cruise missile nuclear warhead

W80-1 Warhead Selected For New Nuclear Cruise Missile

The U.S. Nuclear Weapons Council has selected the W80-1 thermonuclear warhead for the Air Force’s new nuclear cruise missile (Long-Range Standoff, LRSO) scheduled for deployment in 2027.

The W80-1 warhead is currently used on the Air Launched Cruise Missile (ALCM), but will be modified during a life-extension program and de-deployed with a new name: W80-4.

Under current plans, the ALCM will be retired in the mid-2020s and replaced with the more advanced LRSO, possibly starting in 2027.

The enormous cost of the program – $10-20 billion by some estimates – is robbing defense planners of resources needed for more important non-nuclear capabilities.

Even though the United States has thousands of nuclear warheads on ballistic missiles and is building a new penetrating bomber to deliver nuclear bombs, STRATCOM and Air Force leaders are arguing that a new nuclear cruise missile is needed as well.

But their description of the LRSO mission sounds a lot like old-fashioned nuclear warfighting that will add new military capabilities to the arsenal in conflict with the administration’s promise not to do so and reduce the role of nuclear weapons.

What Kind of Warhead?

The selection of the W80-1 warhead for the LRSO completes a multi-year process that also considered using the B61 and W84 warheads.

The W80-4 selected for the LRSO will be the fifth modification name for the W80 warhead (see table below): The first was the W80-0 for the Navy’s Tomahawk Land-Attack Cruise Missile (TLAM/N), which was retired in 2011; the second is the W80-1, which is still used the ALCM; the third was the W80-2, which was a planned LEP of the W80-0 but canceled in 2006; the fourth was the W80-3, a planned LEP of the W80-1 but canceled in 2006.

The W80-4 will be the fifth modification name for the W80 warhead.

The W80-4 will be the fifth modification name for the W80 warhead.

The B61 warhead has been used as the basis for a wide variety of warhead designs . It currently exists in five gravity bomb versions (B61-4, B61-4, B61-7, B61-10, B61-11) and was also used as the basis for the W85 warhead on the Pershing II ground-launched ballistic missile. After the Pershing II was eliminated by the INF Treaty, the W85 was converted into the B61-10. But the B61 was not selected for the LRSO partly because of concern about the risk of common-component failure from basing too many warheads on the same basic design.

The W84 was developed for the ground-launched cruise missile (BGM-109G), another weapon eliminated by the INF Treaty. As a more modern warhead, it includes a Fire Resistant Pit (which the W80-1 does not have) and a more advanced Permissive Action Link (PAL) use-control system. The W84 was retired from the stockpile in 2008 but was brought back as a LRSO candidate but was not selected, partly because not enough W84s were built to meet the requirement for the planned LRSO inventory.

Cost Estimates

In the past two year, NNSA has provided two very different cost estimates for the W80-4. The FY2014 Stockpile Stewardship and Management Plan (SSMP) published in June 2013 projected a total cost of approximately $11.6 billion through 2030. The FY2015 SSMP, in contrast, contained a significantly lower estimate: approximately $6.8 billion through 2033 (see graph below).

Official cost estimates for the W80-4 vary significantly.

Official cost estimates for the W80-4 vary significantly.

The huge difference in the cost estimates (nearly 50%) is not explained in detail in the FY2015 SSMP, which only states that the FY2014 numbers were updated with a smaller “escalation factor” and “improvements in the cost models.” Curiously, the update only reduces the cost for the years that were particularly high (2019-2027), the years with warhead development and production engineering. The two-third reduction in the cost estimate may make it easier for NNSA to secure Congressional funding, but it also raises significant uncertainty about what the cost will actually be.

Assuming a planned production of approximately 500 LRSOs (there are currently 528 ALCMs in the stockpile and the New START Treaty does not count or limit cruise missiles), the cost estimates indicate a complex W80-4 LEP on par with the B61-12 LEP. NNSA told me the plan is to use many of the non-nuclear components and technologies on the W80-4 that were developed for the B61-12.

In addition to the cost of the W80-4 warhead itself, the cost estimate for completing the LRSO has not been announced but $227 million are programmed through 2019. Unofficial estimates put the total cost for the LRSO and W80-4 at $10-20 billion. In addition to these weapons costs, integration on the B-2A and next-generation long-range bomber (LRS-B) will add hundreds of millions more.

The W80-1 is not big, see here with the author at the nuclear museum in Albuquerque.

The W80-1 is not big, seen here with the author at the nuclear museum in Albuquerque, but it packs explosive yields of 5-150 kilotons.

What’s The Mission?

Why does the Air Force need a new nuclear cruise missile?

During a recent meeting with Pentagon officials, I asked why the LRSO was needed, given that the military also has gravity bombs on its bombers. “Because of what you see on that map,” a senior defense official said pointing to a large world map on the wall. The implication was that many targets would be risky to get to with a bomber. When reminded that the military also has land- and sea-based ballistic missiles that can reach all of those targets, another official explained: “Yes but they’re all brute weapons with high-yield warheads. We need the targeting flexibility and lower-yield options that the LRSO provides.”

The assumption for the argument is that if the Air Force didn’t have a nuclear cruise missile, an adversary could gamble that the United States would not risk an expensive stealth bomber to deliver a nuclear bomb and would not want to use ballistic missiles because that would be escalating too much. That’s quite an assumption but for the nuclear warfighter the cruise missile is seen as this great in-between weapon that increases targeting flexibility in a variety of regional strike scenarios.

That conversation could have taken place back in the 1980s because the answers sounded more like warfighting talk than deterrence. The two roles can be hard to differentiate and the Air Force’s budget request seems to include a bit of both: the LRSO “will be capable of penetrating and surviving advanced Integrated Air Defense Systems (IADS) from significant stand off range to prosecute strategic targets in support of the Air Force’s global attack capability and strategic deterrence core function.”

The deterrence function is provided by the existence of the weapon, but the global attack capability is what’s needed when deterrence fails. At that point, the mission is about target destruction: holding at risk what the adversary values most. Getting to the target is harder with a cruise missile than a ballistic missile, but it is easier with a cruise missile than a gravity bomb because the latter requires the bomber to fly very close to the target. That exposes the platform to all sorts of air defense capabilities. That’s why the Pentagon plans to spend a lot of money on equipping its next-generation long-range bomber (LRS-B) with low-observable technology.

The LRSO is therefore needed, STRATCOM commander Admiral Cecil Haney explained in June, to “effectively conduct global strike operations in the anti-access, access-denial environments.” When asked why they needed a standoff missile when they were building a stealth bomber, Haney acknowledge that “if you had all the stealth you could possibly have in a platform, then gravity bombs would solve it all.” But the stealth of the bomber will diminish over time because of countermeasures invented by adversaries, he warned. So “having standoff and stealth is very important” given how long the long-range bomber will operate into the future.

Lt. Gen. Stephen Wilson, the head of Air Force Global Strike Command, says the LRSO is needed to shoot holes in air defense systems.

Lt. Gen. Stephen Wilson, the head of Air Force Global Strike Command, says the LRSO is needed to shoot holes in air defense systems.

Still, one could say that for any weapon and it doesn’t really explain what the nuclear mission is. But around the same time Admiral Haney made his statement, Air Force Global Strike Command commander General Wilson added a bit more texture: “There may be air defenses that are just too hard, it’s so redundant, that penetrating bombers become a challenge. But with standoff, I can make holes and gaps to allow a penetrating bomber to get in, and then it becomes a matter of balance.”

In this mission, the LRSO would not be used to keep the stealth bomber out of harms way per ce but as a nuclear sledgehammer to “kick down the door” so the bomber – potentially with B61-12 nuclear bombs in its bomb bay – could slip through the air defenses and get to its targets inside the country. Rather than deterrence, this is a real warfighting scenario that is a central element of STRATCOM’s Global Strike mission for the first few days of a conflict and includes a mix of weapons such as the B-2, F-22, and standoff weapons.

But why the sledgehammer mission would require a nuclear cruise missile is still not clear, as conventional cruise missiles have become significantly more capable against air defense and hard targets. In fact, most of the Global Strike scenarios would involve conventional weapons, not nuclear LRSOs. The Air Force has a $4 billion program underway to develop the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM) and an extended-range version (JASSM-ER) for deliver by B-1B, B-2A, B-52H bombers and F-15E, F-16, and F-35 fighters. A total of 4,900 missiles are planned, including 2,846 JASSM-ERs.

The next-generation bomber will be equipped with non-nuclear weapons such as the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM) that will provide it with a standoff capability similar to the LRSO, although shorter range.

The next-generation bomber will be equipped with non-nuclear weapons such as the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM) that will provide it with a standoff capability similar to the LRSO, although with shorter range.

Since the next-generation long-range bomber would also be the launch platform for those conventional weapons, it will be exposed to the same risks with or without a nuclear LRSO.

Most recently, according to the Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor , Gen. Wilson added another twist to the justification:

“If I take a bomber, and I put standoff cruise missiles on it, in essence, it becomes very much like a sub. It’s got close to the same magazine capacity of a sub. So once I generate a bomber with standoff cruise missiles, it becomes a significant deterrent for any adversary. We often forget that. It possesses the same firepower, in essence, as a sub that we can position whenever and wherever we want, and it becomes a very strong deterrent. So I’m a strong proponent of being able to modernize our standoff missile capability.”

Although the claim that a bomber has “close to the same capacity of a sub” is vastly exaggerated (it is up to 20 warheads on 20 cruise missiles on a B-52H bomber versus 192 warheads on 24 sea-launched ballistic missiles on an Ohio-class submarine), the example helps illustrates the enormous overcapacity and redundancy in the current arsenal.

What Kind of Missile?

Although we have yet to see what kind of capabilities the LRSO will have, the Air Force description is that LRSO “will be capable of penetrating and surviving advanced Integrated Air Defense Systems (IADS) from significant stand off range to prosecute strategic targets in support of the Air Force’s global attack capability and strategic deterrence core function.”

There is every reason to expect that STRATCOM and the Air Force will want the weapon to have better military capabilities than the current Air Launched Cruise Missile (ALCM), perhaps with features similar to the Advanced Cruise Missile (ACM). After all, so the thinking goes, air defenses have improved significantly since the ALCM was deployed in 1982 and the LRSO will have to operate well into the middle of the century when air defense systems can be expected to be even better than today.

With a 3,000-km range similar to the ACM, the LRSO would theoretically be able to reach targets in much of Russia and most of China from launch-positions 1,000 kilometers from their coasts. Most of Russia and China’s nuclear forces are located in these areas.

In thinking about which capabilities would be needed for the LRSO, it is useful to recall the last time the warfighters argued that an improved cruise missile was needed. The ALCM was also “designed to evade air and ground-based defenses in order to strike targets at any location within any enemy’s territory,” but that was not good enough. So the Advanced Cruise Missile (ACM) was developed and deployed in 1992 to provide “significant improvements” over the ALCM in “range, accuracy, and survivability.” The rest of the mission was similar – “evade air and ground-based defenses in order to strike heavily defended, hardened targets at any location within any enemy’s territory” – but the requirement to hold at risk “heavily defended, hardened targets” was unique.

Yet when comparing the ALCM and ACM mission requirements and capabilities with the operational experience, GAO in 1993 found that “air defense threats had been overestimated” and that “tests did not demonstrate low ALCM survivability.” The ACM’s range was found to be “only slightly better than the older ALCM’s demonstrated capability,” and GAO concluded that “the improvement in accuracy offered by the ACM appears to have little real operational significance.”

The ACM produced to provide improved targeting capabilities over the ALCM had little operational significance and was retired early in 2007. Will LRSO repeat the mistake?

The ACM was produced at great cost to provide improved targeting capabilities over the ALCM but apparently had little operational significance and was retired early in 2007. Will LRSO repeat the mistake?

Nonetheless, the ACM was produced in 1992-1993 at a cost of more than $10 billion. Strategic Air Command initially wanted 1461 missiles, but the high cost and the end of the Cold War caused Pentagon to cut the program to only 430 missiles. A sub-sonic cruise missile with a range of 3,000 kilometers (1,865 miles) and hard-target kill capability with the W80-1 warhead, the ACM was designed for external carriage on the B-52H bomber, with up to 12 missiles under the wings. The B-2 was also capable of carrying the ACM but as a penetrating stealth bomber there was never a need to assign it the stealthy standoff missile as well.

The ACM was supposed to undergo a life extension program to extend it to 2030, but after only 15 years of service the missile was retired early in 2007. An Enhanced Cruise Missile (ECM) was planned by the Bush administration, but it never materialized. It is likely, but still not clear, that LRSO will make use of some of the technologies from the ACM and ECM programs.

Conclusions and Recommendations

The W80-1 warhead has been selected to arm the new Long-Range Standoff (LRSO) missile, a $10-20 billion weapon system the Air Force plans to deploy in the late-2020s but can poorly afford.

Even though the United States has thousands of nuclear warheads on land- and sea-based ballistic missiles that can reach the same targets intended for the LRSO, the military argues that a new nuclear standoff weapon is needed to spare a new penetrating bomber from enemy air-defense threats.

Yet the same bomber will be also equipped with conventional weapons – some standoff, some not – that will expose it to the same kinds of threats anyway. So the claim that the LRSO is needed to spare the next-generation bomber from air-defense threats sounds a bit like a straw man argument.

The mission for the LRSO is vague at best and to the extent the Air Force has described one it sounds like a warfighting mission from the Cold War with nuclear cruise missiles shooting holes in enemy air defense systems. Given the conventional weapon systems that have been developed over the past two decades, it is highly questionable whether such a mission requires a nuclear cruise missile.

The Air Force has a large inventory of W80-1 warheads. Nearly 2,000 were built, 528 are currently used on the ALCM, and hundreds are in storage at the Kirtland Underground Maintenance and Munitions Storage Complex (KUMMSC) near Kirtland AFB in New Mexico.

The Air Force has a large inventory of W80-1 warheads. Nearly 2,000 were built, 528 are currently used on the ALCM, and hundreds are in storage at the Kirtland Underground Maintenance and Munitions Storage Complex (KUMMSC) near Kirtland AFB in New Mexico.

The warfighters and the strategists might want a nuclear cruise missile as a flexible weapon for regional scenarios. But good to have is not the same as essential. And the regional scenarios they use to justify it are vague and largely unknown – certainly untested – in the public debate.

In the nuclear force structure planned for the future, the United States will have roughly 1,500 warheads deployed on land- and sea-based ballistic missiles. Nearly three-quarters of those warheads will be onboard submarines that can move to positions off adversaries anywhere in the world and launch missiles that can put warheads on target in as little as 15 minutes.

It really stretches the imagination why such a capability, backed up by nuclear bombs on bombers and the enormous conventional capability the U.S. military possesses, would be insufficient to deter or dissuade any potential adversary that can be deterred or dissuaded.

