OPINION — Should we all sleep easier because at last we have a low-yield nuclear warhead sitting atop a Trident D-5 sub-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) aboard a strategic ballistic missile submarine now on patrol in the Atlantic Ocean? Not really.
Last Tuesday, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy John Rood officially announced the Navy “has fielded the W76-2,” without disclosing any details about when or where deployment of this low-yield, SLBM warhead began, details which are apparently classified.
Luckily, five days earlier, Bill Arkin and Hans Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists posted that the USS Tennessee, a 33-year-old, U.S. Navy Ohio-class, submarine had left its home port in Kings Bay, Ga., in late December with one or more of its 20 D-5 SLBMs armed with W-76-2s.
Better yet, Arkin and Kristensen also wrote about the history and questionable rationale for the newest member of this country’s already excessive nuclear arsenal.
Rood said in his announcement that the W-76-2 “strengthens deterrence and provides the United States a prompt, more survivable low-yield strategic weapon; supports our commitment to extended deterrence; and demonstrates to potential adversaries that there is no advantage to limited nuclear employment because the United States can credibly and decisively respond to any threat scenario.”
I and others, including Arkin and Kristensen, have argued for years that almost none of those claims are either rationale or true. Start with “low yield.”
The W-76-2 is, according to the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), “a modification of the W-76-1,” a thermonuclear warhead with an explosive yield of some 90 kilotons (the equivalent of 90,000 tons of TNT).
Arkin/Kristensen and others estimate the yield of the W-76-2 is around five kilotons (5,000 tons of TNT). That is about one-third the explosive power of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. In the 1970s, when the U.S. Army was trying to sell a low-yield, neutron artillery shell to be based in Europe, its yield was one kiloton or less because the towns in Germany were described as “two kilotons apart.”
For a different comparison, it would take some 400 of the largest conventional U.S. bombs, the so-called GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB), to equal the explosive power of one W-76-2, and with the nuclear warhead there would be long-lasting radioactive fallout if its fireball hit the ground.
According to Nukemap, an interactive browser map created by Alex Wellerstein, an assistant professor of science and technology at Stevens Institute of Technology, a surface burst of a five-kiloton nuclear weapon, if it hit say Abilene, Kansas (pop. 6,500), would kill 1,600 and injure another 2,000, while creating a potentially deadly radiation fallout area of one and one-half square miles around the detonation site.
It also should be pointed out that the U.S. already possesses up to 1,000 tactical nuclear bombs and cruise missile warheads, some of which can be made to explode with less than one kiloton yields. Supporters of the W-76-2 argue that the new F-35 fighter-bombers which will carry U.S. tactical bombs based in NATO countries might not be able to make it through Russian anti-aircraft defenses. That makes one wonder why we are paying over $90 million per aircraft. There is also the question of what the W-76-2 is meant to deter?
Arkin/Kristensen point out that back in March 2017, then-STRATCOM Commander General John E. Hyten (now Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) was asked at a House Armed Services Committee meeting about the Defense Science Board recommending a new military requirement for new low-yield nuclear weapons deployed on strategic delivery systems to deter Russia using its tactical nuclear weapons. “He didn’t answer with a yes or no but explained the U.S. arsenal already had a wide range of yields,” Arkin/Kristensen wrote.
Later that same month, at a meeting with reporters, Hyten said, “We now have conventional responses all the way up to the nuclear responses, and I think that’s a very healthy thing. So, I’m comfortable with where we are today, but we’ll look at it in the Nuclear Posture Review again.”
Trump’s 2018 Nuclear Posture Review called for “a small number of existing SLBM warheads to provide a low-yield option,” in order “to ensure a prompt response option that is able to penetrate adversary defenses.” Appearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee on March 20, 2018, Hyten said, “I strongly agree with the need for a low-yield [SLBM] nuclear weapon,” because “that capability is a deterrence weapon to respond to the threat that Russia, in particular, is portraying.”
The supposed Russian threat was that Putin could order the use of low-yield tactical nuclear weapons in some European war context and the U.S. could only respond with higher-yield weapons, or more likely, be deterred from responding at all. This is like the far-fetched Cold War arguments that saw the U.S. build up to 10,000 strategic warheads when the fear was that Moscow could strike first and knock out all of the US’ strategic weapons.
At that 2018 hearing, Hyten went a step further.
He said that should the Russians initiate the use of tactical nukes on the battlefield, the U.S. would launch one or two low-yield SLBMs from submarines, not toward the battlefield, where allies might be threatened, but toward targets in Russia.
Here's the most interesting part: How are the Russians going to know the warheads on those incoming missiles were low-yield, and not the much more powerful 90 kiloton versions?
Hyten's initial response to that question was to tell the senators that from launch to detonation some 30 minutes would elapse. He then explained: "If somebody does detect that launch, they would see a single missile or maybe two missiles coming. They would realize it is not an existential threat to their country and, therefore, they do not have to respond with an existential threat." By "existential threat" Hyten essentially meant a full-scale, first strike by hundreds of U.S. warheads, designed to knock out Russia's ability to respond and perhaps survive as a nation.
In short, Hyten suggested that Putin - or his successor - would wait 30 minutes for the incoming one or two U.S. missiles to hit Russian targets before deciding whether to launch a nuclear response back at the United States.
Why did Hyten suggest that? His surprising answer was, "That is what I would recommend if I saw that coming against the United States." Has any prior STRATCOM commander, or any other U.S. senior government official, announced publicly that the United States would ride out any nuclear attack on the homeland before responding?
Remember, that hypothetical five-kiloton warhead could kill or wound over half the population of Abilene, Kansas.
I am aware that during the Carter administration there was a false alarm when U.S. radars seem to have falsely picked up the launching of Soviet ICBMs, but alertly, people waited some minutes before starting a response, enough time to determine it was not a real attack.
The arguments now being used to justify building and deploying this unnecessary low-yield weapon, like Hyten’s claim two years ago, show again the irrationality that has always surrounded justification for added nuclear weapons.
Trump's fiscal 2021 budget, sent to Congress yesterday, continues to boost proposed funding for the National Nuclear Security Administration which runs the nuclear weapons complex. It increased by 19 percent this year and next year he wants it to grow another 18 percent to $19.8 billion, with $17.7 billion going for life extension and modernization of the nuclear stockpile.
Now it is more important to acknowledge that cyber weapons have replaced nuclear weapons as today’s existential, first strike strategic threat.
Cyberattacks, unlike ones with nuclear weapons, don’t necessarily kill thousands of people while making cities and towns uninhabitable for decades. Cyber weaponry also does not potentially carry long-lasting, deadly, radioactive fallout hundreds of miles from the immediate target area.
At the same time, dangerous cyber weapons are still being developed and already are proliferating among nations that could not afford to develop nuclear weapons, which are complex to build and use production facilities that could be discovered via current intelligence capabilities.
Instead of focusing on additional nuclear weapons, the U.S. should be working on cyber offensive and defensive weapons, and at the same time trying to figure out an arms control regime to control their future development and proliferation.
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