As the War in Ukraine Intensifies, America’s Nuclear Policy Needs a Fresh Look

OPINION — “I believe improving our ability to deter and counter adversary limited nuclear use in a regional conflict is the single most important challenge we face in U.S. nuclear strategy today.”

That was former Pentagon official Gregory Weaver, testifying last Tuesday before the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces in a hearing on regional nuclear deterrence.

As Subcommittee Chairman Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) put it at the start of the hearing, “How can we assure that a conventional conflict with a near peer adversary, or a conflict between two nuclear-armed adversaries, does not escalate, does not resort to the use of nuclear weapons which then escalates to a broader nuclear exchange. This is an escalation ladder that theorists have worried about for decades.”

After referring to the current conventional war initiated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Moscow’s nuclear weapons – but not mentioning Russian President Vladimir Putin’s frequent threats of nuclear use — King said the hearing was designed to inform Senators as to “whether our deterrent is appropriately-tailored to such a regional conflict. Are we self-deterred by our high-yield arsenal of ICBMs and SLBMs (submarine-launched ballistic missiles)? There is a debate about bringing back a low-yield, submarine-launched nuclear cruise missile (SLCM-N) … Would it deter Russia in a regional conflict?”

In opening the hearing, King said the subject matter of nuclear deterrence “sounds esoteric, but it’s serious to our national security.”

Weaver was one of four experts brought in to testify. He formerly was Deputy Director for Strategic Stability for the Joint Chiefs of Staff and earlier, in the Obama administration, Principle Director for Nuclear Defense Policy under the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear and Missile Defense Policy. He currently is a Senior Associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies at its Project on Nuclear Issues.

With that background, Weaver spoke to the subcommittee in language that nuclear strategists tend to use, but that I believe needs further explanation. Since no Senator raised questions for clarification, I decided to insert my own in presenting what Weaver actually said.

For example, Weaver said, “It is broadly agreed that the most likely path to limited nuclear deterrence failure is escalation in the context of major conventional conflict between nuclear-armed adversaries. It’s also broadly agreed that the most likely path to a large-scale homeland nuclear exchange between major powers is escalation from limited nuclear use in the context of such a conflict. But, regional nuclear deterrence is the key to addressing the most likely path to nuclear war at any level of violence.”

To translate: Since Russia and the U.S. each have strategic nuclear weapons that could wipe out each other’s homelands, the only way those weapons would be employed would come after a conventional war, like what is currently happening in Ukraine. If Russia were losing, what would deter Putin from ordering use of low-yield tactical nuclear weapons – of which Russia has many? Escalation to strategic weapons could follow. So deterrence against any initial battlefield use of tactical weapons is needed to deter eventual use of strategic weapons.

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Weaver went on to say Russian nuclear strategy and doctrine are “rooted in the assumption that limited use of nuclear use in theater is unlikely to escalate to a large-scale homeland exchange, although I don’t believe the Russians are certain they can avoid uncontrolled escalation.”

Notice Weaver’s hedge here – the Russians only “assume” escalation can be controlled. More about that later.

Weaver then said that Russia’s tactical nuclear weapons play two roles on the battlefield: “First, through the limited use of nuclear weapons in theater, to coerce or terminate on terms acceptable to Russia, if possible, but second to defeat NATO through large-scale nuclear strikes if necessary. The latter is what drives Russian force requirements for thousands of theater nuclear weapons embedded throughout their conventional forces.”

Notice, Weaver does not describe what the “limited use” of nuclear weapons would be – one, five or 20 weapons. Nor does he characterize about what “large-scale nuclear strikes” would consist.

“What then is required to deter Russian nuclear escalation in a theater in an ongoing conventional war with NATO?” Weaver asks.

His answer: “We cannot rely solely on the suicidal threat of a large-scale U.S. nuclear response to limited Russian escalation or on the potential for uncontrolled escalation. Deterrence of Russian nuclear use requires the perceived ability of the United States and our NATO allies to persevere in the face of limited nuclear escalation without be politically coerced into accepting Russian terms and without being decisively, militarily disadvantaged.”

Notice, Weaver rules out the “suicidal threat of a large-scale U.S. nuclear response to limited Russian escalation,” which was once called “massive retaliation.”

Weaver goes on: “Our long-standing flexible response strategy is fit for that purpose, but only if it is enabled by U.S. and allied conventional and nuclear forces that are capable of three key things: First, being able to continue to operate effectively to achieve U.S. and allied objectives in a limited nuclear use environment; second, being able to counter the impact of Russian theater nuclear use; and third, providing the President a credible range of response options  to restore deterrence by convincing Russian leadership they have miscalculated in a dire way, and that further use of nuclear weapons will not result in their achieving their objectives, and they will incur costs in the process that far exceed any benefits they can achieve should they escalate further.”