As the number of warheads deployed on land- and sea-based ballistic missiles continues to drop in the future, long-range, highly accurate, stealthy, standoff cruise missiles will increasingly complicate the situation. These weapons are not counted under the New START treaty and if a follow-on treaty does not succeed in limiting them, which seems unlikely in the current political climate, a new round of nuclear cruise missile deployments could become real spoilers. There are currently more ALCMs than ICBMs in the U.S. arsenal and with each bomber capable of loading up to 20 missiles the rapid upload capacity is considerable.

Under the 1,500 deployed strategic warhead posture of the New START treaty, the unaccounted cruise missiles could very quickly increase the force by one-third to 2,000 warheads. Under a posture of 1,000 deployed strategic warheads, which the Obama administration has proposed for the future, the effect would be even more dramatic: the air-launched cruise missiles could quickly increase the number of deployed warheads by 50 percent. Not good for crisis stability!

As things stand at the moment, the only real argument for the new cruise missile seems to be that the Air Force currently has one, but it’s getting old, so it needs a new one. Add to that the fact that Russia is also developing a new cruise missile, and all clear thinking about whether the LRSO is needed seems to fly out the window. Rather than automatically developing and deploying a new nuclear cruise missile, the administration and Congress need to ask tough questions about the need for the LRSO and whether the money could be better spent elsewhere on non-nuclear capabilities that – unlike a nuclear cruise missile – are actually useful in supporting U.S. national and international security commitments.

This publication was made possible by a grant from the New Land Foundation and Ploughshares Fund. The statements made and views expressed are solely the responsibility of the author.

A military depot in central Belarus has recently been upgraded with additional security perimeters and an access point that indicate it could be intended for housing Russian nuclear warheads for Belarus’ Russia-supplied Iskander missile launchers.

The Indian government announced yesterday that it had conducted the first flight test of its Agni-5 ballistic missile “with Multiple Independently Targetable Re-Entry Vehicle (MIRV) technology.

While many are rightly concerned about Russia’s development of new nuclear-capable systems, fears of substantial nuclear increase may be overblown.

Despite modernization of Russian nuclear forces and warnings about an increase of especially shorter-range non-strategic warheads, we do not yet see such an increase as far as open sources indicate.

cruise missile nuclear warhead

Design Features

Fuzing and delivery mode, development.

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U.S. Government Accountability Office

Nuclear Weapons: Action Needed to Address the W80-4 Warhead Program's Schedule Constraints

The National Nuclear Security Administration is working to modernize and extend the life of the W80, a type of nuclear warhead carried on air-launched cruise missiles. NNSA estimated that this program will cost $11.2 billion and last until 2031.

According to the NNSA, it will deliver the first W80-4 nuclear warhead by September 2025. However, we found this date is more than a year earlier than the program’s own analysis says is reasonable.

We recommended that NNSA use the program’s schedule risk analysis to establish a date for the first warhead delivery and other key program milestones.

Artist’s rendering of a W80-4 Warhead

warhead

What GAO Found

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), a separately organized agency within the Department of Energy (DOE), has identified a range of risks facing the W80-4 nuclear warhead life extension program (LEP)—including risks related to developing new technologies and manufacturing processes as well as reestablishing dormant production capabilities. NNSA is managing these risks using a variety of processes and tools, such as a classified risk database. However, NNSA has introduced potential risk to the program by adopting a date (September 2025) for the delivery of the program's first production unit (FPU) that is more than 1 year earlier than the date projected by the program's own schedule risk analysis process (see figure). NNSA and Department of Defense (DOD) officials said that they adopted the September 2025 date partly because the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2015 specifies that NNSA must deliver the first warhead unit by the end of fiscal year 2025, as well as to free up resources for future LEPs. However, the statute allows DOE to obtain an extension, and, according to best practices identified in GAO's prior work, program schedules should avoid date constraints that do not reflect program realities. Adopting an FPU date more consistent with the date range identified as realistic in the W80-4 program's schedule risk analysis, or justifying an alternative date based on other factors, would allow NNSA to better inform decision makers and improve alignment between schedules for the W80-4 program and DOD's long-range standoff missile (LRSO) program.

W80-4 Life Extension Program Phases and Milestone Dates

W80-4 Life Extension Program Phases and Milestone Dates

NNSA substantially incorporated best practices in developing the preliminary lifecycle cost estimate for the W80-4 LEP, as reflected in the LEP's weapon design and cost report. GAO assessed the W80-4 program's cost estimate of $11.2 billion against the four characteristics of a high quality, reliable cost estimate: comprehensive, well-documented, accurate, and credible. To develop a comprehensive cost estimate, NNSA instituted processes to help ensure consistency across the program. The program also provided detailed documentation to substantiate its estimate and assumptions. To help ensure accuracy, the cost estimate drew on historic data from prior LEPs. Finally, to support a credible estimate, NNSA reconciled the program estimate with an independent cost estimate. GAO considers a cost estimate to be reliable if the overall assessment ratings for each of the four characteristics are substantially or fully met—as was the case with the W80-4 program's cost estimate in its weapon design and cost report, which substantially met each characteristic.

Why GAO Did This Study

To maintain and modernize the U.S. nuclear arsenal, NNSA and DOD conduct LEPs. In 2014, they began an LEP to produce a warhead, the W80-4, to be carried on the LRSO missile. In February 2019, NNSA adopted an FPU delivery date of fiscal year 2025 for the W80-4 LEP, at an estimated cost of about $11.2 billion over the life of the program.

The explanatory statement accompanying the 2018 appropriation included a provision for GAO to review the W80-4 LEP. This report examines, among other objectives, (1) the risks NNSA has identified for the W80-4 LEP, and processes it has established to manage them, and (2) the extent to which NNSA's lifecycle cost estimate for the LEP aligned with best practices. GAO reviewed NNSA's risk management database and other program information; visited four NNSA sites; interviewed NNSA and DOD officials; and assessed the program's cost estimate using best practices established in prior GAO work.

Recommendations

GAO is making two recommendations, including that NNSA adopt a W80-4 program FPU delivery date based on the program's schedule risk analysis, or document its justification for not doing so. NNSA generally disagreed with GAO's recommendations. GAO continues to believe that its recommendations are valid, as discussed in the report.

Recommendations for Executive Action

Full report, gao contacts.

Allison Bawden Director [email protected] (202) 512-3841

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Chuck Young Managing Director [email protected] (202) 512-4800

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Nuclear Arsenal

The us navy’s new nuclear cruise missile starts getting real next year.

Trident II D5 missile, USS Nebraska (SSBN 739)

MINOT AIR FORCE BASE, N.D. — The Pentagon intends to create a program of record for a new nuclear-armed, submarine-launched cruise missile in its next budget request, with the goal of deploying the weapon in 7-10 years, according to a senior defense official.

Speaking on condition of anonymity during a visit to Minot Air Force Base this week, the official noted that the department is going through an analysis of alternatives, or AOA, process for the weapon, which was first announced during the rollout of the Nuclear Posture Review .

“We requested $5 million in FY20, which Congress gave us. There’s nothing in the ‘21 budget because we’ll just continue to use the $5 million to do the AOA,” the official explained. “But in FY22, I hope that you’ll see a budget request that will begin the program of record for the sea-launched cruise missile.”

“You put these on submarines, the Russians won’t know where they are,” the official added. “They’ll hate it. They’ll absolutely hate it.”

As part of the Nuclear Posture Review, rolled out in early 2018, the Trump administration said it would seek two new nuclear capabilities: a low-yield warhead for the submarine-launched ballistic missile, and a sea-launched nuclear-capable cruise missile. The first goal is complete, with the warhead, known as the W76-2, deployed for the first time in late 2019.

The official said the department is still sorting how much money the program might cost, but pointed to the estimated price tag for the Long Range Standoff Weapon — or LRSO, a new air-launched cruise missile — as a rough estimate. That weapon is projected to cost the Defense Department about $8 billion to $9 billion and a similar amount for the National Nuclear Security Administration, which is charged with developing the warhead, the official said.

“Do you put it on a surface ship? Do you put it on a submarine? Do you use a new missile or an existing missile? How far does it have to travel? We’re looking at all of this. And then you also have to look at the concept of operations. How you want them to operate? Do you store the weapons on the sub all the time, or do you bring them into port and bring them in a crisis?” the official said.

Strategically, adding the cruise missile would allow the nuclear-armed Navy to go from 12 ships to 20 or 30, which would be “huge” in changing the strategic calculus for China and Russia, the official noted.

The official emphasized that the weapon doesn’t need to be a brand-new design, saying: “It doesn’t have [to] be a big deal” to design and procure.

“The SLCM [submarine-launched cruise missile] doesn’t have to be a big deal. Could be the same warhead. We’re going to look into that,” the official added.

A conventional Tomahawk weapon has a rough range of 1,250–2,500 kilometers, and the range on the new SLCM would likely be longer, as a nuclear warhead weighs less than a conventional payload. The Navy is already investing in its Next Generation Land Attack Weapon, which could provide a more updated system on which to base the SLCM. The warhead could be a modification of the W80-4, the warhead from NNSA that will be paired with the LRSO.

Critics of the idea argue that another nuclear weapon adds little to the arsenal, while eating into a naval budget that is already under strain.

“A new SLCM would be a costly hedge on a hedge,” said Kingston Reif of the Arms Control Association. “The United States is already planning to invest scores of billions of dollars in the B-21 [bomber], LRSO and F-35A [fighter jet] to address the [area-access/area denial] challenge. The Navy is unlikely to be pleased with the additional operational and financial burdens that would come with re-nuclearizing the surface or attack submarine fleet.”

Additionally, “arming attack submarines with nuclear SLCMs would also reduce the number of conventional Tomahawk SLCMs each submarine could carry,” Reif said.

Regardless of the details for the weapon, the official expects the Pentagon is 7-10 years away from deploying the new SLCM — and that’s if Congress backs the plan. Democrats have raised objections to the Trump administration’s plans for new nuclear weapons before, but ultimately did not block the W76-2 project from moving forward.

“I don’t know if Congress is going to make a big deal about it or not because there’s really no money involved” in fiscal 2021, the official said. “But it is a new weapon system, and unlike the W76-2, where you’re replacing a large warhead for a small warhead, here you’re actually introducing more deployed capabilities. But again, it’s 7-10 years.”

When the Nuclear Posture Review was rolled out, officials emphasized that the SLCM could be used as a bargaining chip in arms control negotiations with Russia. Despite a number of arms control agreements being on the ropes, the official this week again argued that the SLCM could “give us some leverage to bring [Russia] back to the arms control table.”

Aaron Mehta was deputy editor and senior Pentagon correspondent for Defense News, covering policy, strategy and acquisition at the highest levels of the Defense Department and its international partners.

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Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation

June 24, 2021

Fact Sheet: Nuclear Sea-Launched Cruise Missiles

Updated January 2023

cruise missile nuclear warhead

The Biden administration has decided against developing a new nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missile (SLCM-N) and its associated warhead. In FY23 budget documents, the Navy stated that “the program was cost prohibitive and the acquisition schedule would have delivered capability late to need.” Despite the Navy’s opposition and concerns the SLCM would negatively affect readiness, both the FY23 defense authorization and appropriations bills included $45 million in funding for the SLCM-N and its associated warhead, the W80-4 ALT.

In 1991, President George H.W. Bush ordered all nuclear-armed Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles removed from U.S. submarines and placed in storage. In 2010, the Obama administration declared the missiles a redundant capability and retired them. The Trump administration’s 2018 Nuclear Posture Review called for the development of a new SLCM-N to fill a theoretical gap in the U.S. arsenal for a low-yield nuclear response despite repeated DoD assurances that U.S. deterrence remained effective without SLCM. The Congressional Budget Office  estimates  a new SLCM-N will cost at least $10 billion through 2031. That total does not include production costs after 2031, retrofitting submarines and surface ships to carry the weapon, or other operational or security costs, which officials have hinted could lead to a total cost of up to $30 billion.  

Senior Department of Defense officials shared varying opinions on the SLCM-N with Congress in the FY23 budget cycle. In April 2022, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley testified that he continues to support the program. Similarly, the former head of U.S. Strategic Command, Adm. Charles Richard, and the head of U.S. European Command, Gen. Tod Wolters, both supported the program in front of Congress as well. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, on the other hand, opposed the system, arguing that the SLCM-N provides marginal capability compared to its cost.

A Deterrence Gap?  

The argument for the SLCM-N has been raised in the context of the war in Ukraine as well. For example, Adm. Richard used the war in Ukraine as an example of a “deterrence and assurance gap” to justify the SLCM-N in an April 2022 letter to House lawmakers. Russia does, in fact, possess nuclear-capable missiles on its naval vessels; however, the SLCM-N would not be delivered before the 2030s and is therefore not relevant to the current war in Ukraine. There is also no indication that the addition of the SLCM-N would deter any future action by an adversary, such as Russia or China, and no SLCM-N type capability has been used in Ukraine or elsewhere.  

Unwanted, Costly and Redundant

A new SLCM-N is a costly solution to a nonexistent problem. It is not necessary for deterrence, and pursuing such a program would be an expensive exercise that would do little to enhance U.S. security.

  • SLCM-Ns weaken the U.S. Navy’s conventional warfighting duties . Arming U.S. surface or attack submarine fleets with SLCM-Ns means less space for conventional weaponry, weakening U.S. conventional capabilities and potentially leaving even fewer ships available for the Navy’s already overstretched mission set. It would also either bring nuclear weapons back to states that don’t currently house them, or force Navy ships to go out of their way to pick them up before deployment. Some U.S. allies like Japan and New Zealand also prohibit nuclear-armed vessels from docking at their ports or engaging in joint training exercises, presenting additional diplomatic challenges and resupply issues.
  • The United States already has plenty of lower-yield nuclear options . The B61 gravity bomb, the W80-equipped air-launched cruise missile, and the W76-2 sea-launched ballistic missile are all low-yield capabilities already existing in the arsenal. The United States can meet adversaries at any escalation level with its current conventional and nuclear means. Adding a new SLCM-N would be a costly hedge built on an existing hedge.

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The Nuclear Sea-Launched Cruise Missile: Worth the Investment for Deterrence

cruise missile nuclear warhead

Patty-Jane Geller

Former Senior Policy Analyst, Center for National Defense

cruise missile nuclear warhead

Key Takeaways

The SLCM-N would provide a regionally present, sea-based, survivable option needed to fill a gap in U.S. nuclear deterrence capabilities.

While air-based nuclear weapons remain a critical part of U.S. strategy, a sea-based regional nuclear missile can bolster these existing regional capabilities.

Because nuclear deterrence is both the Navy and DOD’s number one mission, resourcing the SLCM-N should take priority.

