The United States is building a new $ 100 billion nuclear missile based on a set of wrong and outdated assumptions, a new report by the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) will say.
The report, due to be published next week, will argue that the planned land-based strategic deterrent (GBSD) is being driven by intense industry lobbying and state politicians who will benefit most economically, rather than a clear assessment of purpose of the new intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).
“It is becoming increasingly clear that there was no serious consideration of the role that these Cold War era weapons should play in a post-Cold War security environment,” says the FAS report, entitled Siled Thinking.
According to FAS, a non-partisan thinktank, the US Air Force’s price for the new GBSD was deliberately framed in a way that seemed a little lower than the cost of extending the life of the missile it would be replacing, the Minuteman III.
An independent assessment by the Rand corporation at almost the same time suggested that the cost of an entirely new weapon could cost two to three times as much.
A Congressional effort to demand an independent study of comparative costs was blocked in 2019 with the help of the industry lobby.
The current estimate is that the basic acquisition costs of GBSD will be $ 100 billion, while the total cost of construction, operation and maintenance over its projected life until 2075 is projected at $ 264 billion.
The report is being published as the Biden government prepares its first defense budget, which may reveal its intentions in relation to GBSD, which is in its early stages.
In September 2020, Northrop Grumman received an unchallenged bid for the $ 13.3 billion engineering, manufacturing and development phase of the project, just over a year after its only rival, Boeing, came out of the race, complaining fraudulent competition. He said Northrop Grumman’s purchase of one of the two companies in the United States that makes solid rocket engines gave him an unfair advantage.
There are currently 400 Minuteman missiles spread across five states: Colorado, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota and Wyoming. Many gun control advocates argue that, instead of being replaced, they should be completely eliminated due to their vulnerability and consequent instability.
A president of the United States would have less than half an hour to decide whether to use the missiles in the event of a surprise attack from Russia (the only country with an arsenal large enough to carry out such an attack), or risk losing them completely to the United States. next enemy missiles. The decision would have to be made on the basis of early warning systems, which could be defective or hacked.
“Deciding to launch US ICBMs under these conditions would be the most impactful decision in human history,” said the report. “As competent as the president is, it is incomprehensible that a single individual is able to make a rational decision in these extraordinary circumstances, especially given the irrationality of the system itself and the likelihood of a false alarm.”
ICBM skeptics, which include former defense secretaries and military commanders, say the United States should trust its nuclear bombers and submarine-launched missiles, the other two legs of the U.S. nuclear triad, that could be used in an attack retaliatory if a nuclear attack is confirmed.
GBSD supporters argue against a greater reliance on sea-launched Trident missiles, which they say will be hostage to advances in anti-submarine warfare.
“There is no point in relying in the long run on the fact that the seas will be opaque forever,” Tim Morrison, former Donald Trump White House adviser on Russia and nuclear weapons, now at the Hudson Institute.
“Our adversaries understand how much of our deterrence is based on our submarines and we can bet that they are trying to make these submarines vulnerable. I see no reason for the US to put more eggs in that basket, eliminating the cheaper and more responsive leg of our triad. “
The FAS report will argue the opposite – that the survivability of the US submarine force, which carries 55% of the total nuclear arsenal, “is unlikely to change, even decades into the future.”
Some critics advocate a pause in the construction of GBSD, delaying the planned increase in funding while the new government conducts a review of the nuclear stance.
While a pause is possible, the Biden government is not expected to rethink the triad, which has been the nuclear orthodoxy of the United States since the start of the Cold War.
“I think they are going to make the wrong decision,” former Defense Secretary William Perry told the Guardian. “These arguments in favor of maintaining the triad have been so ingrained in us over the years that it is very unlikely that they will find a way to overcome this.”
A study published by the Center for International Policy on Tuesday, said Northrop Grumman and his main subcontractors spent more than $ 119 million in lobbying in 2019 and 2020 and employed a total of 410 lobbyists, including many former employees.
China’s growing military power is increasingly being cited by GBSD supporters as a justification for building the new weapon. When Democratic Congressman Ro Khanna suggested an amendment last July to use $ 1 billion of GBSD’s starting capital to help fight the Covid pandemic, Republican Liz Cheney, whose home state of Wyoming hosts the Minuteman complex at Warren, came close to accusing you of being a Chinese puppet.
“I don’t think the Chinese government, frankly, could imagine in their wildest dreams that they could get a member of the US Congress to propose, in response to the pandemic, that we should cut a billion dollars from our nuclear forces,” he said. Cheney.
The FAS currently estimates the Chinese arsenal at 320 warheads, compared to the 3,800 that the US has deployed and in reserve stock. The Siled Thinking report will argue that America’s ICBMs are irrelevant to deter China because any launch of the Great Plains and the Arctic could be interpreted by Moscow as an attack on Russia and therefore there would be a risk of spreading an already catastrophic conflict. .
“Overall, the Air Force’s recommendation … to seek a new missile was based on a series of erroneous assumptions about how GBSD would address perceived capacity gaps, maintain the health of the large solid rocket engine industrial base. and – most importantly – it will be cheaper than the cost of a Minuteman life extension, ”says the Siled Thinking report.
“In retrospect, and after a closer examination, all of these assumptions appear to have been overstated or not prioritized,” the report will conclude, calling for a complete re-evaluation.