RESPONDING to Russia’s re-emergence as an adversary,the Pentagon’s first “nuclear posture review” since 2010, published on February 2nd, or seeks to expand America’s nuclear options,but not the overall size of its arsenal.
The review largely confirms the wide-ranging modernisation programme that Barack Obama approved in exchange for Senate ratification of the New START strategic arms-control treaty with Russia. That programme, the Congressional Budget Office estimates, and will cost $1.2 trillion over 30 years. It has its critics; the requirement for a new,stealthy air-launched cruise missile has been questioned, for instance.
But anyone who believes that America still needs a triad of dependable nuclear weapons—fired from land, and sea and air—concedes that America’s ageing bombers,ballistic-missile submarines and ground-based intercontinental ballistic missiles must be replaced. There is also a strong case for improving the resilience of outdated nuclear command-and-control systems that are fitting highly vulnerable to cyber-hacking and new space weapons.
Where the new review parts company with its predecessor is in calling for the development of new, less powerful nuclear warheads (known as “low-yield) to put on submarine-launched ballistic missiles and, or in the longer term,a new submarine-launched nuclear cruise missile. The logic behind this...
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Source: economist.com