INTRODUCTION

As part of the United States’ effort to modernize its nuclear forces to confront the growing nuclear threat, the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) recommended restoring the nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missile (SLCM). The United States previously deployed a nuclear SLCM (or SLCM-N), called the Tomahawk Land Attack Missile-Nuclear (TLAM-N) during the Cold War, but has since retired the capability. The NPR proposed the SLCM-N to adjust U.S. posture in response to Russia and China’s ongoing buildups of their regional, nonstrategic nuclear capabilities. The SLCM-N would provide a regionally present, sea-based, survivable option needed to fill a gap in U.S. nuclear deterrence capabilities. It would also improve allied assurance of U.S. extended deterrence commitments and add stability to an imbalance of regional nuclear forces that exists in both the European and Indo-Pacific theaters. Fielding the SLCM-N would require overcoming practical hurdles, including redeploying nuclear weapons on forward-deployed Navy ships, reallocating limited naval resources, and added costs. But ultimately, solving these challenges is feasible given the Navy’s previous experience deploying these weapon systems. Considering the immediacy of the nuclear threat and increased potential for limited nuclear use, investing in the SLCM-N is worth overcoming any practical difficulties

The SLCM-N is a theater-range cruise missile armed with a nuclear warhead that can be launched from surface ships or submarines. During the Cold War, the United States deployed the TLAM-N on surface ships and submarines from 1983 to 1991 as part of its strategy to deter a Soviet attack on Europe. In particular, the TLAM-N supported the strategy of deploying nonstrategic nuclear weapons to link conventional forces in Europe with the U.S. strategic nuclear arsenal. Because they were deployed in theater on submarines and surface ships, they helped assure allies that the United States’ extended nuclear umbrella would hold in the event of a Soviet attack. Additionally, the TLAM-N played an important role in deterring Soviet conventional or nuclear attack at a “middle rung” on the escalation ladder. While the United States deployed strategic systems to deter major strategic attacks and tactical systems such as nuclear artillery to deter conflict at the lowest rung of the escalation ladder, the TLAM-N helped fill this middle level, especially after the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty banned intermediate-range ground-launched missiles. Due to their survivability on stealthy attack submarines, the TLAM-N helped convince the Soviets that initiating conflict at this middle level of the escalation ladder would be met with an equivalent assured response.

After the Cold War ended, President George H.W. Bush withdrew the TLAM-N from service. It was kept in storage until 2010 when President Barack Obama’s NPR officially retired the capability. This decision was based on an assessment of the strategic environment at the time to be far more benign than the threats facing the United States today. But since then, the strategic environment has drastically shifted. While the United States dismantled its nonstrategic nuclear capabilities, Russia and China expanded them. Currently, Russia maintains at least 2,000 tactical nuclear weapons that are integrated into its doctrine of escalating conflict to compel its adversaries to back down. China is also advancing its theater-range missiles and rapidly growing its nuclear stockpile.

Rather than maintain the same nuclear posture meant for the previous strategic environment, the 2018 NPR recognized that U.S. posture must adapt to reflect the changed threat and proposed the development of two supplemental capabilities to increase the diversity and flexibility of U.S. nuclear forces. The first capability is a low-yield warhead for submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBM), the W76-2, which was deployed in early 2020. The second, long-term supplemental capability is to restore the SLCM-N within 10 years. The 2018 NPR required the Navy to conduct an Analysis of Alternatives for development of the SLCM-N. The AoA will answer questions on SLCM-N development and concept of operations, including the platforms on which SLCM-N will be deployed, the number of missiles to acquire, and whether the SLCM-N will utilize old TLAMs, technology from the LongRange Standoff Weapon program (LRSO), or new technology. To advance the discussion, this paper will assume that the SLCM-N can be deployed on attack submarines such as the Virginia-class and surface ships such as Zumwalt-class destroyers, as suggested by then commander of U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM) General John Hyten in 2018.

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For fiscal year (FY) 2022, Congress fulfilled President Joe Biden’s budget request of $5.2 million for the Navy to begin SLCM-N research and development efforts and $10 million for the National Nuclear Security Administration to begin work on an accompanying warhead, which will be an alteration of the W80-4 warhead currently being life-extended for the LRSO.7 The SLCM-N will likely take 7 to 10 years to deploy. While the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the SLCM-N might cost about $9 billion over 10 years, this assessment is very preliminary, and a more accurate cost will depend on the results of the AoA.9 The 2018 NPR called for reducing costs by taking advantage of existing technologies, so the extent to which SLCM-N utilizes technology from the LRSO currently under development or the Tomahawk missile has the potential to drive down costs.

STRATEGIC CONTEXT

The 2018 NPR proposed the SLCM-N to address the threat environment, which has changed dramatically over the past decade. The 2010 NPR claimed Russia to be no longer an adversary, and at that time there was still hope for China to rise peacefully. The 2010 NPR also established nuclear force modernization plans in line with the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) that the Department of Defense (DOD) is in the early stages of pursuing today. This current force structure reflects the more benign strategic environment of 2010, but Russia and China have significantly built up their nuclear forces since then. As STRATCOM commander Admiral Charles Richard recently noted , “For the first time in our history, the nation is on a trajectory to face two nuclear-capable, strategic peer adversaries at the same time, who must be deterred differently.” In addition, North Korea continues to improve its nuclear capabilities despite denuclearization efforts. Deterrence at a nonstrategic or regional level is becoming particularly challenging as Russia and China develop their nonstrategic nuclear capabilities while unconstrained by New START and North Korea bolsters its nuclear arsenal. While adversaries grow and advance their nuclear forces, U.S. nuclear posture remains static, as modernization plans consist of replacing existing systems on a one-to-one basis. Additionally, compared to adversaries’ nonstrategic arsenals, the United States only deploys a couple hundred B61 gravity bombs overseas that are not counted under New START.

To compensate for a perceived inferiority of conventional forces, Russia has sought to build a “deterrence ladder” that would enable it to employ nonstrategic nuclear weapons should the United States or NATO inflict unacceptable damage to its conventional forces. The 2018 NPR Russia maintains a diverse arsenal of delivery systems capable of carrying these nonstrategic weapons, ranging from short-range missiles to anti-ship cruise missiles, torpedoes, artillery, and potentially the defensive S-400 system.

China is also undertaking what Admiral Richard described as “a breathtaking expansion” of its nuclear forces. While China is completing a strategic nuclear triad accompanied by an assured second-strike capability, its advancement of regional nuclear forces means, as Richard noted , “they can do any plausible nuclear employment strategy regionally.” The People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force deploys several road- and rail-mobile ballistic missiles with medium and intermediate ranges that can strike an array of targets across the Indo-Pacific with precision. Most missiles are dual-capable, and the DF-17 missile might be able to carry a nuclear-capable hypersonic weapon. Additionally, China’s H-6K bomber can carry nuclear weapons, and China’s sea-based capabilities will improve with the development of the JL-3 SLBMs. These forces enable the Chinese to backstop their conventional forces in the region. For instance, should China decide to forcefully take Taiwan, it can use its regional nuclear forces to coerce the United States and constrain U.S. response options.

North Korea’s advancing nuclear capabilities will also increase the challenge of deterring nuclear use at the regional level. Despite diplomatic efforts, the Kim regime continues to produce fissile material to build more nuclear weapons. It maintains an arsenal of short- and medium-range ballistic missiles that can strike a range of targets in the Indo-Pacific. The presence of two nuclear-armed states increasingly hostile to the United States in the Indo-Pacific presents an increasingly complex strategic deterrence challenge to the United States.

THE CASE FOR THE NUCLEAR SLCM

The nuclear threat to the United States is unprecedented. Russia and China’s nuclear buildups indicate that they believe they can gain an advantage over the United States. So long as Russia and China continue to advance their regional nuclear forces and the United States simply maintains the same force posture designed for a different threat environment, this imbalance in regional nuclear forces will persist. As a result, the United States must take action to respond to this change in threat environment—doing nothing will jeopardize U.S. deterrence. The rest of this paper analyzes the 2018 NPR’s proposal to develop the SLCM-N in response to this change in threat, which the 2018 NPR states will provide a “needed nonstrategic regional presence” that will “strengthen the effectiveness of the sea-based nuclear deterrent force.”

What matters in determining a sufficient nuclear deterrent is the perceptions of adversaries of U.S. willingness to use nuclear force, not what the United States believes is necessary to deter. The argument for the SLCM-N is not necessarily that current U.S. forces are incapable of deterring Russian, Chinese, and North Korean regional nuclear threats, as it is impossible to know exactly why adversaries decide not to take certain actions. But because there is evidence that adversaries may believe they can gain an advantage by growing their nuclear forces or even employ their regional nuclear forces to compel the United States to back down in an ensuing conflict, more is needed to ensure certainty in the minds of adversaries that the United States can and will retaliate to even limited nuclear use. The SLCM-N has several unique attributes that would contribute to the credibility and flexibility of U.S. deterrence and allied assurance.

First, the SLCM-N can be deployed to the European or Indo-Pacific regions, increasing flexibility by providing the president with a proportional, credible response option. The SLCM-N will be deployed on sea-based platforms—likely destroyers or submarines—that can operate in theaters of conflict as opposed to U.S. strategic nuclear forces such as intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) located in the U.S. homeland or SLBMs deployed from nuclear ballistic missile submarines further out at sea. Russian and Chinese nonstrategic or regional nuclear buildups and strategies indicate that they may incorrectly perceive the United States to be reluctant to retaliate against a limited strike using a strategic nuclear weapon, which may disproportionally escalate the conflict further, and instead back down.24 While the United States may be confident in its ability to respond using strategic systems, what matters for deterrence is what adversaries perceive. Deploying a regional nuclear system that can more proportionally respond to limited nuclear employment can convince adversaries with more certainty of U.S. willingness and capability to respond to even a limited nuclear attack.

The need for a regional nuclear capability is especially acute in the Indo-Pacific theater, where the United States does not forward deploy any nuclear weapons. To respond to nuclear employment at the lower rungs of the escalation ladder in the Indo-Pacific, the United States would need to respond with a strategic nuclear weapon or relocate tactical weapons to the theater. While one cannot definitively say whether adversaries will view U.S. ICBMs, SLBMs, and strategic bombers as a credible deterrent against their tactical nuclear weapons, Russia and China’s massive regional nuclear force buildups indicate that they believe they can gain an advantage over the United States—an advantage that the United States must seek to limit. As the threat of regional nuclear forces grows, the SLCM-N can convince an adversary with more certainty that any nuclear use will be met with a proportionate U.S. response. The key is affecting threat perceptions in an enemy’s mind that the United States has viable options all along the escalation ladder that it can employ, not a quantitative matching of warheads.

Critics argue that the existing nuclear triad suffices to deter the growth in China and Russia’s nuclear capabilities, especially since the United States deployed the W76-2 low-yield SLBM in 2020. However, keeping U.S. force posture “as is” will allow this imbalance to persist in regional nuclear forces—which is profoundly destabilizing. The SLCM-N provides a unique capability to deter this growth in threat because it is nonstrategic, not limited to New START’s numeric caps, and can be forward deployed to directly deter adversary regional systems. The W76-2 provided a limited capability to have an option for a more proportional response to low-yield nuclear use in the short term, but more is needed to address the ongoing numeric growth in Chinese and Russian nuclear arsenals. Since it is not treaty-constrained, the SLCM-N enables the United States to add more deployed nuclear systems in the longer term to ensure the United States maintains sufficient capacity to deter the growing threat. Additionally, while the W76-2 provides a useful option to respond with a low-yield weapon, a regionally present system may be a more appropriate response for many limited-use scenarios than a launch from a strategic SLBM.

Second, because the SLCM-N will be deployed on a sea-based platform, it adds a more survivable option to U.S. capabilities below the strategic nuclear threshold. Currently, the United States’ only systems that can be forward deployed are air-based. In Europe, the United States forward deploys a couple hundred B61 tactical nuclear gravity bombs that can be deployed on either U.S. fighters or NATO dual-capable aircraft. However, the storage locations of these bombs are known and therefore vulnerable to Russian attack. Without enough warning time during a crisis, Russia can destroy those bombs, leaving the United States without this option. In the Indo-Pacific, the United States does not forward deploy any nuclear weapons to counter the growing Chinese nuclear threat. The United States can send nuclear-capable bombers to both regions during a crisis, but doing so requires long flight times and avoiding advancing air defenses. In fact, advancing adversary anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) environments indicates that adversaries may find U.S. air-based capabilities to lack credibility. According to a DOD report:

Given the major investment both Russia and China have made in A2/AD capabilities (especially advanced integrated air defense systems), each may come to believe it can effectively impede U.S. regional nuclear capabilities in executing their deterrence missions and thereby secure an exploitable coercive advantage. Dual-capable aircraft may be vulnerable, or perceived as vulnerable, to advanced defensive systems despite enhancements to their stealth and standoff features.

While air-based nuclear weapons remain a critical part of U.S. strategy, a sea-based regional nuclear missile can bolster these existing regional capabilities by more effectively operating against Russian and Chinese air defense systems. Sea-based, survivable submarines or even destroyers can operate in an extensive area and are difficult to find and destroy. Submarines are difficult to detect, and even Navy destroyers dispersed throughout the waters can make targeting difficult, especially if they have low observable characteristics, such as the Zumwalt-class. They can also operate in regional seas during both peacetime and crisis; they do not require long periods of time to deploy. As bombers, fighters, and their bases remain vulnerable to improving enemy A2/AD capabilities, the United States needs an additional regional nuclear option that is sea-based. The argument is not that the SLCM-N on sea-based platforms would be impervious to detection and attack compared to air-based nuclear forces, but rather that expanding options would improve the U.S. deterrence posture by making an adversary’s attack calculus more complicated.

Third, a SLCM-N’s cruise missile trajectory contributes to the U.S. ability to effectively hold targets at risk and complements ballistic missile options. For deterrence to be effective, the United States must ensure it can credibly hold targets at risk. Sea-launched cruise missiles fly at low altitudes, making them much more difficult to detect and intercept by adversary air defenses. The SLCM-N missile itself may incorporate advanced stealth capabilities if it is designed similarly to the LRSO. Ships can also launch multiple cruise missiles from multiple platforms simultaneously at independent targets, which complicates adversary air defenses and strengthens deterrence . This capability is similar to the ALCM, which also flies on a cruise missile trajectory, but is complementary, rather than redundant , especially considering adversary efforts to make airspace for bombers and fighters increasingly prohibitive. Additionally, unlike bombers that cannot remain in the same position for a long period of time without risk of being shot down, sea-based platforms can loiter close to targets. This attribute makes SLCMs particularly effective for striking time-sensitive targets. For instance, Russia, China, and North Korea all rely on the use of transporter erector launchers (TELs) to load and launch their mobile ballistic missiles. The SLCM-N can strike these targets promptly.

Therefore, the SLCM-N complements U.S. ballistic missiles—and the W76-2 low yield weapon in particular—by forcing the adversary to contend with missiles flying on both trajectories, in addition to missiles launched from both air and sea. This is not to argue that the United States cannot target time-sensitive targets such as TELs with other nuclear capabilities today or that a cruise missile would perform better than other capabilities. Rather, the SLCM-N increases the uncertainty and risk in adversaries’ behavior, as having to deal with both kinds of threats increases the demands on their advancing defense systems. Additionally, given the rapidly advancing threat and the time it takes to deploy new capabilities, commencing efforts now to increase the clarity in U.S. capability and will to respond is essential. Fielding the SLCM-N sends a strong signal that the United States will not tolerate regional aggression.

