Thursday Essay: ICBMs Are Obsolete — But Washington Didn’t Get the Memo

"Shall we play a game?" the helpful computer named WOPR asked David, our plucky young hacker.

David, looking for what he thought were purely simulated thrills, replied, "How about Global Thermonuclear War?"

"Wouldn't you prefer a nice game of chess?"

I certainly would — even though I suck at chess. But today, the game isn’t simulated, there’s nothing nice about it, and Global Thermonuclear War simmers on the front burner once again. We've looked at drones and tanks in recent weeks here on the Thursday Essay, and today we need to go back to a topic I briefly and foolishly believed we might have left behind us in the dust of the Soviet Union.

China celebrated, as it were, 80 years of Communist rule with a massive military parade this week, including a sneak peek at the country's latest intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) — a brand-new, first-strike weapon aimed at the United States.

We don't know much about the DF-61, but it's believed to be a road-mobile upgrade to the DF-41 that entered service less than a decade ago. The DF-41 is capable of striking anywhere in the U.S. with between three and 10 multiple independently-targetable reentry vehicle (MIRV) nuclear warheads.

The newest ICBM in the U.S. Air Force inventory is the venerable Minuteman III that entered service in 1970. There are only 400 Minutemen in service, each carrying just a single nuclear warhead.

And Another Thing: It isn't that the Minuteman III can't carry MIRVs and hit multiple targets. In fact, the MIII was designed to carry three MIRVS — and did, until President Barack Obama's 2011 New START agreement with Russia effectively capped the Minuteman to one warhead each. New START expires in February, and when it does, we need to MIRV those Minuteman missiles right the hell back up.

Russia has fewer missiles than we do, but about the same number of warheads available for delivery on a city near you in 30 minutes or less. That's assuming Moscow isn't cheating. 

Spoiler: Moscow cheats. Always. 

The Cold War nuclear calculus was pretty simple by today's standards. We had two major players — the U.S. and the Soviet Union — with a couple of serious ancillaries. The UK maintained a credible nuclear deterrent (it still does today) with a force of four ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs), each carrying 16 sea-launched ballistic missiles (SLBM) with up to three MIRV warheads. France did (and does) much the same, while also maintaining a small ICBM and nuclear bomber force.

And Another Thing: The old dark joke was that France had two nuclear launch codes: one for the Soviets, and one for us. Paris likes to maintain a certain flexibility, et c'est ainsi.

In the 1950s, we conceived, deployed, and still maintain a nuclear "triad." The three parts are our ICBM force, the sea-launched missiles aboard our SSBNs, and nuclear-capable strategic bombers. The ICBMs are typically thought of as the first-strike force, the missile subs maintain an untouchable retaliatory force, and the bombers provide what the Pentagon calls a "flexible response."

Back in the bad old days of the Cold War, China was almost a nuclear afterthought. They maintained enough missiles to deter, but not enough to threaten.

That's changing rapidly now that we're in Cold War II.

The U.S. is working to replace our 400 Minutemen missiles with the same number of Sentinel ICBMs. You will not be shocked to learn that Sentinel is already years behind schedule and billions over budget. China and Russia, meanwhile, are rapidly modernizing their nuclear forces. China, in particular, is increasing its number of missiles at a shocking speed.

It isn't just that China has introduced not one but two new missiles in the time that it's taken us to A) realize that maybe those 50-year-old Minutemen need replacing, and B) seriously botched the replacement program already. 

It's also that China is deploying those new missiles in unprecedented numbers. 

The Pentagon warned in 2021 that Beijing had begun a "strategic breakout," growing from a small deterrent to a credible threat. "The breathtaking growth and strategic nuclear capability enables China to change their posture and their strategy," Adm. Charles Richard (who was chief of our Strategic Command) told an audience at the Space and Missile Defense Symposium. "You’re not gonna find the definition of ‘strategic breakout’ in a doctrine or a manual — and I think it’s one of about four words in the Department of Defense that doesn’t have a definition buried in some joint publication somewhere — but it is significant and I don’t use the term lightly."

Adm. Richard was talking about China suddenly building 230 new ICBM silos, presumably for DF-41 (and perhaps now DF-61) missiles. In the four years since those revelations, China has completed, and presumably armed, perhaps three dozen of those silos. By 2030, China will have an ICBM force with the ability to deliver far more warheads than ours.

