The Doomsday Clock is at 5 minutes to midnight, and the discussion here is about thermonuclear rearmament. And the interviewee, Mr Bracken, offers throwaway lines like

" I personally don’t think we were ever close to a nuclear launch or a detonation. Those who tell you that our nuclear forces are on a hair-trigger simply don’t know what they’re talking about—thank God."

and

" ... the problem today is not US nuclear weapons, but it’s really other countries’ nuclear weapons. That is what really influences what we should be buying."

????

All very well for Mr Bracken, the Pentagon consultant. Arguably, his abstracted comments speak most clearly to which side his bread is buttered on.

Am I an expert in the area? No. Just one of the 6 or 7 billion innocent bystanders, one who is able to smell something rancid in the article (and the mostly kneejerk comments).

Is Mr Bracken going to be one of the experts who helps reset the Doomsday clock next month?

Its interesting when people discuss alternative nuclear force postures for the United States, it is usually variations on a theme of Cold War Triads - land-based ICBMs, submarine based SLBMs, and manned bombers. Bracken's comments above tend to replicate this. Yet here we are in the 21st Century with new technologies emerging, so I think its time for thinking outside of the box on this.

The aim is to ensure we have a credible deterrent capability that an adversary cannot target. Land-based ICBMs rely on hardened silos - or road mobility - to maximise survivability, but its not convincing. An adversary can still knock out ICBMs in hardened silos, and road mobile ICBMs have their own unique problems - and can still be knocked out if an adversary knows a general area where the missiles are, and can develop a means to track the TEL. In my view, sticking with a ground-based leg of the TRIAD should be something we aim to move away from in coming years.

Likewise, the sea-based SSBN/SLBM force remains invulnerable for the moment - but advances in computing and sensor technology may make the seas less opaque over time. SSBNs may become more detectable. An adversary could then have an easier time holding them at risk, either through forward deployed SSNs, or long-endurance, long range armed UUVs, or even a variant of the ASBM equipped with a nuclear warhead suitable for attacking submerged submarines. If an ASBM can inflict a mission kill on a carrier, might a more advanced version, when cued by advanced ASW sensor networks, be able to kill a sub at long range? I accept I'm thinking a bit beyond what is possible now, but no one really saw China's DF-21D ASBM coming.

What about airborne options? The US is about to invest substantially in the LRS(B) to replace B-1B and B-52H, and eventually B-2A. This aircraft is based around enhanced stealth to be able to penetrate a thick IADS network and strike at a target with precision nuclear weapons such as the B-61-11. But how long will its 'stealth advantage' last in the face of Chinese and Russian advances in counter-stealth sensors, and more advanced air and ground based defences?

I think its going to get harder to make all three legs of the Triad credible in coming years, against Chinese and Russian adversaries and other potential nuclear adversaries. Based on that observation, is there a better way, especially given the very high cost ($2 Trillion is staggering to consider)? Surely we can think outside the box - what can we do with hypersonics? What can we do with unmanned systems? What can we do with DEW and with Cyberwarfare?

Perhaps the solution is not 'deterrence through punishment' - which the current Triad is set up for, and which discussion about future options seems to stick with - but perhaps a focus should be on 'deterrence by denial'? Preventing an adversary from being able to use nuclear weapons to achieve policy goals should be the objective. I am not advocating Reagan's Star Wars again. BMD so far has not really worked that well, and Reagan's vision of an 'astrodome' defence was never really realistic. But we should develop the means to rapidly and pre-emptively prevent small scale nuclear threats (i.e. Iran, North Korea), and sow doubt into the minds of Chinese and Russian planners that limited nuclear use on their part would be successful because we can strike their weapons before they can use them - with conventional weapons of either kinetic or non-kinetic varieties.

This still does not address the possibility that an adversary might just accept the risk and launch anyway, and our pre-emptive non-nuclear strikes don't work as well as we'd hoped for, so some form of nuclear deterrent remains essential. If we have to maintain a nuclear deterrent, then the better bet is a sea-based approach - perhaps SSBNs or long-endurance UUVs in defended bastions - and an airborne approach - Stealthy HALE UAVs with long-range air-based ballistic missile systems (think a 21st Century Skybolt) or endo-atmospheric hypersonic glide vehicles that can be placed on airborne alert in a crisis. LRS-B can still play a role, but ensuring a credible nuclear deterrent may mean trying as much as possible to keep our delivery systems out of harms way and avoid them being detected. It is the weapons that do the penetrating, rather than the delivery system. If a delivery system - like LRS-B - has to penetrate, perhaps to hit a time-urgent hardened or deeply buried target - then perhaps its path should be cleared by advanced UCAVs designed to undertake D/SEAD and Offensive Counter-Air operations at long range. A modern version of the old F-108 Rapier and F-12B interceptor concepts, with advanced long-range missiles and DEW. Sounds like a 'sixth generation' fighter, which is being looked at anyway, so why not put it to good use. Make it stealthy, fast and long-range, and as Lockheed Martin recently said of their SR-72 concept, 'speed is the new stealth'.