A regional, sea-based, cruise missile option would play an important role in both the European and Indo-Pacific theaters by convincing adversaries that attempts to escalate conflict will bring unacceptable risk. During the Cold War, the TLAM-N limited Soviet options for destroying U.S. forces deployed in Europe because even if the Soviets destroyed all the U.S. intermediate-range nuclear missiles, they could never be sure they could locate and destroy TLAM-Ns. In fact, the former commander of the U.S. Sixth Fleet, Vice Admiral J. D. Williams, recalled Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev remarking in a meeting with U.S. president George H.W. Bush that: “We have read every one of your submarine messages for ten years and have been unable to find or kill even one of them. We quit.” Now, the United States does not even deploy nuclear missiles to Europe—only B61 bombs, of which Russia knows the locations. With more survivable SLCM-Ns lurking in regional waters, Russia would have to think twice before escalating conflict to the point where it believes it can employ nuclear weapons and win.

The SLCM-N may play a more critical role in the Indo-Pacific theater. The dual-capable nature of China’s theater-range ballistic missiles combined with its advancing early-warning and command and control capabilities indicate that its nuclear forces could backstop a strategy to take Taiwan and compel the United States to back down during a crisis. China’s growing regional nuclear forces can constrain U.S. response options if the United States cannot effectively deter nuclear use at the lower end of the escalation ladder. According to Admiral Richard , “We’ll be the ones that are getting deterred if I don’t have the capability to similarly deter them.” It is important to note that effective deterrence depends on the successful completion of the modernization of the entire U.S. nuclear enterprise—including warheads, delivery platforms, and command and control systems—but as a part of that effort, the deployment of SLCM-Ns would fill an important gap that exists today.

SLCM-N AND ALLIED ASSURANCE

Allies may question the credibility of a U.S. response to limited employment of nuclear weapons in Europe or the Indo-Pacific using its high-yield, strategic nuclear forces. They may also question U.S. assurance commitments in general should the United States ignore the growing disparity with Russia and China. A nuclear capability that can be deployed in allies’ own regions can help reinforce that the United States is committed to the extension of its nuclear umbrella. Additionally, because it is sea-based, the SLCM-N can provide this benefit without the need for additional basing requirements. For this reason, NATO and Pacific allies would likely support the SLCM-N because it would improve deterrence of their aggressive neighbors without provoking domestic protests against nuclear weapons basing.

Maintaining allied confidence in the U.S. nuclear umbrella is critical as allies in Europe, and even more so the Indo-Pacific, become increasingly threatened by Russian and Chinese aggression. For instance, former commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command Admiral Philip Davidson predicts that China could invade Taiwan within the next six years. At the same time, allies have reason to doubt U.S. commitments to extended deterrence, as the United States has sought to minimize its role in the world over the course of recent administrations. If the United States cannot modernize and maintain force levels of its own nuclear forces, allies will likely question the U.S. commitment to maintaining a nuclear force capable of deterring attacks against allies as well. Especially as allies such as Japan and South Korea have the technical capabilities to produce their own nuclear weapons, the United States must ensure its extended deterrence commitment remains credible. Developing the SLCM-N would aid in this effort.

SLCM-N AND STABILITY

Critics of nuclear deterrence argue that the SLCM-N will negatively impact stability with U.S. adversaries or start an arms race. China and Russia’s nuclear buildups threaten strategic stability. Their expanding and diversifying arsenals may provide both nations options to escalate conflicts in novel ways to which the current U.S. nuclear posture would be challenged to respond. This trend erodes deterrence; China and Russia may be more willing to take risks or even strike first as the credibility and efficacy of a U.S. response diminish. Adding the SLCM-N to the U.S. arsenal is therefore stabilizing because it would begin to rectify this imbalance.

The SLCM-N would also not start an arms race. Both Russia and China are already expanding their nuclear forces, as well as developing new and novel nuclear systems. The SLCM-N is a modest response to these significant expansions—and would not be the cause of them. Senior military leaders have also consistently emphasized that the United States does not intend to match either nation system for system; however, doing nothing means ceding an advantage to adversaries and reducing the United States’ ability to deter nuclear use. Russia and China will of course seek to disparage the SLCM-N effort as destabilizing. Doing so is in their interest since the SLCM-N would help close in on the advantages they seek—not because it would disrupt any existing strategic stability that Russia and China have already been acting to squander.

Another concern is that because the United States also deploys conventionally armed cruise missiles, Russia or China will confuse a U.S. conventional cruise missile with a nuclear one and launch a nuclear attack in response. However, the logic that a state can characterize a warhead based on missile trajectory is fundamentally flawed when it is technically possible to put a nuclear payload on any type of delivery system. This problem is also not unique to the SLCM-N, as countries have deployed dual-capable weapons for years and this mistaken escalation has never occurred . In an escalating conventional conflict, a Russian or Chinese preemptive nuclear strike after a U.S. cruise missile launch is implausible. Because Russia and China have clear assured second-strike options available after a U.S. missile launch, preemptively launching nuclear weapons and risking nuclear retaliation when a chance exists that the U.S. missile launch was conventional would not be a rational response.

SLCM-N AND ARMS CONTROL

Developing the SLCM-N may also play a useful role in future arms control negotiations. The NPR states that the SLCM-N “may provide the necessary incentive for Russia to negotiate seriously a reduction of its non-strategic nuclear weapons.” Russia has historically refused to even discuss its growing nonstrategic nuclear stockpile, much less negotiate on numbers and types. The Trump administration reached an agreement in principle for Russia to freeze all nuclear warhead growth in exchange for a short-term New START extension, but Russia reneged on that agreement after the U.S. 2020 election. Just as the U.S. deployment of Pershing II intermediate-range ballistic missiles in Europe led to the INF Treaty in 1987, SLCM-N deployment—or even mere development—might compel Russia to the negotiating table. Deploying the SLCM-N may have a similar impact on China, which has thus far refused to participate in arms control discussions. Moreover, failing to respond to either nation’s nuclear buildups would likely decrease adversaries’ incentives for meaningful arms control by reinforcing their views that expanding their nuclear forces provides them a military advantage.

To be clear, the SLCM-N ought not be developed solely for the purpose of eventually being negotiated away. Given Russia and China’s regional nuclear force buildups, the United States should pursue the SLCM-N to help deter these threats. As General John Hyten testified when he was STRATCOM commander in 2018, “That [SLCM] capability is against the threat. However, that capability also gives our negotiators something to talk about. If you do not have something to talk about, it is very hard to sit down and negotiate. But it is not a bargaining chip because it is to counter the threat.”

PRACTICAL CONSIDERATIONS TO ADDRESS

The case for the SLCM-N’s contribution to deterrence and national security is clear, as initially made by the 2018 NPR. The more important questions and concerns lie in the practical and feasibility implications of acquiring the SLCM-N. DOD will have to decide on which platforms it will deploy the SLCM-Ns, where any outcome would likely impact critical conventional naval missions. The Navy will also need to fit the SLCM-N into an already-constrained budget. While decisions such as platform, number of missiles, missile technology, and concept of operations have been examined in the AoA, this paper discusses potential options and outcomes to inform future policymaking. Ultimately, while developing the SLCM-N will require trade-offs, its development would provide a significant operational impact and is possible at a low cost.

The SLCM-N will likely be deployed on surface ships, attack submarines, or a combination of the two. In 2018, General Hyten specified that DOD would examine deploying SLCM-Ns on different types of submarines and the Zumwalt-class destroyer. While the Ohio-class, or future Columbia-class SSBNs, will likely not be an option, the Virginia-class attack submarines (SSNs) would be the likeliest candidate for submarine deployment. The U.S. Navy currently maintains 19 Virginia-class boats and will continue procuring about two more per year as the older Los Angeles-class SSNs retire. The Virginia-class has both vertical launch tubes and torpedo tubes that can carry the conventional TLAMs. Most Virginia-class boats being procured now and in subsequent years will carry the new Virginia Payload Module (VPM), an 84-foot-long section that can carry additional missile tubes, increasing capacity for missiles by about 76 percent. Given the Cold War experience of deploying SLCM-Ns, it is very plausible that new versions of this weapon could approximate the size of TLAMs and presumably fit in the VPMs or torpedo tubes of the Navy’s submarines.

As hinted by General Hyten, the Zumwalt-class destroyer (DDG-1000) could also deploy SLCM-Ns. The Navy owns three Zumwalt-class ships, with no plan for further procurement. The mission of the Zumwalt-class has recently expanded to include both surface warfare and land-attack capabilities. It carries the 80-cell Vertical Launch System capable of carrying TLAMs, making it a strong candidate for carrying SLCM-Ns. Surface ships can be seen and tracked, which would increase their vulnerability during conflict, but they can provide a powerful deterrence signal to U.S. adversaries. If deployed to the Indo-Pacific, announced in April 2021 that one of the Zumwalt-class ships would carry the Navy’s Common Hypersonic Glide Body, which would require missile tube alterations to fit the larger hypersonic missiles. Acquiring the hypersonic mission would not rule out the SLCM-N mission—if anything, carrying both systems would fit the Zumwalt’s new mission of blue-water strike. However, limited space on the Zumwalt-class may require trade-offs in the number of hypersonic versus nuclear cruise missiles it can hold. While this trade-off may be offset by future deployment of hypersonic missiles on the VPMs, policymakers will need to consider capacity limits.

Indeed, policymakers have already expressed concern with the SLCM-N detracting from core naval missions, “such as tracking enemy submarines, protecting United States carrier groups, and conducting conventional strikes on priority land targets,” according to introduced legislation . The Navy will also lose missile tubes when the Ohio-class guided-missile submarines (SSGNs) retire in the FY 2026 to FY 2028 timeframe. While the VPMs are intended to make up for lost space provided by the large SSGNs, the Navy’s total missile capacity will still decrease.

Deploying nuclear weapons on conventionally armed platforms brings several issues because DOD manages nuclear weapons differently than conventional weapons. Nuclear and conventional weapons use different fire control systems, requiring the Navy to add fire control stations to conventional ships that would deploy SLCM-Ns. Nuclear weapons management also requires separate personnel training and special security measures. Adding nuclear weapons to conventional ships is not as simple as inserting the missiles into tubes—doing so involves additional, hidden costs.

While these challenges are significant, the Navy can consider potential arrangements to find an amenable concept of operations, as it did during the Cold War. To avoid nuclear certification complications, the Navy could retrofit a block of submarines as dedicated SLCM-N carriers. But that could constrain those submarines from conducting their existing conventional missions. Instead, the Navy might retrofit a portion of its attack submarines to carry SLCM-Ns in addition to conventional weapons, allowing those boats to continue their conventional missions. During the Cold War, the deployment of TLAM-Ns on ships along with conventional missiles did not change the ships’ general mission to implement the Navy’s maritime strategy. One advantage of this option is that U.S. adversaries would not know which boats carried nuclear weapons, increasing uncertainty and deterrence. Indeed, much of the SLCM-N’s contribution to deterrence may be achieved with a relatively modest deployment, creating another opportunity to manage trade-offs.

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While delivery platform selection and nuclear certification processes may be complex and create additional costs, development of the missile itself may be simpler. Because the SLCM-N is not a new capability, the Navy can exploit existing technology and know-how to build the SLCM-N. As former secretary of defense James Mattis stated , “[B]y going back to a weapon that we had before, there is a fair amount of already sunk technology costs that we will not have to redo, will not have to come back up and ask for again.” The $9 billion cost estimated by the Congressional Budget Office is based on an assumption that the SLCM-N would be similar to the LRSO. However, the Navy has the option to simplify the SLCM-N development even further by just updating the TLAM-N. Even if the Navy does opt to build a brand-new missile, it could minimize costs by leveraging the technologies used to build the LRSO. In fact, the National Defense Authorization Act for FY 2020 required that DOD report on opportunities to do just that.57 The decision to alter the W80-4 Life Extension Program (the warhead being developed for the LRSO) to fit the SLCM-N could also help minimize costs and simplify the effort. While deploying SLCM-Ns on ships may require additional burdens and costs, the Navy does not need to reinvent the wheel to develop the SLCM-N itself.

Ultimately, while issues with nuclear certification, personnel training, and resource allocation present valid challenges, they are not insurmountable and are worth resolving, considering the SLCM-N’s role in deterring the advancing global nuclear threat. Evidence is growing that nuclear war is likeliest to begin at the lower levels of the nuclear escalation ladder in either the European or Indo-Pacific theaters. Regional nuclear forces could also be used to coerce and constrain U.S. response options. This rising threat must serve as the prime driver for U.S. deterrence strategy. Because the SLCM-N can be deployed on a sea-based platform to the theater of conflict and provide a survivable cruise missile option, it can help convince both U.S. adversaries and allies of the United States’ will and capability to respond to a limited, regional nuclear strike. In this sense, it would increase stability among peers by helping to offset an imbalance between U.S. and adversary regional nuclear forces.

Practical considerations such as cost and resource allocation should not preclude the execution of this threat-driven strategy. While indeed challenging, concepts of operations for SLCM-N deployment exist that could lessen the burden on the Navy. The Navy has deployed SLCM-Ns before and can do so again. Even if future budgets remain constrained, the Navy can prioritize SLCM-N development at the lowest cost possible. Because nuclear deterrence is both the Navy and DOD’s number one mission, resourcing the SLCM-N should take priority. Ultimately, the United States must adjust its force posture in some way to respond to the change in nuclear threat, and the modest addition of the SLCM-N could have a significant impact on U.S. national security.

This piece originally appeared in On the Horizon

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A new nuclear-armed, sea-launched cruise missile: Just say no

By Robert J. Goldston | July 19, 2023

The guided-missile destroyer USS Chafee launches a Block V Tomahawk cruise missile, the weapon's newest variant, during a three day missile exercise. (U.S. Navy photo by Ensign Sean Ianno)

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As can be seen in the headlines, the House of Representatives recently passed their version of the National Defense Authorization act, laden with provisions to fight “wokeness” in the military. This will create difficulties for reaching agreement with the Senate on a final bill. However, lost in the headlines is the fact that Congress will have to decide whether to fund the development of a new nuclear-armed, sea-launched cruise missile (acronym: SLCM-N) and its associated warhead. Based on its 2022 Nuclear Posture Review, the Biden administration zeroed out funding for this system in its budget request for 2024, but both the House version and Senate Armed Services Committee’s version of the National Defense Authorization Act authorize funding for the development of SLCM-N and its warhead. There are, nonetheless, multiple steps ahead to the point of actually appropriating funds (through appropriations bills), and so there are still real opportunities for informed decision-making.

A policy debate [1] is raging about the development and deployment of the new nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missile. Advocates [2] , [3] argue that in a world where the United States and Russia are in a state of extreme tension, and China is increasing its nuclear arsenal, the United States needs to strengthen its nuclear weapons capabilities, particularly at the so-called “middle rung” of deterrence, between so-called “tactical” and “strategic.” Those who oppose the new cruise missile [4] , [5] often argue that it is redundant and costly and will create practical impediments for the US Navy’s conventional war-fighting capability. Their arguments are cogent, but the situation is even worse than this. Deployment of such a weapon would seriously deteriorate, not improve, US national security and that of its allies, for reasons touched on in an article in Defense One [6] and a fact sheet by the Physicists’ Coalition for Nuclear Threat Reduction. [7] I flesh out these arguments here.