And Another Thing: Where China lags is in nuclear bombers capable of reaching the U.S. and its SSBN force. But that situation, too, is changing rapidly. China's H-20 bomber is believed to be at least as capable as our B-2 Spirit, and perhaps a match — or better — for the Air Force's B-21 Raider currently in development. China's sub-based force still seriously lags. But given how quickly China built up its surface fleet, its submarine forces will quickly follow. 

We have a nuclear deterrent just barely big enough to deter Russia, which is itself a mere shadow of the Soviet Union. Meanwhile, China's nuclear forces will soon outmatch ours.

See the problem?

Let me spell it out for you, regardless.

The Cold War deterrence doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) requires that the threat of destruction be, well, mutual.

MAD survived the end of the Cold War because it works... for now, but perhaps not for much longer.

Defense experts Norman Haller and Peter Pry warned at the start of China's strategic breakout that "The Math Is Bad for MAD."

"The current modernization of nuclear-missile arsenals by both Russia and China exposes a simple mathematical flaw in the assumptions underlying continued reliance on MAD," they wrote. "Despite our having ~1,400 deployed strategic nuclear warheads, they are postured such that a surprise attack by approximately 70 – 100 Russian or Chinese missiles [soon able to carry 10-15 MIRVs apiece] — a fraction of their total nuclear forces — could soon undermine our 'assured' retaliatory capability."

I'm unsure whether China or Russia could ever deploy 15 warheads per missile, but given China's ICBM expansion, 10 would be sufficient. 

In the scenario Haller and Pry postulated, a Russian or Chinese first strike could eliminate our ICBM force, and even our strategic bomber force, which is no longer widely dispersed at bases across the nation. Our SSBNs would remain untouched, of course, but they are too few in number.

Now picture the situation unfolding in real time:

It is also possible that Russia or China would not have targeted Washington, D.C. specifically so their leaders could contact the President to discuss the situation, maybe while their missiles were in flight. It’s intriguing to imagine how such discussions might proceed, but two outcomes are predictable: (1) they would complicate and delay the President’s decisions about a retaliatory response from our submarines, and (2) America would be in a weak position to secure any favorable outcomes.

Emphasis in the original, but it's hardly needed for what could become a real-world Dr. Strangelove situation — as absurd as it is deadly.

With our ICBMs and bombers taken out and our SSBNs at sea, the only remaining targets for China and Russian forces would be our cities. 

So that first strike would put POTUS — any POTUS — in an almost impossible situation. He would have very little time to decide whether to accept that the U.S. nuclear deterrent had been effectively defanged (along with untold collateral damage), or whether to order our SSBNs to unleash a city-busting nuclear war that would effectively end human civilization.

Is that an outrageous scenario? Of course it is. But everything about nuclear warfare is outrageous — especially our current refusal to take the threat seriously. 

And Another Thing: If you were POTUS, what would you do? I've thought about this question since Holler and Pry raised it four years ago, and I still don't have an answer. Remind me never to run for president, since I'm clearly unfit to handle the launch codes.

If we were serious, we wouldn't have waited so long to replace our aged Ohio-class SSBNs. If we were serious, we wouldn't replace those 14 Ohios with just a dozen Columbia-class subs — not when we have to deter Russia and China. If we were serious, Columbia would carry at least as many missiles as Ohio, instead of four fewer. If we were serious, the Columbia program might not be running a year and a half late.

If we were serious, the Air Force would demand at least 300 B-21 Raider strategic bombers, instead of the 100 it currently plans for. Although I am happy to report that the Raider program is coming along nicely. Delays and cost overruns all seem to be COVID-related.

If we were serious, we wouldn't rely on an ICBM force deployed during the disco era. My first date was 42 years ago, but Minuteman III's first test launch was in 1968, the year my parents married.

And Another Thing: Nuclear non-proliferation is generally considered a good thing, but for Western-leaning nations, it also depends upon a credible U.S. deterrent. The more credibility we piss away, the more likely that countries like South Korea, Turkey, Australia, and many others might decide to get their own nukes. Some of those countries might not be as politically stable as we'd like to trust with nukes.

If we were serious, we might even take a hard look at our nuclear triad that milblogger CDR Salamander (a retired Navy officer) called "an inertia-based holdover of the Eisenhower Era."

