The Need for Nuclear Alerts
Mel Deaile and Al Mauroni
May 6, 2015 · in Commentary
The U.S. general who commanded America’s nuclear forces and a few
other notable American national security leaders have forged an alliance
of sorts with a number of European, Russian, and Asian military
officers and national security experts over a most explosive issue.
The
Global Zero Commission on Nuclear Risk Reduction, chaired by retired
Gen. James Cartwright, is calling for the end of U.S. and Russian
nuclear “hair-trigger” attack readiness as well as a series of
agreements among the “nuclear club” that would end alert status for
nuclear forces. Their report concludes that nuclear forces on alert
make a nuclear exchange — accidental or deliberate — more likely because
of escalating tensions between the United States and Russia. The effort
to reduce the readiness level of nuclear forces is, in reality, a
stepping stone for the Global Zero movement to continue its push for
total nuclear disarmament. This effort, led by Gen. Cartwright,
unfortunately misses the strategic importance of maintaining an alerted
nuclear force and uses hyperbole and misinformation to advance a flawed
argument.
The report makes the amazing statement that basic deterrence and
operational cohesion can be preserved even as these radical “risk
reduction” measures are implemented.
The report offers an expansive view of what “de-alerting” entails,
which includes taking warheads out of the land-based and sea-based
ballistic missiles, locking down the ballistic missiles so they can’t be
launched within 72 hours, taking targeting data off-line, restricting
ballistic submarine patrols, removing all non-strategic nuclear weapons
from Europe, pulling back on theater missile defense capabilities, and
eventually eliminating all land-based ballistic missiles. The report
claims that these steps would increase strategic stability and reduce
the chance of a terrorist group obtaining a nuclear warhead. Sure,
verifying that Russia, China, and the United States are all complying
with these proposed steps would be impossible, since no nation will let
inspectors go into launch centers or ballistic submarines to see if
these measures have in fact been taken. But these are simply minor
details to be overcome through other confidence-building measures. What
this report really demonstrates is Global Zero’s deliberate distortion
of general deterrence theory. The report does nothing to address the
rationale as to why we keep nuclear forces on alert.
Alerted nuclear forces are
actually a stabilizing force in international relations because they
force diplomats and national leaders to carefully consider their next
escalatory step. There has to be a credible belief that a nation
cannot avoid a violent response if it attacks the United States
(deterrence by punishment), or that its goals will not be met even if it
attacks the United States (deterrence by denial). If the U.S. nuclear
posture is to deter a nuclear or WMD attack by a peer nation-state,
there is no better asset position for that mission than the
intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) on alert.
There are two necessary conditions for nuclear deterrence. First, the
weapons must raise the cost of an adversary contemplating an attack on
the United States. With 450 launch silos serviced by 45 launch control
centers, an adversary must have and be able to launch an arsenal of over
500 weapons to wipe out the ICBM force. An adversarial nuclear state
that cannot take out the entire ICBM infrastructure has to consider that
a retaliatory strike could be inbound within 30 minutes of an attack.
This secured strike capability is the basis of assured destruction and
deterrence.
Second, the nuclear assets must be positioned and postured to affect
the decision calculus of the adversary. If the ICBMs are taken off-line
and the warheads for submarine ballistic missiles are not mated, an
adversary who didn’t de-alert its forces could easily take out America’s
three strategic bomber bases and two submarine bases, thus putting the
United States in jeopardy. Without this alerted force, the entire U.S.
nuclear infrastructure could be taken out with a force of a few nuclear
weapons. Alerted weapons let the adversary know that any preemptive
strategic attack against the United States will not work because it will
be impossible to take out the entire nuclear force. The inability to
preemptively strike another nation requires alerted, responsive forces,
dispersal of forces, and positioning forces so that they cannot be
located at any time.