From a top-level perspective, at a time of increased tensions, renewed efforts at arms control and restraint are most needed. It is important to pull the most incendiary logs off the fire first, as President Reagan recognized in signing the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty in 1987. Now is not the time to add especially flammable fuel to the fire. Much worse than being redundant and costly, the sea-launched cruise missile is extraordinarily dangerous, having even more risky characteristics than the low-yield W76-2 warheads loaded onto submarine-launched ballistic missiles following the Trump administration’s 2018 Nuclear Posture Review.

There are at least three strongly compelling reasons that the SLCM-N is dangerous to US national security:

  • To an adversary, a SLCM-N is indistinguishable from a conventional sea-launched cruise missile, so the very existence of the SLCM-N makes the use of a conventional SLCM a possible trigger for thermonuclear war, due to misattribution of a conventionally armed missile as one carrying a nuclear warhead. Since the Baltic and Black Seas are only 500 miles from Moscow and the Yellow Sea is only 500 miles from Beijing, with Taiwan about 1,000 miles from Beijing, stealthy SLCM-Ns with a range of 1,500 miles would create the risk for Moscow and Beijing of an undetected decapitating nuclear strike, and as a result create for the United States enhanced risk of disastrous split-second miscalculation by its potential adversaries. This is what the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty was designed to mitigate, and what the current restraint on intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Europe is continuing. The United States would be throwing explosive logs onto an already hot fire with the SLCM-N.

Conventional Tomahawk sea-launched cruise missiles were employed in 1991 during the Persian Gulf War. Misattribution was not a significant risk, as Kuwait is nearly 2,000 miles from Moscow, and relations at the time between the United States under President George H.W. Bush and the Soviet Union under President Gorbachev were favorable. After President Bush removed all nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missiles from service in 1992, conventional Tomahawk cruise missiles were used in Iraq, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Sudan, Yugoslavia, Somalia, Yemen, Libya, and Syria [8] without any risk of misattribution.

NATO’s defense of Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, and/or Estonia would likely require the use of barrages of conventionally armed sea-launched cruise missiles. This would render misattribution by Russia an existential risk for the United States. Crucially, the deployment of SLCM-Ns would reduce, not enhance, the United States’ ability to defend its NATO allies.

  • More generally, any use of a sea-launched cruise missile would be extraordinarily ambiguous; an adversary could not know whether it carried a conventional or nuclear payload, or, if the warhead were nuclear, what its yield might be. Greatly enhancing this ambiguity is an adversary’s inability to know where a stealthy, maneuverable cruise missile is headed, even if it is detected after launch. The SLCM-N blurs the escalation ladder in an extraordinarily dangerous way, through wide ambiguity in both its yield and its target.

The ambiguity is even worse than that which surrounds a submarine-launched ballistic (not cruise) missile armed with a low-yield W76-2. This missile certainly carries a nuclear warhead, and its trajectory can be determined. Because this submarine-launched missile is ballistic, adversaries will know in advance if it is headed to a strategic target in Moscow or Beijing, or to a battlefield tactical target.

  • Arms-racing is now a three-player game. The United States is planning to build 38 Virginia-class attack submarines, each of which could carry up to 16 SLCM-N’s, with a potential total of 608 warheads [2] , even ignoring the possibility that these missiles could be placed on surface ships. Assuming reasonably that both Russia and China would feel that they must match such increased firepower, the United States could eventually be facing twice as many additional warheads as it mounted.

Adding nuclear warheads is not a wise long-term strategy for US security in the modern threat environment. In a three-way arms race, while the United loses in a two-for-one ratio when it increases nuclear warhead numbers, it can gain by a two-to-one ratio if it negotiates warhead limitations or, better, reductions with Russia and China.

The bottom line is that a new sea-launched cruise missile will deteriorate US national security in both the short and the long term. Furthermore, the new three-peer nuclear arms environment we are facing provides a strong incentive for arms control, not for arms racing.

[1] https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF12084

[2] https://www.heritage.org/defense/commentary/the-nuclear-sea-launched-cruise-missile-worth-the-investment-deterrence

[3] https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/in-depth-research-reports/issue-brief/strengthening-deterrence-with-slcm-n/

[4] https://carnegieendowment.org/2022/05/12/taxpayers-should-question-pitch-to-fund-another-naval-nuclear-weapon-pub-87120

[5] https://armscontrolcenter.org/fact-sheet-nuclear-sea-launched-cruise-missiles-are-wasteful

[6] https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2021/04/biden-should-sink-new-nuclear-weapon/173473/

[7] https://physicistscoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/SLCM-N-Fact-Seet-April-20-2023-FINAL.pdf?emci=dce192ed-0f0a-ee11-907c-00224832eb73&emdi=ea000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000001&ceid=

[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomahawk_(missile)

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Keywords: SLCM-N , nuclear-armed , sea-launched cruise missile Topics: Analysis , Nuclear Risk , Nuclear Weapons

guest

We consider ourselves to be a civilized sentient species, yet we spend trillions of dollars annually building WMD that can destroy the human race in multiple ways. How dare we consider ourselves ‘civilized’ when we focus our efforts on multiple ways to exterminate mankind?

CWP

I agree fully but as we cannot trust foreign nuclear armed nations, I would argue for a naval-based platform of defensive ABM missiles, preferably hypersonic to destroy offensive enemy missiles during launch phase. Instant reliable launch location & tracking is also required.

Rob Goldston

Robert J. Goldston

Robert J. Goldston is a professor of Astrophysical Sciences at Princeton University. He was the director of the US Energy... Read More

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  • Missiles of the World

Kh-55 (AS-15)

The Kh-55 (NATO: AS-15 “Kent) is an air-launched cruise missile developed by the Soviet Union starting in 1971. Originally designed as a strategic system capable of delivering a nuclear warhead 2,500 km, the missile has given rise to several variants. These include the Kh-55SM, an extended range version; the Kh-555, a conventional version; and the Kh-65SE, a conventional version designed for export.

Kh-55 (AS-15 “Kent”) at a Glance

kh-55

Kh-55 Development

The Kh-55SM is an extended range version. To achieve the extra range, conformal fuel tanks are mounted on both sides of the fuselage. It also has a more powerful engine, producing 450 kg of thrust. See below for the main differences.

  • Slightly larger body diameter due to the fuel tanks, 0.77 m.
  • Increased launch weight, 1,500 kg.
  • Increased range, 3,000 km.

The Kh-555 is a conventional variant of the Kh-55. The nuclear warhead has been replaced by a 400 kg unitary HE, penetration HE, or submunitions warhead. Other notable changes include the following:

  • Larger conformal fuel tanks (compared to the Kh-55SM).
  • Reduced radar cross-section.
  • Improved accuracy.
  • Increased range, 3,500 km.

Kh-65SE and Kh-SD

Similarities with iran’s soumar.

In 2000, reports suggest that Ukraine exported six Kh-55SM missiles to China, and in 2001, exported another six to Iran. Two Russian nationals, with the help of at least one Ukrainian official, created a series of front companies to hide and facilitate the transaction. 6 This is considered one the worst cases of missile proliferation in modern times given the advanced capabilities of the Kh-55 series.

On March 8, 2015, Iran unveiled the Soumar ground-launched cruise missile . The origin of the Soumar appears to be from the nuclear capable Russian Kh-55. In 2005, Ukraine acknowledged that 12 Kh-55’s (without nuclear warheads) were illegally sold to Iran in 2001 through a black market counterfeit operation.

  • “Kh-55 (AS-15 ‘Kent’/Kh-555/RKV-500/Kh-65)” in IHS Jane’s Weapons: Strategic 2015-2016, ed. James C. O’Halloran (United Kingdom: IHS, 2015), 184-86.
  • Carlo Kopp, “Soviet/Russian Cruise Missiles” Air Power Australia. April 2012, http://www.ausairpower.net/APA-Rus-Cruise-Missiles.html#mozTocId152650.

North Korea says it tested two nuclear-capable cruise missiles

State media says the tests were supervised by leader Kim Jong Un who has made acquiring tactical nuclear weapons a priority.

Kim Jong un in a brown jacket smiles and clasps his hands after watching the launch of two cruise missiles

North Korea has test-fired a pair of long-range strategic cruise missiles, with leader Kim Jong Un lauding another successful display of the country’s tactical nuclear strike capability.

The test, which took place on Wednesday, aimed at “enhancing the combat efficiency and might” of cruise missiles deployed to the Korean People’s Army “for the operation of tactical nukes”, state media KCNA reported on Thursday morning.

Keep reading

North korea says tests a nuclear warning to south korea, us, world will be forced into coexistence with nuclear-armed n korea, north korea fires two missiles after us-south korea drills, n korea defends missile launches as defence against us threats.

It was the latest in a series of weapons launches that have increased tension on the divided Korean Peninsula and heightened fears Pyongyang might be about to conduct its first nuclear test in five years.

The cruise missiles travelled 2,000km (1,240 miles) over the sea, according to KCNA, which said the projectiles hit their intended, but unspecified, targets.

a cruise missile taking off from a launcher in a cloud of smoke and flame

Stressing that the test was another clear warning to “enemies”, Kim said the country “should continue to expand the operational sphere of the nuclear strategic armed forces to resolutely deter any crucial military crisis and war crisis at any time and completely take the initiative in it”, according to KCNA.

A US Department of State spokesperson declined to comment on the launches, saying Washington remained focused on coordinating with allies and partners to address threats posed by North Korea.

On Monday, North Korean state media reported that Kim had supervised two weeks of guided nuclear tactical exercises, including the test of a new intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) that was launched over Japan as a protest against recent joint naval drills by South Korea and the United States that involved the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, the USS Ronald Reagan.

Mistake to dismiss tests

North Korean state media once reported routinely on the country’s weapons testing but has stopped doing so in recent months.

Analysts say that while the recent “deluge of propaganda” could not be trusted, the tests should not be ignored.

“North Korea’s cruise missiles, air force, and tactical nuclear devices are probably much less capable than propaganda suggests. But it would be a mistake to dismiss North Korea’s recent weapons testing spree as bluster or sabre-rattling,” Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul, wrote in emailed comments.

“Pyongyang’s military threats are a chronic and worsening problem for peace and stability in Asia that must not be ignored. Policymakers in Seoul, Tokyo and Washington should not allow domestic politics and other challenges such as Russia’s war in Ukraine to prevent them from increasing international coordination on military deterrence and economic sanctions.”

North Korea’s cruise missiles usually generate less interest than ballistic weapons because they are not explicitly banned under UN Security Council resolutions.

Kim made acquiring tactical nuclear weapons – smaller, lighter and designed for battlefield use – a priority at a key party congress in January 2021 and first tested a “strategic” cruise missile in September of that year.

Analysts said it was the country’s first such weapon to have nuclear capability and was a worrying development because, in the event of a conflict, it might not be clear whether it was carrying a conventional or nuclear warhead.

The country revised its nuclear laws last month to allow preemptive attacks, with Kim declaring North Korea an “irreversible” nuclear power, effectively ending the possibility of negotiations over its arsenal.

President Joe Biden unveiled the latest update to the United States National Security Strategy on Wednesday but it contained only a single reference to North Korea.

Daniel Russel, the top US diplomat for East Asia under former President Barack Obama, said this was striking, “not only because it passes so quickly past a persistent and existential threat, but also because it frames the strategy as ‘seeking sustained diplomacy toward denuclearization,’ when North Korea has so convincingly demonstrated its utter rejection of negotiations”.

North Korea says it practiced firing nuclear-capable cruise missiles

The Supreme People's Assembly, North Korea's parliament, convenes in Pyongyang

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Reporting by Joori Roh and Josh Smith; Additional reporting by David Brunnstrom in Washington and Hyonhee Shin in Seoul; Editing by Richard Pullin and Gerry Doyle

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Biden’s Armageddon Moment: When Nuclear Detonation Seemed Possible in Ukraine

For a few weeks in October 2022, the White House was consumed in a crisis whose depths were not publicly acknowledged at the time. It was a glimpse of what seemed like a terrifying new era.

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President Biden walking through a factory with an American flag in the background.

By David E. Sanger

David E. Sanger is a White House and national security reporter and the author, with Mary K. Brooks, of the forthcoming “New Cold Wars: China’s Rise, Russia’s Invasion and America’s Struggle to Defend the West,” from which this article is adapted.

President Biden was standing in an Upper East Side townhouse owned by the businessman James Murdoch, the rebellious scion of the media empire, surrounded by liberal New York Democrats who had paid handsomely to come hear optimistic talk about the Biden agenda for the next few years.

It was Oct. 6, 2022, but what they heard instead that evening was a disturbing message that — though Mr. Biden didn’t say so — came straight from highly classified intercepted communications he had recently been briefed about, suggesting that President Vladimir V. Putin’s threats to use a nuclear weapon in Ukraine might be turning into an operational plan.

For the “first time since the Cuban Missile Crisis,” he told the group, as they gathered amid Mr. Murdoch’s art collection, “we have a direct threat of the use of a nuclear weapon if in fact things continue down the path they’ve been going.” The gravity of his tone began to sink in: The president was talking about the prospect of the first wartime use of a nuclear weapon since Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

And not at some vague moment in the future. He meant in the next few weeks.

The intercepts revealed that for the first time since the war in Ukraine had broken out, there were frequent conversations within the Russian military about reaching into the nuclear arsenal. Some were just “various forms of chatter,” one official said. But others involved the units that would be responsible for moving or deploying the weapons. The most alarming of the intercepts revealed that one of the most senior Russian military commanders was explicitly discussing the logistics of detonating a weapon on the battlefield.

Fortunately, Mr. Biden was told in his briefings, there was no evidence of weapons being moved. But soon the C.I.A. was warning that, under a singular scenario in which Ukrainian forces decimated Russian defensive lines and looked as if they might try to retake Crimea — a possibility that seemed imaginable that fall — the likelihood of nuclear use might rise to 50 percent or even higher. That “got everyone’s attention fast,” said an official involved in the discussions.

No one knew how to assess the accuracy of that estimate: the factors that play into decisions to use nuclear weapons, or even to threaten their use, were too abstract, too dependent on human emotion and accident, to measure with precision. But it wasn’t the kind of warning any American president could dismiss.

“It’s the nuclear paradox,” Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff until he retired in September, told me over dinner last summer at his official quarters above the Potomac River, recalling the warnings he had issued in the Situation Room.

He added: “The more successful the Ukrainians are at ousting the Russian invasion, the more likely Putin is to threaten to use a bomb — or reach for it.”

This account of what happened in those October days — as it happened, just before the 60th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the closest the United States and the Soviet Union ever came to a nuclear exchange in the Cold War — was reconstructed in interviews I conducted over the past 18 months with administration officials, diplomats, leaders of NATO nations and military officials who recounted the depth of their fear in those weeks.

