US document calls to update nuclear arms

Deterrence is at stake, Gates argues

WASHINGTON - Continued study and development of a new generation of nuclear weapons and modernization of the aging manufacturing infrastructure needed to build them are necessary to maintain "the ultimate deterrent capability that supports US national security."

That is the conclusion of a nuclear policy paper released quietly last month by Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman.

The secretaries warn that without the Reliable Replacement Warhead program, which Congress has delayed, the United States will have to keep an inventory of older, non-deployed nuclear warheads. That would be in addition to the 1,700 to 2,200 Cold War-era warheads - many whose useful life has been extended 20 years under the stockpile stewardship program - that are to be ready for use on strategic bombers and intercontinental land- and sea-based missiles from 2012 onward.

The Gates-Bodman paper is the last attempt by the Bush administration to have an impact on future US nuclear weapons policy. A congressionally mandated study, co-chaired by former defense secretaries William Perry and James Schlesinger, is to be completed by December. The Pentagon is to do a Nuclear Posture Review next year.

The Gates-Bodman paper warns, in the strongest terms yet, that the stockpile stewardship program will soon have to modernize so many components and materials that the weapons may no longer be reliable.

"Without nuclear testing, at some time in the future the United States may be unable to confirm the effect of the accumulation of changes to tested warhead configurations," they say.

They note that the United States "is now the only nuclear weapons state party to the (Non-Proliferation Treaty) that does not have the capability to produce a new nuclear warhead" and has not done so since the early 1990s. RRWs will be based on old, tested nuclear designs but put together with modern parts and technology.

What's missing from the nuclear strategy, as outlined by Gates and Bodman, is the basic rationale that requires 1,700 to 2,200 deployed strategic nuclear warheads into the future. The authors concede that such numbers are important in determining how large the new nuclear production complex should be, but they never come to grips with how many warheads the United States should be prepared to build.

The paper notes that, in the past, the US nuclear force was determined by the size of Soviet forces and the targeting requirements for nuclear strikes against them. With the end of the Cold War, President Bill Clinton and President Bush entered agreements with Russian leaders on reductions.

The United States decided to reduce the number of its deployed warheads from more than 6,000 to 1,700 to 2,200 by 2012. But rather than dismantling all warheads removed from delivery systems, the Bush administration plan placed many in storage, where they remain as a strategic stockpile - a hedge against any future threat.

Gates and Bodman say the US deterrent force, no longer fixed by Russian targets, meets "a spectrum of political and military goals . . . broader goals (that) are not reflected fully by military targeting alone." One political requirement is that the United States maintain a nuclear posture that reassures NATO and Asian allies, such as Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, of Washington's commitment to their defense and gives them no compelling need to acquire nuclear weapons.

Another goal of the US nuclear force is to dissuade potential adversaries and even "near-peer competitors," such as China and Russia, from adding sufficient numbers of nuclear warheads to wipe out US systems. It also is based on "retaining a sufficient margin over countries with expanding nuclear arsenals to discourage their leaders from initiating a nuclear arms competition."