Advocates for taking America’s ICBMs off alert fail to put the
concept of nuclear alert in perspective. Alert became a feature of
nuclear operations since the advent of the ICBM. In fact,
Strategic Air Command assumed its first alert tour on 1 October 1957,
three days before the Russians launched Sputnik. The missile age
reduced the time for leaders to make a nuclear strike decision from days
to hours to minutes. These early alerted forces were nuclear-armed
strategic bombers capable of reaching their targets within a matter of
hours. The main purpose of the alert force, at that time, was to make
sure the United States could get its forces airborne to preserve its
secured second strike in case of a preemptive attack. While bombers
served as the primary alert force in the early years of the Cold War,
the ICBM force slowly grew in capability until 1964 when the number of
missiles on alert outnumbered the number of bombers. In 1991, the
bombers were removed from an alert posture by order of President George
H. W. Bush. Since that time, ICBMs on alert served as the primary
deterrent force in the U.S. arsenal.
The commission’s report
suggests that sole reliance on the U.S. ballistic missile submarine
fleet to provide what we call “assured second strike” will maintain U.S.
deterrence capability against a first strike scenario. It notes
that nuclear bombers could be armed within 48 hours in times of crisis,
but might not survive a first strike. While the submarine fleet is
survivable due to its stealth, it is not as responsive to national
crises as land-based ballistic missiles or bombers, and there would be
fewer delivery systems for an enemy to monitor. Also, this
recommendation puts all of the risk into one option. If an adversary
develops a technology to detect ballistic missile submarines at sea or
dedicates more reconnaissance assets to watch the few missile boats move
from home base to sea, then our one option to deter a strategic nuclear
exchange is in peril. Furthermore, the U.S. triad works because the
various legs serve as a hedge in case of a technical or mechanical
problem in the other legs. No president or Congress is going to accept
that calculus.
While nuclear-alerted missiles provide strategic stability, the
argument against them continues to rest on deliberate falsehoods. The
first involves the false notion of a “hair-trigger.” The second is that a
high-alert status opens the door to a nuclear accident or incident. And
the third is that high-alert makes it far more likely that a
misinterpretation between world leaders or military forces could lead to
a nuclear exchange. All three arguments are full of holes. There is no
“hair-trigger” alert. The U.S. military has maintained an unblemished
safety record for 25 years.* And constant communications between the
United States and Russia dramatically reduce the possibility of such
misinterpretations.
What Hair-Trigger?
One of the arguments presented against alert is that these missiles are on a “hair-trigger”
— a term used seven times in the Global Zero report. This gives the
impression that missiles stand at the ready and all a launch officer has
to do is press some red button and nuclear Armageddon occurs. As Gen.
Cartwright understands better than almost anyone, this is utterly
ridiculous. First, the president is the only person authorized to order
the release of a nuclear weapon. The suggestion that the president has
less than a few minutes to make a decision for a full-out strategic
response based on a tenuous launch warning is a straw man. There is no
demand for the president to make a decision within minutes — if there is
any doubt, the decision could be to wait until there is clear evidence
prior to any retaliation. Secondly, no one individual can launch a
nuclear missile. As with all things in nuclear operations, two people
must give consent (aside from, of course, the president) before an
action can occur. No one person has knowledge of all nuclear codes;
therefore, an insider threat is mitigated. Furthermore, crews are
directed by relatively short encrypted messages. While the notion of
hacking into the nuclear command and control system would make for a
great Hollywood movie, the truth is that all messages go through
sophisticated levels of encryption so it would be impossible to
duplicate an actual message. While the ICBM force has had some bad press
recently, none of the infractions ever compromised the integrity of the
launch codes or the nuclear command structure.
The Global Zero report states
that the risk of the outbreak of nuclear conflict has not decreased
proportionally with the significant reductions of nuclear weapons since
the height of the Cold War. They insist that a “hair-trigger” alert
could result in a nuclear exchange during this period of high acrimony
on the international stage. By doing so, they ignore geopolitical
context. While tensions between the United States and Russia are
undoubtedly higher than we’d like, we are not facing anything
approaching the massive competition for global dominance that was the
Cold War and the tensions that came along with it. This argument and the
others advanced by Global Zero commission reveal their effort as just
another excuse for taking nuclear weapon systems offline.