Though the crisis passed, and Russia now appears to have gained an upper hand on the battlefield as Ukraine runs low on ammunition, almost all of the officials described those weeks as a glimpse of a terrifying new era in which nuclear weapons were back at the center of superpower competition.

While news that Russia was considering using a nuclear weapon became public at the time, the interviews underscored that the worries at the White House and the Pentagon ran far deeper than were acknowledged then, and that extensive efforts were made to prepare for the possibility. When Mr. Biden mused aloud that evening that “I don’t think there’s any such thing as the ability to easily” make use of “a tactical nuclear weapon and not end up with Armageddon,” he was reflecting urgent preparations being made for a U.S. reaction. Other details of extensive White House planning were published in a New York Times opinion piece by W.J. Hennigan and by Jim Sciutto of CNN .

Mr. Biden said he thought Mr. Putin was capable of pulling the trigger. “We’ve got a guy I know fairly well,” he said of the Russian leader. “He is not joking when he talks about potential use of tactical nuclear weapons or biological or chemical weapons because his military is, you might say, significantly underperforming.”

Since then, the battlefield advantage has changed dramatically, and October 2022 now looks like the high-water mark of Ukraine’s military performance over the past two years. Yet Mr. Putin has now made a new set of nuclear threats, during his equivalent of the State of the Union address in Moscow in late February. He said that any NATO countries that were helping Ukraine strike Russian territory with cruise missiles, or that might consider sending their own troops into battle, “must, in the end, understand” that “all this truly threatens a conflict with the use of nuclear weapons, and therefore the destruction of civilization.”

“We also have weapons that can strike targets on their territory,” Mr. Putin said. “Do they not understand this?”

Mr. Putin was speaking about Russian medium-range weapons that could strike anywhere in Europe, or his intercontinental ballistic missiles that can reach the United States. But the scare in 2022 involved so-called battlefield nukes: tactical weapons small enough to be loaded into an artillery shell and designed to eviscerate a military unit or a few city blocks.

At least initially, their use would look nothing like an all-out nuclear exchange, the great fear of the Cold War. The effects would be horrific but limited to a relatively small geographic area — perhaps detonated over the Black Sea, or blasted into a Ukrainian military base.

Yet the White House concern ran so deep that task forces met to map out a response. Administration officials said that the United States’ countermove would have to be nonnuclear. But they quickly added that there would have to be some kind of dramatic reaction — perhaps even a conventional attack on the units that had launched the nuclear weapons — or they would risk emboldening not only Mr. Putin but every other authoritarian with a nuclear arsenal, large or small.

Yet as was made clear in Mr. Biden’s “Armageddon speech” — as White House officials came to call it — no one knew what kind of nuclear demonstration Mr. Putin had in mind. Some believed that the public warnings Russia was making that Ukraine was preparing to use a giant “dirty bomb,” a weapon that spews radiological waste, was a pretext for a pre-emptive nuclear strike.

The wargaming at the Pentagon and at think tanks around Washington imagined that Mr. Putin’s use of a tactical weapon — perhaps followed by a threat to detonate more — could come in a variety of circumstances. One simulation envisioned a successful Ukrainian counteroffensive that imperiled Mr. Putin’s hold on Crimea. Another involved a demand from Moscow that the West halt all military support for the Ukrainians: no more tanks, no more missiles, no more ammunition. The aim would be to split NATO; in the tabletop simulation I was permitted to observe, the detonation served that purpose.

To forestall nuclear use, in the days around Mr. Biden’s fund-raiser appearance Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken called his Russian counterpart, as did Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III and the national security adviser, Jake Sullivan. Germany’s chancellor, Olaf Scholz, was going on a planned visit to Beijing; he was prepped to brief Xi Jinping, China’s president, about the intelligence and urge him to make both public and private statements to Russia warning that there was no place in the Ukraine conflict for the use of nuclear weapons. Mr. Xi made the public statement; it is unclear what, if anything, he signaled in private.

Mr. Biden, meanwhile, sent a message to Mr. Putin that they had to set up an urgent meeting of emissaries. Mr. Putin sent Sergei Naryshkin, head of the S.V.R., the Russian foreign intelligence service that had pulled off the Solar Winds attack, an ingenious cyberattack that had struck a wide swath of U.S. government departments and corporate America. Mr. Biden chose William J. Burns, the C.I.A. director and former U.S. ambassador to Russia, who is now his go-to troubleshooter for a variety of the toughest national security problems, most recently getting a temporary cease-fire and the release of hostages held by Hamas.

Mr. Burns told me that the two men saw each other on a mid-November day in 2022. But while Mr. Burns arrived to warn what would befall Russia if it used a nuclear weapon, Mr. Naryshkin apparently thought the C.I.A. director had been sent to negotiate an armistice agreement that would end the war. He told Mr. Burns that any such negotiation had to begin with an understanding that Russia would get to keep any land that was currently under its control.

It took some time for Mr. Burns to disabuse Mr. Naryshkin of the idea that the United States was ready to trade away Ukrainian territory for peace. Finally, they turned to the topic Mr. Burns had traveled around the world to discuss: what the United States and its allies were prepared to do to Russia if Mr. Putin made good on his nuclear threats.

“I made it clear,” Mr. Burns later recalled from his seventh-floor office at the C.I.A., that “there would be clear consequences for Russia.” Just how specific Mr. Burns was about the nature of the American response was left murky by American officials. He wanted to be detailed enough to deter a Russian attack, but avoid telegraphing Mr. Biden’s exact reaction.

“Naryshkin swore that he understood and that Putin did not intend to use a nuclear weapon,” Mr. Burns said.

David E. Sanger covers the Biden administration and national security. He has been a Times journalist for more than four decades and has written several books on challenges to American national security. More about David E. Sanger

Our Coverage of the War in Ukraine

News and Analysis

A day after securing a new term in a rubber-stamp presidential election, President Vladimir Putin of Russia said he would not back down in Russia’s war against Ukraine .

With additional American aid still in doubt, Lloyd Austin, the U.S. defense secretary, called for “creative, adaptable and sustainable ways” to continue arming Ukraine  and praised European allies who were trying to bolster Kyiv’s military.

Ukraine fired a volley of exploding drones  at Moscow and other targets on the final day of Russia’s presidential vote, the local authorities said, continuing a flurry of attacks timed for the election .

Symbolism or Strategy?: Ukrainians say that defending places with little strategic value is worth the cost in casualties and weapons , because the attacking Russians pay an even higher price. American officials aren’t so sure.

Elaborate Tales: As the Ukraine war grinds on, the Kremlin has created increasingly complex fabrications online  to discredit Ukraine’s leader, Volodymyr Zelensky, and undermine the country’s support in the West.

Targeting Russia’s Oil Industry: With its army short of ammunition and troops to break the deadlock on the battlefield, Kyiv has increasingly taken the fight beyond the Ukrainian border, attacking oil infrastructure deep in Russian territory .

How We Verify Our Reporting

Our team of visual journalists analyzes satellite images, photographs , videos and radio transmissions  to independently confirm troop movements and other details.

We monitor and authenticate reports on social media, corroborating these with eyewitness accounts and interviews. Read more about our reporting efforts .

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North Korea resumes missile tests, raising tensions with its rivals after their military drills’ end

A TV screen shows a file image of North Korea's missile launch during a news program at the Seoul Railway Station in Seoul, South Korea, Monday, March 18, 2024. North Korea fired multiple short-range ballistic missiles toward its eastern waters Monday morning, its neighbors said, days after the end of the South Korean-U.S. military drills that the North views as an invasion rehearsal. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

A TV screen shows a file image of North Korea’s missile launch during a news program at the Seoul Railway Station in Seoul, South Korea, Monday, March 18, 2024. North Korea fired multiple short-range ballistic missiles toward its eastern waters Monday morning, its neighbors said, days after the end of the South Korean-U.S. military drills that the North views as an invasion rehearsal. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida speaks during a parliamentary session of House of Councilors in Tokyo, Monday, March 18, 2024. Kishida told a parliamentary session that North Korea fired “a number of” ballistic missiles into the waters between the Korean Peninsula and Japan. (Kyodo News via AP)

A TV screen shows a file image of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un during a news program at the Seoul Railway Station in Seoul, South Korea, Monday, March 18, 2024. North Korea fired multiple short-range ballistic missiles toward its eastern waters Monday morning, its neighbors said, days after the end of the South Korean-U.S. military drills that the North views as an invasion rehearsal. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, left, and South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Tae-yul pose for a photo as they meet at the Foreign Ministry in Seoul, South Korea, Monday, March 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon, Pool)

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, left, walks with South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Tae-yul at the third Summit for Democracy in Seoul, South Korea, Monday, March 18, 2024. (Evelyn Hockstein/Pool Photo via AP)

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SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea fired multiple short-range ballistic missiles toward its eastern waters Monday morning, its neighbors said, days after the end of the South Korean-U.S. military drills that the North views as an invasion rehearsal.

The launches — North Korea’s first known missile testing activities in about a month — came as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was in Seoul for a democracy summit . Outside experts earlier predicted North Korea would extend its run of missile tests and intensify its warlike rhetoric ahead of the U.S. presidential election in November to boost its leverage in future diplomacy.

Japan’s Defense Ministry said North Korea fired three missiles, two together at 7:44 a.m. and the other about 37 minutes later. Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida told a parliamentary session that the North Korean missiles landed in the waters between the Korean Peninsula and Japan, all outside of Japan’s exclusive economic zone, and that no damage or injuries have been reported.

Kishida denounced North Korea’s repeated ballistic missile tests as acts “that threaten the peace and safety of Japan, the region and the international society.” He said Japan strongly protested against North Korea over its testing activities, saying they violated U.N. Security Council resolutions that ban the North from engaging in any ballistic activities.

FILE - Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un shake hands during their meeting at the Vostochny cosmodrome outside the city of Tsiolkovsky, about 200 kilometers (125 miles) from the city of Blagoveshchensk in the far eastern Amur region, Russia, Sept. 13, 2023. Kim used a Russian luxury limousine gifted by Putin recently, Kim’s sister said Saturday, March 16, 2024, praising the car’s “special function” and the two countries' deepening bilateral ties. (Vladimir Smirnov/Sputnik Kremlin Pool Photo via AP, File)

South Korea’s military said it also detected “several” suspected short-range ballistic launches by North Korea on Monday morning. The Joint Chiefs of Staff called the launches “clear provocation” that threaten peace on the Korean Peninsula. It said South Korea will maintain readiness to repel any provocation by North Korea, based on its solid military alliance with the United States.

According to Japanese and South Korean assessments, the North Korean missiles fired from its capital region traveled a distance of 300-350 kilometers (about 185-220 miles) and reached a maximum altitude of 50 kilometers (about 30 miles).Observers say the missiles’ fight distances indicate they are weapons targeting major facilities in South Korea, such as its military headquarters in the central region.

The U.S. State Department condemned the launches, saying they pose a threat to the North’s neighbors and undermine regional security. A State Department statement said the U.S. commitment to the defense of South Korea and Japan remain “ironclad.”

The U.S. stations a total of 80,000 troops in South Korea and Japan, the backbone of its military presence in the Asia-Pacific region.

During the South Korea-U.S. military drills that ended Thursday, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un guided a series of military training exercises involving tanks , artillery guns and paratroopers and called for greater war fighting capabilities. The 11-day South Korean-U.S. drills involved a computer-simulated command post training and 48 kinds of field exercises, twice the number conducted last year.

The North didn’t perform any missile tests during its rivals’ training, however. Its missile tests are considered much bigger provocations as North Korea has been pushing hard to mount nuclear warheads on its missiles targeting the U.S. mainland and its allies. Many experts say North Korea already has nuclear-armed missiles capable of reaching all of South Korea and Japan, but it has yet to have functioning long-range missiles that can strike the U.S. mainland.

Before Monday’s launches, North Korea last carried out missile tests in mid-February by firing cruise missiles into the sea.

Animosities on the Korean Peninsula remain high in the wake of North Korea’s barrage of missile tests since 2022. Many of the tests involved nuclear-capable missiles designed to attack South Korea and the mainland U.S. The U.S. and South Korean forces have responded by expanding their training exercises and trilateral drills involving Japan.

Experts say North Korea likely believes a bigger weapons arsenal would increase its leverage in future diplomacy with the United States. They say North Korea would want to win extensive sanctions relief while maintaining its nuclear weapons.

Worries about North Korean military moves have deepened since Kim vowed in a speech in January to rewrite the constitution to eliminate the country’s long-standing goal of seeking peaceful unification of the Korean Peninsula and to cement South Korea as its “invariable principal enemy.” He said the new charter must specify North Korea would annex and subjugate the South if another war broke out.

Observers say North Korea may launch limited provocations along its tense border with South Korea. But they say the prospects for a full-scale attack by North Korea are dim as it would know its military is outmatched by the U.S. and South Korean forces.

Yamaguchi reported from Tokyo. Associated Press writer Yuri Kageyama in Tokyo contributed to this report.

Follow AP’s Asia-Pacific coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/asia-pacific

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Report: Russia’s Nuclear Weapons Are Now in Belarus

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Russia’s Nuclear Weapons Are Now in Belarus

The move sends a clear political message, but some experts downplay its military significance..

  • Jack Detsch
  • Robbie Gramer

Russia has moved tactical nuclear weapons from its own borders into neighboring Belarus, several hundred miles closer to NATO territory, Western officials confirmed to Foreign Policy , as Russian President Vladimir Putin threatens a wider military showdown with the alliance over its continued support for Ukraine.

The move, which Putin first announced in June of last year, is likely aimed at ramping up pressure on NATO’s eastern flank. It follows years of nuclear saber-rattling intended to scare the West into paring back its support for Ukraine, now in its third year of war against Russia’s invasion, though top NATO officials insist that the move doesn’t drastically change the nature of Russia’s military threats to NATO.

Arvydas Anusauskas, Lithuania’s defense minister, was the first top official within the NATO alliance to confirm the news of the deployment. He warned that the risks of Western inaction were high, citing the lackluster response in the West to Russia moving more nuclear weapons to the Kaliningrad Peninsula, which is bounded by Poland and Lithuania on either side.

“We would like to see a harder response on that,” Anusauskas said. “If [the] Russians move nuclear weapons closer to us, we need to move as well.”

The nuclear question has hung over the heads of Western leaders ever since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine. Top U.S. officials believed that Putin floated the possibility of using limited-yield tactical nuclear weapons in 2022 as he faced Ukrainian victories and significant battlefield setbacks before the conflict ground into a stalemate the following year.

Putin hasn’t taken that threat off the table, even in the conflict’s current state of relative deadlock. On Wednesday, ahead of Russia’s presidential elections this weekend, he doubled down.

“From a military-technical point of view, we are, of course, ready,” Putin told Rossiya-1 television and news agency RIA about the prospect of nuclear war with the West, when asked about threats to Russian sovereignty. Yet the Russian leader said he didn’t think that “everything is rushing head-on” toward a nuclear conflict. He also denied that he considered using tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine in 2022, saying that “there was never such a need.”