Sal argued that "we can sundown our nuclear ICBM with no impact on strategic defense," provided we adjust the Raider and Columbia programs accordingly:

SSBN: The Ohio can, in theory, carry 20 SLBM (though built to carry 24), the Columbia 16. They can have a MIRV’d warhead. Once underway, they are the most survivable part of the present Triad, and they are just as accurate as ICBM. We can, and should, build more to cover the targeting gap left by the ICBM force. Create a Flight II Columbia Class with that can carry 20 missiles, if that is what is needed. We can get that additional funding from the decommissioning of the obsolete ICBM force.

Bombers: These are the most useful of the deterrence force as they are dual use. With the B-21 ready for serial production, we should build a lot more of them than we plan to. As we learned (again) earlier this month, they don’t have to wait for the end of the world to be used. They are a solid investment due to their flexibility more than anything else. Let’s make sure the nuclear armed AGM-181A Long-Range Standoff cruise missile is a success as well.

Our current and next-generation SLBMs are, as Sal noted, accurate enough to serve as a first-strike deterrent, and once at sea, are essentially untouchable. Properly dispersed, an air fleet of 300-350 Raiders would be difficult or probably impossible to eliminate in a first strike. We should also go back to a Cold War I posture of having several nuclear-armed Raiders in the air and ready to strike, 24/7/365.

Tell me again why we need to spend $132 billion on a Sentinel ICBM force, sitting in easily-targeted silos? 

Cold War II is not the same as Cold War I, and our thinking must change, too.

The biggest difference, aside from China's shocking rise — financed in large part by the American consumer — is Ronald Reagan's dream of an effective defense against nuclear missiles finally becoming a reality.

Of the many incredibly stupid things to come out of Congress, the most incredible example — oh, who am I kidding? It's merely the most recent — comes courtesy of Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.)

Ars Technica had the story last week:

Moulton argued that a missile shield like the Golden Dome would change the decision-making of a potential adversary. If another country's leaders believe the United States can protect itself from widespread destruction—and therefore remove the motivation for a massive US response—that might be enough for an adversary to pull the trigger on a nuclear attack. Inevitably, at least a handful of nuclear-tipped missiles would make it through the Golden Dome shield in such a scenario, and countless Americans would die, Moulton said.

"If nations know that they will get obliterated if they use nuclear weapons against us, they are never going to use them," Moulton said in the House Armed Services Committee's markup hearing.

Rep. John Garamendi, another boneheaded Democrat, but from California, chimed in: "If you're playing defense, you're likely to lose... somebody out there is going to figure out a way to get around it."

Missile defense was never meant to intercept every single warhead coming at us during the dreaded Global Thermonuclear War. No system is perfect, and any defense can eventually be overwhelmed. The purpose of missile defense is to generate strategic uncertainty worrisome enough to make Beijing or Moscow think twice about striking first.

The uncertainty is this: "Will my first strike eliminate America's ICBM and bomber force, or will their missile defense guarantee that enough survive to wipe me out?"

An enemy with the ability to launch a successful first strike might just do it. An enemy given pause by Golden Dome will do just that — pause.

Without going into tactical nukes and the like, our current strategic nuclear deterrent looks like this:

• 400 50-year-old Minuteman silo-bound ICBMs.
• Fewer than 70 nuclear-capable B-52 and B-2 bombers stationed at just two primary Air Force bases. Those B-52s predate Apollo 11, and the youngest B-2 is nearly 30 years old.
• 14 Ohio-class SSBNs, each carrying 20 missiles with eight warheads. The newest is also about to turn 30.
• Not much in the way of continental missile defense.

A modern nuclear deterrent would be more streamlined, survivable, and deadly:

• Zero ICBMs for the enemy to target in a first strike.
• A large and dispersed stealth bomber force with a dozen or more armed and airborne at all times.
• 20 Columbia-class SSBNs, carrying 16-24 missiles with eight warheads each.
• A Golden Dome protecting America's cities to the greatest degree possible.

Should the need for ICBMs return, forget deploying anything like the gold-plated, silo-based Sentinel. There's nothing wrong with quickly building decent numbers of inexpensive but "good enough" road-mobile ICBMs — just like Russia and China do — at a fraction of Sentinel's time and cost.

But if the choice is between building Golden Dome or increasing our bomber- and submarine-based nuclear deterrence, there is no choice. The only correct answer is "both."

That is, if we're serious.

Last Thursday: Ukraine Found Russia’s Weak Spot — and It’s ON FIRE