Finally - and to be REALLY controversial here - I think that in spite of our best efforts, we will fail to prevent the weaponisation of Space in the 21st Century. China and Russia have every incentive to procede with ASAT programs and with ground-based direct-ascent ASATs and also non-kinect counter-space capabilities. Once that threshold is breached (and you can argue the Chinese have already done so), then space weaponisation in terms of counter-space is unavoidable, and its a logical next step for an adversary to use space as a high ground for attacks not only against space-based targets but also potentially ground or upper atmosphere targets. Back in the 1990s, there was artwork for a 'Rods from God' concept - kinetic energy weapons dropped from LEO onto a ground based target. It was highly speculative - the artwork looked great (I used it in a military space course I taught at the UK Staff College from 2003 to 2007) - but of course, could be argued that it violated the letter and spirit of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty. Perhaps a military-industrial fantasy, but I'd be willing to bet that the Chinese probably took note. We now have the US X-37B spaceplane operating, and a Chinese Shenlong spaceplane in development. If you want to think about a radical leap away from the Triad, imagine a future Spaceplane - armed with precision-strike weapons like hypersonic glide vehicles - or even nuclear weapons (if the 1967 Outer Space Treaty were to collapse) - able to deliver such weapons onto a target at short notice. I hear gasps of outrage from arms control proponents reading this - but who says it would be the US that would deploy such a capability? It would be interesting to work out the orbital mechanics of a nuclear strike from a LEO-based spaceplane.

Enough speculation though... the truth is the US is facing a potential $2 Trillion bill to maintain nuclear deterrence. I think it definitely is time to think if there is a better way to do things! Now is the time to think about different options, before we commit to paths that essentially replicate what we have. There is a short window of opportunity when all possible alternatives should be considered and analysed, rather than just blindly sticking with what we've done in the past. I don't think yesterday's solutions are going to necessarily work as well in the future. $2 Trillion is a lot of money to spend - we have to get this right.

Do commitments to pursue disarmament under the NPT mean anything? Jonathan Granoff

This is a fascinating article.

There was one glaring problem: the idea of reducing the strategic triad to just one form: submarines. As stated, submarines are a good deterrent because they are highly survivable - due to stealth.

But.. that stealth may be vulnerable to technological breakthroughs, and we might not know about those breakthroughs until too late. The digital revolution has created exponential improvements in sensor and especially signals processing technologies.

If an adversary knew the location of the few submarines on patrol, it could target them with multiple nuclear weapons, wiping out our entire deterrent and leaving us helpless.

The drawbacks of SLBM platforms include the limited basing of facilities (Kitsap/Bangor and Kings Bay); predictable transit routes to and from those two bases; a limited number of highly expensive boats that are subject to budgetary whimsy and not assigned a definitive life cycle; limited and disadvantaged communications links (satellites are highly subject to initial strike and require the boats to go shallow to receive EAM messages - making them detectable and subject to strike or reliance on the single ELF/VLF communication link which has an extremely slow transmission rate and is subject to natural transient signals); and other technical issues. We also need modern effective SSN attack subs to be paired with the Boomers to deter and defend against foreign subs.

While I agree that the land based ICBM is a strategic "dinosaur" and must be eliminated solely on the increasing vunerabilities to ground attacks from terrorists and on the devastation that it invites on the CONUS during a limited pre-emption nuclear strike by opposing power(s), the SLBM does have its' limitations.

The one aspect of the triad that is not often considered is the aerial bomber, both land and sea based. The USAF continues to insist on obscenely priced aircraft that are the modern equivalent of the 1920's battleship and are virtually unusable due the the investment expenditure. The USN lacks any effective mid/long range strike aircraft since the retirement of the A6 Intruder and the F35 will never have the range or capacity to serve in the role of the A5 Vigilante / A6 Intruder. As a result, we have eliminated the "flexible response" option that a President could wield in times of crisis.

Based on the corner we have painted ourselves into as so aptly described by the national inattention that Dr. Bracken illustrates, we are effectively limited to the SIOP response of the late 1950's under Eisenhower - if something looms, launch everything and hope that a respectable percentage of the missiles launch and the lack of renewable tritium in the fusion boosting phases of the warheads work.

A counter-intuitive corollary: Land-based missiles should be
co-located with the assets they protect, so that an attack on
them does enough collateral damage to justify counter-attack.

I ordinarily delete ideologically based name calling from the site. But "arugula-eating surrender puppets" is too well-crafted to die. Still, Mr. Morgan, if you post here again, you should have an argument to make, and you should make it in civil terms. John Mecklin, Editor

Socialized medicine has three goals.

1. Cut the incomes of the doctors (Medicaid is already doing this)

2. Cut the income of Big Pharm

3 Suck up so much public monies there is none for Defense.

4. Now comes the patient.

When that trillion $ bill for new nukes comes due, there will be no money and thus no new nukes.

I guarantee it.

And I am sad to say you are 100% correct.

Fantastic interview