Western intelligence officials and open-source sleuths have spent months tracking the status of the Russian deployment to Belarus, which Putin himself framed as a warning to the West. The movement of the weapons to Belarus marks one of the westernmost deployment points of the Kremlin’s atomic arsenal.

The movement of its nuclear weapons has clear political signaling, but some experts downplayed the military significance of the move—arguing that the weapons don’t pose a higher or lower threat to the alliance simply by being moved several hundred miles closer to NATO territory.

“The Russians can reach any place in NATO with nuclear missiles with what they have on their own territory,” said Rose Gottemoeller, a former top U.S. arms control envoy and deputy secretary-general of NATO. “It does not change the threat environment at all. So it is purely a political message.”

Others went further, arguing that publicly responding to the movement of nuclear weapons in Belarus simply plays into Russia’s hands.

“What difference does it make, really?” Hanno Pevkur, Estonia’s defense minister, told Foreign Policy . “So this is why every discussion about ‘Jesus, we have a nuclear weapon in Belarus, look what happens.’ Come on. This is just a Russian plan to take away focus from Ukraine and to have extra topics on our agenda. But in reality, it doesn’t make any difference [to] how Russia behaves.”

Still, Putin may play up the nuclear threat against NATO in the near future, particularly as Russia struggles to reconstitute its decimated military forces in Ukraine and it sees Western military support for Ukraine starting to waver . But on the flip side, the West’s resolve against nuclear blackmail is growing.

“[Putin] wants to make sure there’s an edge of worry” in current U.S. and European debates on whether to continue supporting Ukraine, Gottemoeller said. “For Ukraine and NATO allies in Europe, it’s not that they’re immune to these threats, but they don’t have the flash-bang shock value that they had in the first days of the invasion.”

A new unclassified assessment from the U.S. intelligence community released this week concluded that Russia likely does not want to engage in direct military conflict with NATO, but it determined that the Kremlin will rely more heavily on nuclear weapons to deter the United States and the alliance as it rebuilds its land forces.

The Kremlin is believed to have an inventory of nearly 6,000 nuclear warheads, including ones with much smaller yields, known as “tactical” or battlefield nuclear weapons, and nuclear warheads with much larger, so-called “strategic” yields.

As U.S.-Russia relations steadily deteriorated in recent years—and then cratered following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022—both sides have abandoned decades-old arms control treaties.

Washington and Moscow now only have one nuclear arms control treaty left, the New START treaty, which the Kremlin unilaterally suspended last year. The treaty caps the number of deployed warheads, missiles, bombers, and strategic nuclear missile launchers that both sides can have, but does not apply to new weapons that Russia has been building in recent years. (The Pentagon estimates Russia has 2,000 nonstrategic nuclear weapons that the treaty doesn’t cover.)

NATO officials insisted during the Munich Security Conference in February that Russia had done nothing since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine two years ago to force the alliance’s nuclear-armed countries—the United States, France, and the United Kingdom—to change their posture. The United States stages tactical nuclear weapons in at least six bases in Europe.

Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko, seen by most Western officials as a Kremlin pawn, said in December that Russia had completed shipments of nuclear weapons to his country; however, until now, Western officials had not confirmed that the deployment was complete. Lukashenko had said the move was an effort to deter aggression from Poland, a NATO member on Belarus’s western border that spent an estimated 4 percent of GDP on defense in 2023. Though Belarus does not control the Russian warheads on its soil, the country has written a new military doctrine that stresses the use of tactical nuclear weapons to keep foreign attackers at bay.

Russia had already deployed Iskander missiles, which are nuclear capable, to Belarus by the end of 2022. Belarus has also become a home for about 2,500 to 4,000 members of the Russian paramilitary force known as the Wagner Group, according to Estonian intelligence estimates, many of them stationed at an old Soviet missile base about 50 miles from Minsk.

By October 2023, a senior Lithuanian diplomat and other Western officials indicated to Foreign Policy that Russia had built specific storage facilities and railway systems in Belarus to potentially house a nuclear arsenal. Russia had also begun training pilots in Belarus to use aircraft capable of deploying nuclear weapons.

Open-source analysts have focused on two particular sites in Belarus. In the town of Asipovichy, near a Russian base for Iskander missiles, officials have built a quadruple-layered security fence and garrison garages for potential launcher and warhead storage in the past year and a half, according to Hans Kristensen, the director of the nuclear information project at the Federation of American Scientists.

In the northeast corner of Belarus, in the town of Prudok, Russia appears to have constructed a bunker and a large storage garage near a railway entrance. “I think what they’re doing instead is more that they’re practicing their contingency capabilities to put them in there if they need to,” Kristensen said.

The United States, the United Kingdom, and France are in the middle of multidecade nuclear modernization efforts. Among Germans, with some officials fearing that a second Trump administration in the United States might not come to Europe’s defense against a Russian invasion, there is talk of fielding their own nuclear weapons, or at least developing a fallback plan if U.S. help doesn’t arrive.

“We need a second insurance policy,” Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said at an event at the Atlantic Council think tank in Washington in February. Sikorski stated during a briefing in Washington this week that Russia has found that “nuclear weapons are actually very hard to use,” owing to the military’s inability to fight in environments contaminated by nuclear fallout.

Even NATO—which has revamped its war plans for a possible Article 5 -level war against Russia—is beginning to think about its role in helping speed up that process.

“It will cause other NATO nations to think about whether they need to have nuclear weapons on their soil,” said Philip Breedlove, a retired four-star U.S. Air Force general who was formerly the dual-hatted NATO supreme allied commander and the head of U.S. European Command. Breedlove said he had no independent knowledge of Russia staging nuclear weapons in Belarus.

Beyond Belarus, Russia is building up its nuclear arsenal, too. The Kremlin claims that it’s put liquid-fueled intercontinental ballistic missiles on combat duty. The Russians are also fielding new nuclear-powered cruise missile submarines. And they’ve launched hypersonic cruise missiles against Ukraine, though the Ukrainians have managed to shoot down the sound barrier-breaking weapons with U.S.-made Patriot air defenses.

Other top NATO leaders said strengthening the alliance’s nuclear and conventional deterrence is the only proper response to Putin’s saber-rattling.

“Putin has a great weakness,” Sikorski said. “He attacks only when he thinks he can get away with it. He shrinks when in the face of strength, willpower, and credible deterrence.”

Jack Detsch is a Pentagon and national security reporter at Foreign Policy . Twitter:  @JackDetsch

Robbie Gramer is a diplomacy and national security reporter at Foreign Policy . Twitter:  @RobbieGramer

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North Korean leader Kim Jong Un gestures as he guides a training of the fire division, in North Korea, March 18, 2024, in ...

Hyung-Jin Kim, Associated Press Hyung-Jin Kim, Associated Press

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  • Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/north-korea-claims-progress-in-developing-a-hypersonic-missile-designed-to-strike-distant-u-s-targets

North Korea claims progress in developing a hypersonic missile designed to strike distant U.S. targets

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea successfully tested a solid-fuel engine for its new-type intermediate-range hypersonic missile, state media reported Wednesday, claiming a progress in efforts to develop a more powerful, agile missile designed to strike faraway U.S. targets in the region.

A hypersonic missile is among an array of high-tech weapons systems that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un publicly vowed to introduce in 2021 to cope with what he called deepening U.S. hostility. Outside experts say Kim wants a modernized weapons arsenal to wrest U.S. concessions like sanctions relief when diplomacy resumes.

On Tuesday, Kim guided the ground jet test of the multi-stage solid-fuel engine for the hypersonic missile at the North’s northwestern rocket launch facility, the official Korean Central News Agency reported.

It cited Kim as saying the strategic value of the new missile with an intermediate-range is as important as intercontinental ballistic missiles targeting the U.S. mainland and that “enemies know better about it.” It said that a timetable for completing the development of the new weapons system was “set through the great success in the important test.”

Intermediate-range missiles possessed or pursued by North Korea are the weapons systems primarily aimed at attacking the U.S. Pacific territory of Guam, home to U.S. military bases. Those missile can also reach Alaska, and with a range adjustment they can be used to strike closer targets like U.S. military installations in Japan’s Okinawa island, experts say.

READ MORE: North Korea says it tested a new cruise missile in the latest example of its expanding capabilities

In recent years, North Korea has been pushing to develop more weapons with built-in solid propellants, which make launches harder to detect than liquid-propellant missiles that must be fueled before liftoffs and cannot last long. The North’s pursuit of hypersonic weapons is also meant to defeat U.S. and South Korean missile defense systems , but it’s unclear the North’s hypersonic vehicles proved their desired speed and maneuverability during tests in recent years, analysts say.

In January, North Korea said it flight-tested a new solid-fuel intermediate-range ballistic missile tipped with a hypersonic, maneuverable warhead, in a likely reference to the missile mentioned in Wednesday’s KCNA dispatch. In November, North Korea said it had tested engine tests for an intermedia-range missile but didn’t say whether it’s designed to carry a hypersonic warhead.

While the North’s missile test in January was likely related to the development of its first-stage rocket, this week’s engine test appeared focused on the development of its second-stage rocket in part of the North’s efforts to increase the weapon’s flying speed, said Chang Young-keun, a missile expert at South Korea’s Research Institute for National Strategy.

Chang said the latest engine test suggests North Korea could soon test-launch the new hypersonic missile.

After short-range tests with hypersonic weapons, North Korea would want to increase their ranges with maneuverable hypersonic warheads, Lee Choon Geun, an honorary research fellow at South Korea’s Science and Technology Policy Institute, said. He said the capacities of the new missile can be assessed when it’s test-flighted.

On Monday, South Korea, the U.S. and Japan said they detected the multiple ballistic missile test-launches by North Korea in what was the country’s first missile firings in about a month. The North said Tuesday it performed a live-fire drill of what it called nuclear-capable “super-large” multiple rocket launchers designed to target South Korea’s capital, Seoul. South Korea’s military later said it views the North Korean weapons system tested as a ballistic missile.

North Korea has been engaging in a provocative run of missile tests since 2022. The U.S. and South Korea militaries have responded by expanding their bilateral exercises and trilateral drills involving Japan. Observers say North Korea will likely intensify its run of missile tests ahead of the U.S. presidential election in November.

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North Korea’s Cruise Missiles vs. U.S. Tomahawk: Game-Changer in the Region? – Part 2

North korea has launched cruise missiles five times this year alone.

I n a deliberate move to escalate tensions and spark military crises on the Korean Peninsula, North Korea has been drawing international attention by showcasing its strategic use of cruise missiles for ground-to-ground, ground-to-air, and ground-to-sea operations. This marks a departure from its ballistic and hypersonic missile tests, with an increased frequency of cruise missile tests—activities not currently covered by international sanctions.

Notably, North Korea’s strategy aims to broaden its missile arsenal. This includes not just ballistic missiles, recognized as weapons of mass destruction (WMD), but also precision-strike capable cruise missiles. It is seen as an attempt to overload South Korean and U.S. missile defenses.

In a provocative act just two days before the “Day of Shining Star,” commemorating Kim Jong Il’s birthday on February 16, North Korea launched several cruise missiles into the East Sea on February 14. This event marked the country’s fifth cruise missile test within the year.

Most concerning is the testing of the “Bulhwalsal-3-31” on January 28, a submarine-launched cruise missile (SLCM). This capability not only allows for concealed launch origins but also signals North Korea’s potential to arm these missiles with nuclear warheads. The introduction of such submarine-based nuclear strike capabilities represents a significant step in diversifying North Korea’s nuclear delivery methods. This development poses a considerable threat to South Korea and the U.S. military authorities, highlighting the urgent need for heightened vigilance and strengthened defense measures.

Military authorities in South Korea and the U.S. are closely monitoring North Korea’s advancements in cruise missile technology, recognizing the strategic advantages these missiles hold. Unlike ballistic missiles, which exit the Earth’s atmosphere before following a ballistic trajectory back down, propelled by inertia, cruise missiles remain within the atmosphere throughout their flight. This fundamental difference allows cruise missiles to use jet engines that intake air and burn fuel without needing separate oxidizers.

Read more: North Korea Conducts Super-Large MRL Firing Drill, Kim Jong Un Supervises

Cruise missiles are designed to fly at low altitudes, often below the radar detection capabilities of both ground-based and maritime radar systems, which are constrained by the Earth’s curvature. The straight-line propagation of radar waves further complicates detection, as there are blind spots for objects flying low to the ground or sea surface. This “sea-skimming” technique, where missiles maintain a low altitude near the sea’s surface, means they often go undetected until it’s too late.

The capability of North Korea’s cruise missiles is increasingly seen as comparable to the U.S. Tomahawk, a missile known for signaling the commencement of U.S. military operations. The Tomahawk flies at speeds around 800 km/h. In contrast, according to available data, North Korea’s “Hwasal-1” and “Hwasal-2” cruise missiles boast speeds exceeding 700 km/h. This development underscores the growing sophistication of North Korea’s missile program and the urgent need for effective countermeasures.

North Korea’s advancements in long-range strategic cruise missiles, evidenced by successful test launches, have demonstrated capabilities that exceed expectations, particularly in low-altitude penetration and terrain-hugging flight. These developments have prompted military authorities to devise countermeasures urgently. In response to the intrusion of a North Korean small unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) in late December 2022, Kim Seung Kyum, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, ordered the swift creation of strategies to counter North Korea’s long-range cruise missiles. The North Korean arsenal includes the “Hwasal-1” missile, with a maximum range of 1,500 km; the “Hwasal-2,” capable of reaching 2,000 km; the latest “Bulhwasal-3-31” submarine-launched strategic cruise missile (SLCM); and the new “Padasuri-6” ground-to-ship cruise missile.

The release of videos by North Korea at the end of March 2023, showcasing the long-range cruise missiles’ ability to fly at extremely low altitudes and adjust elevation over mountain ridges or along coastlines, caught military authorities off guard. The capability for “terrain-following flight”—maintaining extremely low altitudes near the ground or coastline—poses a significant challenge for detection by ground-based radar systems, highlighting the strategic threat these missiles represent.

To read Part 1…

To read Part 3…

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The Korean Central News Agency reported that North Korea conducted a firing drill of the strategic cruise missile “Hwasal-2” in the West Sea of Korea on January 30. Korean Central News Agency · Yonhap News

cruise missile nuclear warhead

Did 'Russian Media' Post This Video of Russian Nuclear Attack on US?

The three films plagiarized to make this video were not produced in russia. one of them starred nicolas cage., alex kasprak, published march 18, 2024.