The Accident Red Herring
Another Global Zero argument
for eliminating the ICBMs and returning non-strategic nuclear weapons to
the United States is that it would reduce nuclear incidents or
accidents. (An accident would be an unexpected error due to a
failure of procedures such as an unauthorized launch or the loss of a
nuclear weapon. An incident would be an intentional hostile event
involving a nuclear weapon, facility, or component.) This is a red
herring.
There have been 32 known “broken arrows” (accidents involving nuclear weapons) in the history of nuclear operations.
The majority of these accidents involved aircraft carrying nuclear
weapons, and a majority of those occurred in the 1960s when Strategic
Air Command was flying airborne alert. A significant accident happened
in 1980 when a dropped wrench socket hit a fuel line that eventually
caused a liquid-fueled rocket to explode and jettison the nuclear
warhead some 600 feet downrange. Today’s nuclear weapons are much more
safe and secure than during the Cold War. The U.S. nuclear arsenal has
no liquid-fueled rockets (they are all solid fuel) and no bombers flying
on alert loaded with nuclear bombs.
Misinterpreting Misinterpretations
Finally, those who would de-alert the nuclear force claim that the slightest misinterpretation could lead to a nuclear exchange.
History refutes this claim as well. During the Cold War, bomber and
reconnaissance aircraft routinely penetrated the airspace of both sides.
This was a commonly-accepted practice to test resolve, prod air
defenses, and to signal displeasure with current policy or practices.
Even today, Russian bombers enter U.S. and European airspace and U.S.
reconnaissance planes loiter on the boundaries of Russia. The United
States sends its B-2 Spirit bombers to Europe and Southeast Asia to
demonstrate political resolve. It did not lead to nuclear war in the
past and it will not in the future, because political and military
leaders recognize this for what it is — strategic messaging, not acts of
war.
During the early days of George W. Bush’s administration, a Chinese
fighter aircraft ran into a U.S. reconnaissance aircraft forcing it to
land on Hainan Island. While this was an international incident between
two nuclear-weapon states, it did not lead to nuclear war or even a
change in the nuclear posture of both countries. Additionally, previous
misinterpretations of launches did not lead to a nuclear exchange
because both sides understand the importance of strategic context. Some
like to claim a false target on a radar screen, a fly landing on the
scope, or some other fanciful scenario might happen that could cause an
unauthorized nuclear first strike. The Dr. Strangelove scenario of a
Gen. Jack Ripper launching the nuclear fleet on an attack to preserve
the United States’ “purity of essence” makes for great entertainment but
is hardly based on fact. As noted above, the president is the only
person who can authorize a U.S. nuclear release and constant
communications between the United States and Russia (through the White
House “
hot line,” the
Nuclear Risk Reduction Center, the State Department, and the United Nations) work to prevent such scenarios.
While the Cold War is over and tensions between the two sides have
recently increased, there is no current strategic context under which
either side would launch a bolt out of the blue. So does this mean
nuclear weapons should be pulled off alert? Absolutely not. No one can
forecast the future security environment of Russia and China. We are in a
multipolar world in which nuclear weapon states other than Russia also
pose an existential threat. It is because our nuclear forces are on
alert that the United States remains free from the threat of nuclear or
WMD attack. If there are people who cannot get out of the Cold War
mentality of “Dr. Strangelove,” it is the Global Zero community and not
the Air Force.
*The flight of the B-52 bomber from Minot Air Force Base to Barksdale
Air Force Base in 2007 while carrying six nuclear cruise missiles was
an unauthorized movement. However, the nuclear weapons were not armed
and never left the custody of the U.S. Air Force. As a result, this is
not considered a nuclear accident, as opposed to the 1966 Palomares
incident or 1968 Greenland crash (both of which involved B-52 bombers).
Dr. Mel Deaile and Al Mauroni work at the U.S. Air Force Center for Unconventional Weapons Studies. The
opinions, conclusions, and recommendations expressed or implied within
are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the
Air University, U.S. Air Force, or Department of Defense.
