Costly Replacement Of ICBMs With Sentinel Missiles Increases Risk Of Nuclear War

Many of our unmet needs as US citizens are due in part to the cost of the US nuclear arsenal.

By Richard Krushnic, Nancy Goldner, Jonathan Alan King, Truthout

At the September 10 presidential debate, Vice President Kamala Harris described her support for maintaining the “most lethal fighting force” in the world. Almost certainly that includes the United States’ plan to upgrade its nuclear arsenal with more powerful, more accurate nuclear warhead delivery systems, as well as new tactical nuclear warheads and bombs for use on the battlefield.

The world is already awash in nuclear weapons with an astonishing capacity for mass death: The U.S. has 14 Ohio-class nuclear-armed submarines. A single submarine can launch 24 missiles. Each missile can carry eight independently targeted warheads with blast forces many times greater than the Hiroshima bomb –100,000 tons of TNT equivalent versus 15,000 tons. The missiles launched from just one such submarine can obliterate the major cities of any nation on Earth. The U.S. also maintains 400 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) in fixed silos and hundreds of strategic nuclear bombs mounted on B-52 and B-2 bombers.

The U.S., North Korea, France, Russia and China are all upgrading their nuclear weapons arsenals, developing new nuclear weapons, or deploying them more closely to current target areas. Israeli leaders have threatened to use nuclear weapons against Iran, a risk which has intensified since the former’s escalation against Lebanon. Russia has threatened to use nukes if Ukraine moved to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or if the U.S. assists Ukraine in firing conventional missiles deep into Russia. The U.S. has never disavowed first use of nuclear weapons in a conflict. Russian scholar Gilbert Doctorow worries that the U.S. may launch a first nuclear strike against Russia to prevent its total victory in Ukraine. Former senior CIA analyst Ray McGovern, one of several members of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, fears the U.S. may use tactical nukes in Ukraine to forestall total Russian victory in that war. Trump’s advisers are calling for renewing nuclear weapons testing, in violation of the multilateral Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty.

The first steps in this unsound direction were taken by the U.S. under President Barack Obama, when design and production of this new generation of nukes began. Presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden continued with Obama’s plan, increasing its annual funding.