Fake

About this rating

On March 16, 2024, an account on X (formerly Twitter) with a history of spreading pro-Russian misinformation posted a video with the caption, "Russian media published: This is what a Russian nuclear attack on the United States would look like." 

cruise missile nuclear warhead

The video had been posted in several places, including on YouTube , with that same caption as a title:

"Russian media" did not "publish" or create this viral film. It is, instead, a cobbled-together mishmash of clips from three U.S. movies: " Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol " (2014), " Battlestar Galactica: The Plan " (2009), and " Knowing " (2009):

cruise missile nuclear warhead

In the video, the clips from 0:00 to 0:16 stem from an attempted nuclear strike from an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) on San Francisco depicted in the fourth "Mission Impossible film," "Ghost Protocol." In the film, Tom Cruise's Ethan Hunt disables the weapon before it detonates, leaving it to bounce almost harmlessly off a San Francisco skyscraper. 

The footage from 0:17 to 0:33 is from the straight-to-DVD prequel "Battlestar Galactica: The Plan." Despite depicting an artificially intelligent race of machines' attempted nuclear annihilation of a planet from space, the clips generally show the process by which actual human-built ICBMs with multiple nuclear warheads re-enter Earth's atmosphere and disperse warheads across a wide area. 

The remaining footage showing the wholesale destruction of New York City, from 00:34 to the end, comes from the film "Knowing." The story follows Nicolas Cage as he realizes a document found in a student's time capsule predicts a calamitous, world-ending event. The destruction in this film, however, stems from a solar flare. The film does not accurately capture the effects of either a nuclear strike or a solar flare . 

As a whole, though fictional, the suspect footage depicts the deployment of a form of nuclear weapon possessed by both Russia and the United States : submarine-launched ICBMs carrying multiple separate nuclear warheads. In the U.S., this capability is fulfilled by a rocket system known as the Trident II. In Russia, it is fulfilled by a weapon known as the RSM-56 Bulava.

These rockets do not make use of a launch tower, and are instead released deep underwater from submarines. When they breach the surface, a multi-stage rocket launch capable of sending a warhead briefly into space is triggered. The video below shows the U.S. testing a Trident II launch from the USS Maryland in August 2016:

The Russians performed a similar test of a Bulava rocket launch in May 2018. While both missiles can carry non-nuclear warheads, these systems are presently deployed and capable of sending nuclear-warhead-loaded ICBMs from submarines. In some U.S. configurations, the Trident II missiles contain multiple warheads that are each individually capable of navigating to different targets. 

These individual warheads are released after an ICBM reaches the zenith of its flight, and are guided by what is known as a multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle (MIRV). This portion of the process was stolen from "Battlestar Galactica" in the viral video. 

cruise missile nuclear warhead

(1983 Peacemaker rocket test . Each line shows the path of an individual warhead released from the same rocket) 

While such a system has never been tested in its totality, re-entry systems that would theoretically deliver multiple nuclear warheads from an ICBM have been tested. In 1983 , for example, the United States tested the capability of the land-based Minuteman II rocket to deliver multiple warheads via a MIRV. Below shows the entry of multiple blank warheads launched from a single rocket:

According to a 2020 report by the Federation of American Scientists, U.S. submarines including the USS Tennessee are presently carrying Trident II missiles armed with multiple W76-2 nuclear warheads. 

These are thermonuclear bombs with comparatively low yields, by modern standards. Each individual W76-2 has a yield of about 5-7 kilotons of TNT — less than half the yield of the atomic bombs America dropped on Japan at the end of World War II. The Trident II on these submarines may also carry the larger W88 bomb, with a yield of 475 kt of TNT.

Both the United States and Russia (or the Soviet Union) have, to some degree, released dramatizations of the launch of an all-out nuclear strike on the other. In the late 1970s, the U.S. helped fund a video, produced with defense contractor RAND,  called  " First Strike (1979), that dramatized a Soviet nuclear missile strike and the United States' response.

More recently, in March 2018 , Russian President Vladimir Putin shared an animation depicting the alleged capabilities of Russia's own MIRV. That video appeared to show several nuclear bombs en route to locations in Florida. 

Because, however, the present video is a hodgepodge of Hollywood-produced action films from well over a decade ago, and not a recent creation of Russian media, we rate the claim as "Fake." 

🇷🇺🇺🇸 Russian Media: "This Is What a Russian Nuclear Attack on the United States Would Look like.'. www.youtube.com, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyJ5HiGAZQs. Accessed 18 Mar. 2024.

Knowing. Directed by Alex Proyas, Summit Entertainment, Escape Artists, Mystery Clock Cinema, 2009.

"Martin Marietta LGM-118A Peacekeeper." National Museum of the United States Air Force™, https://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/Visit/Museum-Exhibits/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/197974/martin-marietta-lgm-118a-peacekeeper/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nationalmuseum.af.mil%2FVisit%2FMuseum-Exhibits%2FFact-Sheets%2FDisplay%2FArticle%2F197974%2Fmartin-marietta-lgm-118a-peacekeeper%2F. Accessed 18 Mar. 2024.

Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol. Directed by Brad Bird, Paramount Pictures, Skydance Media, TC Productions, 2011.

Putin Shows Video of Nuclear Attack on US. www.youtube.com, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRHUoDb-dfI. Accessed 18 Mar. 2024.

"Russian Media Published: This Is What a Russian Nuclear Attack on the United States Would Look Like." X (Formerly Twitter), https://twitter.com/Sprinterfactory/status/1768997095808069715. Accessed 18 Mar. 2024.

Sputnik. "Timeline of Bulava Missile Launches." Sputnik International, https://sputnikglobe.com/20111228/Timeline-of-Bulava-missile-launches-170536782.html.

The Plan. Directed by Edward James Olmos, David Eick Productions, R&D TV, 2009.

"US Deploys New Low-Yield Nuclear Submarine Warhead." Federation of American Scientists, https://fas.tghp.co.uk/publication/w76-2deployed/. Accessed 18 Mar. 2024.  

By Alex Kasprak

Alex Kasprak is an investigative journalist and science writer reporting on scientific misinformation, online fraud, and financial crime.

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IMAGES

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  3. W80 Nuclear Cruise Missile Warhead

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COMMENTS

  1. W80 (nuclear warhead)

    W80 Mod 4 warhead for the LRSO program. The W80 is a low to intermediate yield two-stage thermonuclear warhead deployed by the U.S. enduring stockpile with a variable yield ("dial-a-yield") of 5 or 150 kilotonnes of TNT (21 or 628 TJ). It was designed for deployment on cruise missiles and is the warhead used in all nuclear-armed ALCM and ACM ...

  2. Tomahawk (missile)

    Torpedo tubes. Surface ships. Submarines. TELs. The Tomahawk ( / ˈtɒməhɔːk /) Land Attack Missile ( TLAM) is a long-range, all-weather, jet-powered, subsonic cruise missile that is primarily used by the United States Navy and Royal Navy in ship and submarine-based land-attack operations. Developed at the Applied Physics Laboratory of Johns ...

  3. U.S. Navy Funds New Submarine-Launched Nuclear Cruise Missile Biden

    The Navy's R&D budget release reveals a new sea-launched cruise missile with a nuclear warhead in the pipeline, but the new weapon might cause more problems than it solves.

  4. W80-1 Warhead Selected For New Nuclear Cruise Missile

    The U.S. Nuclear Weapons Council has selected the W80-1 thermonuclear warhead for the Air Force's new nuclear cruise missile (Long-Range Standoff, LRSO) scheduled for deployment in 2027. The W80-1 warhead is currently used on the Air Launched Cruise Missile (ALCM), but will be modified during a life-extension program and de-deployed with a new name: W80-4. […]

  5. The W80 Warhead

    The W80 is the warhead used on the three cruise missiles currently in the U.S. arsenal - the Mod 0 with the BGM-109 Tomahawk SLCM (sea launched cruise missile), the Mod 1 with the AGM-86B ALCM (air launched cruise missile) and the AGM-129 ACM (advanced cruise missile, an air launched weapon incorporating stealth technology).

  6. Nuclear weapons delivery

    Cruise missiles can carry a nuclear warhead. They have a shorter range and smaller payloads than ballistic missiles, so their warheads are smaller and less powerful. The AGM-86 ALCM is the US Air Force's current nuclear-armed air-launched cruise missile. The ALCM is only carried on the B-52 Stratofortress which can carry 20 missiles. Thus the ...

  7. Nuclear Sea-Launched Cruise Missile Has 'Zero Value,' Latest Nuclear

    The idea of a sea-launched nuclear cruise missile was introduced in the 2018 NPR to provide a low-yield warhead option as a response to the use of an adversary's tactical nuclear weapon. In ...

  8. Raytheon wins $2B contract for new nuclear cruise missile

    Raytheon wins $2B contract for new nuclear cruise missile. ... December 2020 that the Pentagon would save $12.5 billion from FY21 to FY30 by canceling the LRSO program and the W80-4 warhead it ...

  9. Nuclear Weapons: Action Needed to Address the W80-4 Warhead Program's

    The National Nuclear Security Administration is working to modernize and extend the life of the W80, a type of nuclear warhead carried on air-launched cruise missiles. NNSA estimated that this program will cost $11.2 billion and last until 2031. According to the NNSA, it will deliver the first W80-4 nuclear warhead by September 2025.

  10. The US Navy's new nuclear cruise missile starts getting real next year

    Strategically, adding the cruise missile would allow the nuclear-armed Navy to go from 12 ships to 20 or 30, which would be "huge" in changing the strategic calculus for China and Russia, the ...

  11. Kh-101 / Kh-102

    The Kh-101 / Kh-102 is a line of conventional and nuclear capable air-launched cruise missiles (ALCM) developed and deployed by Russia. A stealthy missile, the Kh-101/-102 is designed to defeat air defense systems by flying at low, terrain-hugging altitudes to avoid radar systems. The Kh-101 carries a conventional warhead, while the Kh-102 is ...

  12. Fact Sheet: Nuclear Sea-Launched Cruise Missiles

    Updated January 2023 The Biden administration has decided against developing a new nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missile (SLCM-N) and its associated warhead. In FY23 budget documents, the Navy stated that "the program was cost prohibitive and the acquisition schedule would have delivered capability late to need." Despite the Navy's opposition and concerns the SLCM would negatively […]

  13. Report to Congress on Sea-launched Nuclear Cruise Missile

    From the report. In its FY2023 budget request, the Navy eliminated funding for research and development into a new nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missile (SLCM-N). The Navy indicated that the ...

  14. The Nuclear Sea-Launched Cruise Missile: Worth the Investment for

    The SLCM-N is a theater-range cruise missile armed with a nuclear warhead that can be launched from surface ships or submarines. It would provide a regionally present, sea-based, survivable option to fill a gap in U.S. nuclear deterrence capabilities and deter Russia and China's regional nuclear threats. The paper explains the benefits, challenges, and costs of developing the SLCM-N.

  15. PDF Defense Intelligence Ballistic Missile Analysis Committee

    instrument of coercion. Missiles also have the advantage of fewer maintenance, training, and logistic requirements than manned aircraft. Even limited use of these weapons could have devastating consequences if armed with chemical, biological, or nuclear warheads. The ballistic and cruise missile threat continues to increase with the advancement ...

  16. A new nuclear-armed, sea-launched cruise missile: Just say no

    Those who oppose the proposed new nuclear-armed, sea-launched cruise missile often argue that it is redundant and costly and will limit the US Navy's conventional war-fighting capability. Their arguments are cogent, but the situation is even worse: Deployment of such a weapon would seriously deteriorate, not improve, US national security and impede the defense of allies.

  17. Cruise missile

    A BGM-109 Tomahawk flying in November 2002. A cruise missile is a guided missile used against terrestrial or naval targets, that remains in the atmosphere and flies the major portion of its flight path at an approximately constant speed. Cruise missiles are designed to deliver a large warhead over long distances with high precision. Modern cruise missiles are capable of traveling at high ...

  18. Nuclear-Armed Sea-Launched Cruise Missile (SLCM-N)

    nuclear warheads, possibly diverting time and training resources to maintain nuclear safety and surety standards. The SLCM-N would also replace conventional missiles, thus limiting the numbers of conventional weapons available for use in regional conflicts. Since the Navy has employed conventional cruise missiles in the past

  19. Kh-55 (AS-15)

    The Kh-55 (NATO: AS-15 "Kent) is an air-launched cruise missile developed by the Soviet Union starting in 1971. Originally designed as a strategic system capable of delivering a nuclear warhead 2,500 km, the missile has given rise to several variants. These include the Kh-55SM, an extended range version; the Kh-555, a conventional version ...

  20. US tests hypersonic missile in Pacific as it aims to keep up with ...

    China has been testing hypersonic glide vehicles that can carry both nuclear and conventional warheads since 2014, according to the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance, a non-partisan lobbying group.

  21. North Korea says it tested two nuclear-capable cruise missiles

    13 Oct 2022. North Korea has test-fired a pair of long-range strategic cruise missiles, with leader Kim Jong Un lauding another successful display of the country's tactical nuclear strike ...

  22. North Korea says it practiced firing nuclear-capable cruise missiles

    Cruise missiles and short-range ballistic missiles that can be armed with either conventional or nuclear warheads are particularly destabilising in the event of conflict as it can be unclear which ...

  23. Biden's Armageddon Moment: When Nuclear Detonation Seemed Possible in

    For the "first time since the Cuban Missile Crisis," he told the group, as they gathered amid Mr. Murdoch's art collection, "we have a direct threat of the use of a nuclear weapon if in ...

  24. North Korea resume missile test days after South Korea, US end military

    Before Monday's launches, North Korea last carried out missile tests in mid-February by firing cruise missiles into the sea. Animosities on the Korean Peninsula remain high in the wake of North Korea's barrage of missile tests since 2022. Many of the tests involved nuclear-capable missiles designed to attack South Korea and the mainland U.S.

  25. Russia's Nuclear Weapons Are Now in Belarus

    The Kremlin is believed to have an inventory of nearly 6,000 nuclear warheads, ... The Russians are also fielding new nuclear-powered cruise missile submarines.

  26. 2007 United States Air Force nuclear weapons incident

    On 29 August 2007, six AGM-129 ACM cruise missiles, each loaded with a W80-1 variable yield nuclear warhead, were mistakenly loaded onto a United States Air Force (USAF) B-52H heavy bomber at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota and transported to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana.The nuclear warheads in the missiles were supposed to have been removed before the missiles were taken from ...

  27. North Korea claims progress in developing a hypersonic missile ...

    In November, North Korea said it had tested engine tests for an intermedia-range missile but didn't say whether it's designed to carry a hypersonic warhead. While the North's missile test in ...

  28. EXCLUSIVE: F-35A officially certified to carry nuclear bomb

    The program is estimated to cost $9.6 billion in FY22 dollars over its lifespan, although much of that cost has already been spent, according to an annual government accounting of nuclear warheads .

  29. North Korea's Cruise Missiles vs. U.S. Tomahawk: Game-Changer ...

    North Korea has launched cruise missiles five times this year alone In a deliberate move to escalate tensions and spark military crises on the Korean Peninsula, North Korea has been drawing ...

  30. Did 'Russian Media' Post This Video of Russian Nuclear Attack on US?

    According to a 2020 report by the Federation of American Scientists, U.S. submarines including the USS Tennessee are presently carrying Trident II missiles armed with multiple W76-2 nuclear warheads.