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Weaver’s reference to “our long-standing flexible response strategy” needs more explanation since over years it has meant different things under different administrations. In the early 1960s, under President Kennedy, it meant trying first to have more conventional options before the U.S. initiated use of tactical nuclear weapons. At that time, it was the U.S. that had more than 2,000 nuclear artillery shells and some short-range nuclear missiles in Europe, while the Soviet Union and its allies had the advantage in conventional arms and much fewer nuclear ones. Now it is the reverse. The U.S. and NATO allies have the conventional arms advantage, so Russia now threatens to use its greater number and variety of nuclear weapon numbers.

Therefore, Weaver is apparently using flexible response as it refers to the U.S. President needing a variety of lower-yield nuclear weapons below the strategic level available using a variety of delivery systems as a deterrent to prevent Russia’s first use of such weapons.

To meet the need of deterring Russian use or escalation, Weaver said, “We need a range of forward deployed, survivable theater nuclear capabilities that can reliably penetrate adversaries air and missile defense with a range of explosive yields on operationally relevant time-lines … Based on these attributes, planned U.S. nuclear capabilities, in my view, are not sufficient for the future threat environment we face.”

It was at this point that some Senator should have asked Weaver to list the U.S. theater nuclear weapons currently available or would be available in the near future. Right now, there are American and allied fighter-bombers, including the newest, stealthy F-35, in Europe capable of delivering B-61 tactical nuclear bombs that can be dialed to have a variety of explosive yields from less than one kiloton [equal to 1,000 tons of TNT] to over 300 kilotons. Up to 200 B-61 bombs are stored at five NATO bases in Europe.

In addition, the U.S. has more than 500 air-launched nuclear cruise missiles with a range of some 1,500 miles when launched from B-52s. Its warhead has explosive yields of from five kilotons to 150 kilotons. The U.S. also has low-yield warheads (supposedly five kilotons) on one or two sub-launched ballistic missiles now on strategic submarines, one or two if which are now on patrol. The latter were authorized and produced three years ago during the Trump administration to meet just this type of European war situation.

Weaver continued: “Our theater nuclear forces can be made a much more credible deterrent without having to match Russia and China weapon-for-weapon by supplementing our dual-capable fighter force with at least one more survivable, forward-deployed, selectable yield delivery system that has a high probability to penetrate adversary defenses. Several candidate systems could meet this requirement, but I assess the SLCM-N, deployed on attack submarines, is the best solution.”

Do we need a “credible deterrent,” or a “much more credible deterrent”? Weaver gives away that adding the SLCM-N just increases what we already have available to deter Putin. And bringing on the SLCM-N sounds much more to me like trying to match our adversaries weapon-for-weapon.

Another issue raised at the subcommittee hearing that needs further discussion is the operational planning for how these so-called low-yield tactical nuclear weapons would actually be employed on the battlefield. 

The witness was Dr. Brad Roberts, since 2015 the Director of the Center for Global Security Research at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. In the Obama administration he served for four years as Deputy Assistant Defense Secretary for Nuclear and Missile Defense Policy and was policy director for the 2010 Nuclear Posture Review.

Sen. Fischer asked Roberts how the U.S. should focus its regional nuclear strategy. 

Roberts said, “Operational planning, of course the STRATCOM commander stands ready to do what might need to be done tonight. But I bear in mind the findings of the National Defense Strategy Commission of 2018, which concluded, as you will recall, that the United States could well lose a war against a nuclear-armed rival, largely not because we have the wrong capabilities, but because we have not understood the nature of the war that is being waged against us. We have not done our intellectual homework. We have not developed the concepts we need to organize our operational planning and conduct operations. I do not know to what extent that remains true, but that was an important marker that rang a lot of alarm bells for me.”

Since tactical nuclear weapons have never been used in actual battles, only in exercises, no one has experience in actual operations, and I would argue no one has realistic plans for their use. Even the Russians, with their so-called “escalate to de-escalate” doctrine, have just war-gamed tactical nuclear usage.  

Back in the late 1960s, when I was for a limited time on the staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee under Chairman Sen. J.W. Fulbright (D-Ark.), we investigated the deployment of U.S. nuclear artillery on the West German border. The weapons were within nine miles of the border – the range of the eight-inch guns – because the Bonn government did not want nuclear shells even hypothetically landing on their territory. 

A U.S. Army captain who commanded the nuclear unit told me the nuclear weapons were there to prevent Soviet and Warsaw Pact tanks from massing to attack NATO. However, since he would not be given Presidential authority to use them before an actual invasion, the only real operational plan he had was to pick the entire unit up, in the event of an invasion, and head west to the West German interior.

In the late 1970s, when I wrote the first stories about the U.S. Army approving production of new, long-range so-called neutron artillery and short-range missiles, I learned again there was no actual usage planned for the so-called radiation battlefield, beyond possibly signaling potential use by sending a nuclear shell into the North Sea as a warning shot.

Remember, if a tactical nuclear weapon hits the ground, it would be like the Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident, where 37 years later total cleanup of radiation does not exist, and no one lives within the Exclusion Zone covering a radius of 18.6 miles from the original explosion.

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