year 2090. Surely, through arms control efforts, the number of nuclear weapons can be lowered in coming years, when much more likely, cyber or some other form of deterring strategic weaponry will come along to reduce the need for that many nuclear weapons.

Meanwhile, a new Neutron Diagnosed Subcritical Experiment facility has been developed to help answer questions about whether plutonium pits – aged ones on deployed weapons or in the stockpile, as well as newer ones manufactured using new processes — will “be good enough to trigger a nuclear explosion that meets military requirements,” according to a 2014 Los Alamos National Laboratory article.

From the beginning of the nuclear age, mutual vulnerability to a nuclear attack has been the deterring factor that has kept nuclear powers from attacking each other. Recognizing what extraordinary, permanent destruction would follow the use of just one nuclear weapon, that alone should continue to be enough to deter any country from being the one to engage in their first use.

Read more expert-driven national security insights, perspective and analysis in The Cipher Brief

Tagged with:

Related Articles

Search

Close