I recently wrote an analysis on the future of the proposed life extension program for the B61 gravity bomb.

It argues, "Congress provided the full $233 million NNSA requested for the B61 life extension program in FY 2012. However, when you read the fine print, it is less clear how Congress will respond to future funding requests. According to the Conference Report for H.R. 2055, the legislation which funds the government for FY 2012, including NNSA, Congress withheld $134 million until “NNSA submits to the House and Senate Committees on Appropriations the outcome of the Phase 6.2/2A design definition and cost study.

The results of this study, as well as other stringent reporting requirements mandated by Congress, are likely to present insurmountable hurdles to NNSA’s plan to move forward with the most ambitious option for the B61 LEP. The current budget environment is no doubt also a key driver of the need to reevalutate the objectives of the program, but a rethinking of the goals of the planned refurbishment would be necessary even in better economic times."

You can read the entire piece here.

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Nukes on a Blog, budget, NNSA, tactical nuclear weapons (all tags)

I’m a little late to this, but it looks as though Maj. Gen. William Chambers, the Air Force’s Assistant Chief of Staff for Strategic Deterrence and Nuclear Integration, recently had some interesting things to say about the B61 life extension program.  Here’s a summary, courtesy of Air Force Magazine:

No Wavering: The Air Force—and the United States—"remain committed" to providing aircraft capable of delivering nuclear weapons to support NATO's nuclear mission, said Maj. Gen. William Chambers, who oversees nuclear issues on the Air Staff. "There is nothing currently being considered to undo or change that commitment," said Chambers during a Capitol Hill speech on Oct. 28. "We are a nuclear alliance. We believe in the deterrent force. We are going to help provide that." However, some issues still are uncertain regarding that US force's future shape, he said. Decisions regarding the integration of a modernized version of the B61 nuclear bomb on the F-35 strike fighter have slipped to the right due to the F-35's overall schedule delays, said Chambers. "It is probably not" going to be resolved as part of the Pentagon's Fiscal 2013 to Fiscal 2017 budget program, he said. Further, there has been "no decision made yet" on the specific course of action for extending the B61's life, he said. Chambers later told reporters that the Air Force's current nuclear-capable aircraft for NATO—Europe-based F-15Es and F-16s—"remain very viable into the next decade and beyond. In fact, the F-15E will be viable with a nuclear-weapon-carrying capability into the mid 2030s." [emphasis mine].

Meanwhile, Inside Defense quoted Chambers as stating: “there are a lot of different ways to meet the requirements [for the B61 life extension program]. If there's money available to do a little more than the basic requirements, then that's been put on the table as well."

Contra Air Force Magazine’s headline, there does appear to be some wavering going on...  

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Nukes on a Blog, Congress, modernization, tactical nuclear weapons (all tags)

But Bush’s Presidential Nuclear Initiatives (PNIs) still mark an extraordinary moment in history, the point at which it might be said that the US truly won the Cold War. For decades, the superpowers had been piling warhead upon warhead. As historian Raymond L. Garthoff has noted, Bush’s September speech and Gorbachev’s response were a time when the arms race ran in reverse—downhill. Furthermore, the PNIs showed that ponderous negotiations aiming at a treaty were not the only way to cut nuclear arsenals. Unilateral arms control turned out not to be an oxymoron. And it was perhaps a good example of the deftness with which Bush handled the US response to the USSR’s collapse and Russia’s rebirth as a separate state.

Peter Grier, "When the Nuke Plan Changed".  Air Force Magazine, September 2011.  Read the whole thing; it's really an excellent piece on the origins of the Presidential Nuclear Initiatives, the 1991 reductions in U.S tactical nuclear weapons order by President George H.W. Bush, which led the Soviet Union to take similar steps, dramatically increasing U.S. security.

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Nukes on a Blog, tactical nuclear weapons, New START (all tags)

That being said, however, an analysis of current trends cannot help but lead one to assume that it is unlikely that there will be any American nuclear weapons based on European soil ten years hence. That decision cannot be seen in advance as either good or bad; it is just likely. It is time to start thinking about the Alliance’s preferred alternatives.

Jeffrey A. Larsen, "Future Options for NATO Nuclear Policy, August 30.  Larsen is president of Larsen Consulting Group and an adjunct professor at Denver, Northwestern, and Texas A&M universities. He is also a retired Air Force command pilot and the first director of the Air Force Institute for National Security Studies.  He has written extensively on tactical nuclear weapons.

For more information on NATO's dilemma as it pertains to the future of dual capable aircraft, check out the following useful sources, including a piece by yours truly:

Parting words: Gates and tactical nuclear weapons in Europe (Link)

NATO, Nuclear Weapons and Arms Control (Link)

Tactical Nuclear Weapons in Germany: Time for Withdrawal? (Link)

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Nukes on a Blog, quote of the day, tactical nuclear weapons (all tags)

Through the years, I worked with other people, aircraft and weapons, ranging from a hand-picked team of perfectionists developing the B-2 bomber, to an unmotivated group of foreign military transcripts at an undisclosed NATO base, complete with an alcoholic commander and about 20 nuclear weapons. Those weapons have since been relocated. I'd like to tell you more, but it would be both unwise and illegal.

Brent Hoffman, a former military officer and Pentagon 9/11 survivor, writing about his experience with nuclear weapons in the Sioux City Journal, August 21, 2011

UPDATE 8/25: Jeffrey Lewis provides some additional details over at Armscontrolwonk. Turns out Hoffman was at a NATO base in Greece, where U.S. nukes were stored until 2001.

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Nukes on a Blog, tactical nuclear weapons, quote of the day (all tags)

Center intern Emma Lecavalier and I took to the pages of the Bulletin last week to opine on the future of U.S. tactical nuclear weapons in Europe.

