While I’m in general agreement with the author, mostly on modernization, the cite China as trebling their ICBM warhead count from 30 to about 100 is a bit of a reach.
As is North Korea...neither serious strategic threats.
And we are not going to build beyond 1550 strategic warheads unless Russia blows past that number and breaks the treaty. But I am confident they will be at 1550 with us in 2018.
But we have 3500 other active warheads which require credible tactical delivery systems.
But the only serious deficiency we have in the strategic arsenal is it’s age. The Minuteman III is 45yrs old and the Trident is 35. They are getting rickety...even though every test launch is successful. 100%.
That won’t always be the case and the time to start development and then procurement is now.
How many tactical nukes does Russia have, and how does their total mega-tonnage compare to the US?
Ok, let’s say China can “only” hit 60 US cities. Plus maybe 10 EMP detonations. How is that not a strategic threat?
I respectfully disagree.
The W-76 Trident 2 SLBM warhead has design reliability questions that could end in a ‘fissle’, not reaching nominal yield of 100 kt. Obama stopped development of a safer, more reliable “Reliable Replacement Warhead”. This is the most numerous warhead in our arsenal.
The Russians have the capability to produce 2000 new warheads a year. That is quite a break out capability given we have shut down our’s to the level of 30. We might be able to refurbish some older ones in storage, but...
The Russians also have several thousand (nobody knows) tactical warheads on modern weapons. (Including their SRAM standoff missile which we retired our version of, which goes Mach 5 and arms the nearly strategic, but not counted as such, Backfire bombers) We still only have the 1960s B-61 gravity bomb, and while I am no expert, even stealth technology would benefit from not having to fly right over the target as far as survivability given the ‘double diget’ SAM capability Russia has.
Clearly we have been out of the nuclear weapons development game for 8 years now thanks to the traitor who inhabits the whitehouse. Hopefully this can be turned around.