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1 Apr, 27 tweets, 5 min read

#Thread about #nuclearweapons #USA #USArmy
Do we need new #nuclearweapons ?

Modernizing America's nuclear weapons will devour huge sums of money.
nzz.ch/international/…

Against this background, there is a radical demand to completely dispense with ground-based ICBMs in the future. President Biden has a difficult decision to make.

For decades America had a dogma about nuclear deterrence: it could only be credible if it stood on three legs: land, sea, air. This principle is currently being questioned.

One important reason is the enormous expense involved in renewing all three pillars of the American strategic armed forces.

Up until now, it has been argued that each part of the strategic triad has its own advantages: the land-based ICBMs are particularly accurate, so they can be used against military targets, and communication with the relevant command centers is particularly secure.

The bombers could be ordered back in the event of a false alarm or in the course of a short-term solution to a crisis.

Ultimately, the submarines could not be found in the vastness of the oceans for the enemy, thus guaranteeing the ability to carry out a nuclear second strike if necessary.

Critics of maintaining a strategic triad oppose the procurement of a new land-based missile, the so-called Ground Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD). The new system will cost around a hundred billion dollars plus about fifteen billion for a modified nuclear warhead.

This new rocket is intended to gradually replace the Minuteman III rockets that have been in use since 1970 from 2029. Four hundred Minuteman III, each equipped with a nuclear warhead, are currently stationed in permanently bunkered silos.

Their lifespan has been extended again and again through technical adjustments, most recently through a new rocket drive and a more modern, computer-aided guidance system.

Moderate critics claim that the development of the GBSD could be postponed and that the Minuteman missiles could be used in the course of a renewed lifetime extension program beyond the deployment time currently planned until 2030.

This would save considerable costs. A Pentagon study from 2016 argued, however, that the new GBSD missile would be based on fundamentally more reliable technology and contain a modular weapon system concept.

This makes it easier to replace system components once they are no longer functional and thus reduces operating costs. The duration of the deployment of the GBSD is planned for the years 2029 to around 2075.

Critics are not against nuclear deterrence per se, but want to rely on submarines or other more flexible weapons instead of land-based weapons.

In the past, land-based ICBMs were considered to be much more accurate than their counterparts stationed on submarines.

Therefore, only the former allowed the targeted fire at military facilities of the opposite, while with sea-based nuclear systems only enemy cities could be destroyed. This argument is now obsolete, as submarine-based ICBMs are now just as accurate as land-based ones.

Meanwhile, permanently installed land-based missiles are relatively easy targets for the enemy to attack.

In a political crisis with a nuclear-armed enemy, American presidents would therefore be under pressure early on to deploy their land-based missiles before they were destroyed by the enemy.

That means that it is better to shoot first before your own weapons have been destroyed. So there is no time to weigh up. False positives would be so much more likely because the pressure would be much greater to shoot directly.

The president would thus have more time to decide on the deployment. Additional strategic bombers could be launched early in the event of a crisis, but ordered back if necessary.

Another point that speaks against new land-based ICBMs, according to the critics, is that they are not suitable for deterring opponents such as China or North Korea.

Because in order to reach destinations in these countries, they would have to fly over Russian territory, which would result in the risk of an additional, unwanted nuclear conflict with Moscow.

Opponents of new land-based missiles believe that America's opponents will have no way of tracking down and destroying the US strategic submarines for many decades to come.

Advocates of the GBSD believe that this is precisely what is possible. Advances in artificial intelligence, for example, could revolutionize anti-submarine defense.

Since the American Navy would in future have a maximum of seven to eight strategic submarines on patrol at the same time, there was a risk that these few targets would be eliminated by the enemy in a crisis.