The piece uses former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’ recent speech in Brussels criticizing NATO members for not bearing a greater share of the Alliance defense burden as a pivot to question the logic and feasibility of continuing the European deployment.  

You can read the full piece at the Bulletin's website.  Here's a teaser:

US tactical nuclear weapons in Europe provide a capability for a threat that no longer exists at a financial and opportunity cost that can no longer be justified.

The original rationale for deploying tactical nuclear weapons in Europe was to deter a Soviet conventional attack on Western Europe. This threat disappeared when the Soviet Union disintegrated in the early 1990s. In fact, the continued storage of tactical nuclear weapons at multiple bases in Europe increases the risk that they could be targeted for theft or sabotage by terrorists. The presence of these weapons also provides Russia with a convenient excuse to refuse to talk about its enormous non-strategic arsenal.

...

The longer NATO puts off a collective decision about removing tactical nuclear weapons, the greater the odds that financial and political realities in Europe could force changes to alliance nuclear policy under circumstances not of its own choosing. For example, if the German parliament decides not to fund a nuclear capability for the Eurofighter -- a distinct possibility given the current economic climate -- the other host nations will find it difficult to pursue their own modernization programs. This could lead to a situation where the weapons are removed in a disorganized fashion, undermining alliance cohesion and effectiveness.

As is often the case with op-eds/articles a few things got left on the cutting room floor. Expect two areas in particular to receive future attention on the blog...

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Nukes on a Blog, tactical nuclear weapons (all tags)

In a The Wall Street Journal article published on November 30, Adam Entous and Jonathan Weisman allege that Russia has moved tactical nuclear weapons to Kaliningrad, a Russian enclave between Poland and Lithuania.  In light of the administration’s attempt to secure Senate approval of the New START treaty during the lame-duck’s final moments, the authors have stirred up longstanding GOP concerns about the issue of tactical nuclear weapons.

Jeffrey Lewis, Nikolai Sokov (see the comments section of the aforementioned Jeffrey Lewis piece), and Pavel Podvig have already done an excellent job refuting Entous and Weisman’s assertions, noting that this “breaking news” is nothing more than a red-herring leaked with the intention of derailing New START ratification.  In lieu of rehashing what they have already addressed, I want to focus on how entry into force of New START is integral to paving the way for a subsequent agreement with Russia on tactical nuclear weapons...

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Russia, New START, tactical nuclear weapons, Kaliningrad (all tags)

Last week was a big week for New START on the op-ed pages and blogs.  Joe Cirincione has a nice little summary of what transpired over at the Huffington Post.  Like Jeffrey Lewis, I thought the best response (and there were many good ones) to Mitt Romney’s embarrassing effort to dress himself up as knowledgeable about national security was provided by Sen. Lugar.

Jeffrey highlights Sen. Lugar’s response to the claim that New START is a bad treaty because it doesn’t capture Russia’s tactical nuclear weapons.  As Jeffrey notes, this is just plain dumb, for while Russia’s non-strategic weapons are a concern, failure to ratify New START would make it just about impossible to reach a subsequent agreement with Russia on tactical nuclear weapons, whether that agreement comes in the form of greater transparency, central storage, and/or actual reductions.  

Yet I thought the most interesting part of Sen. Lugar’s response on tac nukes was his view of the threat they pose (or don't pose) to our allies in Europe…

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Nukes on a Blog, New START, tactical nuclear weapons (all tags)

While digging through the electronic stacks of the Naval War College Review this afternoon, I found this article from spring 2004 by Timothy Miller and Jeffrey Larsen. The authors argue:

We believe that there is a way to achieve greater dialogue and cooperation in the matter of nonstrategic nuclear weapons. This article describes one possible solution to the problem of dealing with Russia’s tactical nuclear arsenal—a plan that relies on direct purchase of Russia’s weapons by the West and dismantlement of the warheads in Russia.

And they present a detailed plan for actually pulling it off.  Interesting…

Apparently the essay was runner-up for the Captain Hugh G. Nott award for the most outstanding paper in the NWCR in 2004.

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Nukes on a Blog, Russia, tactical nuclear weapons (all tags)

In the Washington Post’s new “spring cleaning” op-ed forum on 12 things the world should toss out, CNAS commander-in-chief John Nagl argues for getting rid of tactical nuclear weapons.

John’s short piece is here, and pasted in full below.

The treaty President Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed last month reducing their countries' supplies of strategic nuclear weapons goes a long way toward boosting stability between the two former Cold War rivals, whose arsenals together account for 95 percent of the world's nuclear arms. But it is only a first step toward a safer future for a planet that remains awash in nukes.

The next logical step is to slash the thousands of American and Russian tactical or "battlefield" nuclear weapons, which are meant to support troops in the field during a conflict.

Today, these weapons serve no military purpose. During the Cold War, the United States deployed them in Europe to deter a Soviet attack against our NATO allies, but a Russian invasion through the Fulda Gap is no longer a major concern. America's strategic nuclear arsenal and conventional military superiority provide all the deterrence NATO needs. While strategic nuclear weapons will be necessary to protect the United States for many years, tactical nuclear weapons are a dangerous and unnecessary expense for everyone, and especially for Moscow.

Russia has thousands more tactical nuclear weapons than we do, and our allies sometimes consider U.S. deployment of such weapons in Europe to be concrete proof of our commitment to NATO's defense. So it will not be easy for the United States to negotiate a deal reducing or, better still, eliminating them. Yet, in an age when every tactical nuclear weapon the world gets rid of is one less that could fall into the hands of terrorists or a rogue state, these political challenges seem well worth tackling.

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Nukes on a Blog, New START, Russia, tactical nuclear weapons (all tags)