Did Trump and Putin Resume the Cold War?

By James Drew

In 140 characters, President-elect Donald Trump has registered U.S. interest in re-entering a Cold War-style nuclear buildup to counterbalance Russia, tweeting that the U.S. must “greatly strengthen and expand” its strategic arsenal.

The tweet to make America’s nuclear stockpile great again came just hours after Russian President Vladimir Putin called for a strengthening of Moscow’s strategic forces to include weapons that can “reliably penetrate any existing and prospective missile defense systems,” a likely reference to the U.S.’s expanding missile shield.

“The U.S. must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes,” @realDonaldTrump tweeted on Dec. 22, hours after Putin’s speech.

Putin reportedly praised the Russian military’s performance in Syria and called for a strategic buildup, adding that Russia is stronger militarily than “any potential aggressor.” Trump highlighted Russia’s recent nuclear renewal during his election run, saying Moscow’s weapons are new while America’s are “old, tired and way behind.”

Trump’s and Putin’s statements come when Washington and Moscow are supposed to be reducing their nuclear stockpiles in line with the New Start treaty signed in April 2010. By February 2018, both sides must possess no more than 1,550 warheads carried by 700 air, sea and land-based launch vehicles.

The State Department reported on Oct. 1 that Russia has gone above those caps, with 1,796 deployed nuclear warheads carried by 508 strategic bombers, ballistic missiles and submarines. Meanwhile, the U.S. arsenal has dropped to 1,367 warheads on 681 delivery platforms, the lowest level since the 1950s and down 24% since New Start counting began in 2011. The warhead disparity now numbers 429, but the U.S. Strategic Command says it expects the number to rise in the next count as various weapons return from maintenance.

Trump’s statement is reminiscent of former President Ronald Reagan’s policy of “arm to disarm,” by which America’s nuclear might would be so technologically and numerically overwhelming that the then-Soviet Union could not possibly keep up and would go bankrupt. Reagan presided over the largest nuclear modernizations of the Cold War, and many of those weapons remain the bedrock of the U.S. deterrent. Many within the Pentagon claim Washington has been on “nuclear procurement holiday” since the breakup of the Soviet Union. Meanwhile, Russia and China have been expanding and modernizing their assets. President Barack Obama has been no slouch when it comes to nuclear modernization, launching programs to replace the U.S.’s submarines, bombers, ballistic and cruise missiles and update the B61 bomb, but delivery won’t start until the early 2020s.

The U.S.’s sole intercontinental ballistic missile, the Boeing Minuteman III, entered service in 1970. The youngest Boeing B-52 bomber is 54 years old. The bomber’s primary nuclear-tipped cruise missile, the Boeing AGM-86, was developed in the 1970s and entered production in 1982. The youngest of America’s 14 Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines reaches the end of its 42-year service life in 2027. The Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit’s primary nuclear armament, the free-fall B61 thermonuclear bomb, was designed in the 1960s.

The new Ohio-class replacement submarine, the Columbia-class SSBN-X, won’t enter service until 2031. The Northrop B-21 Raider bomber entered development in February and won’t be ready for operational service until the mid-2020s. The Air Force only recently launched competitions to develop the next generation of intercontinental ballistic and cruise missiles for operational service by the late 2020s.

The current U.S. bomber inventory counts 62 non-nuclear Boeing B-1Bs, 76 B-52Hs and 20 B-2s. Each Ohio-class vessel carries up to 24 Trident II D5 missiles. The Minuteman III inventory has been reduced to 400 active silos across three air force bases and 50 empty backup silos, with test assets at Vandenberg AFB in California. The U.S.’s primary means of homeland defense against a limited salvo of Russian, Chinese or North Korean nuclear-armed missiles is 44 Boeing Ground-Based Interceptors, each armed with one exoatmospheric kill vehicle. They are emplaced in silos at Vandenberg and Fort Greely, Alaska.

Hans Kristensen and Robert Norris of the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) estimate that Russia has 307 nuclear-tipped, global-range ballistic missiles in silos and on mobile launchers, the newest being the four-warhead RS-24 Yars deployed in 2010 (mobile) and 2014 (silo). The latest RS-26 Yars-M was due to enter operational service this year and the 10-warhead RS-28 Sarmat is in development for fielding around 2020. Moscow’s newest submarine-launched ballistic missile, the six-warhead RSM-56 Bulava, entered service in 2014. The new ultra-long-range, air-launched Kh-102 nuclear cruise missile recently entered service. Russia’s conventional derivative, the Kh-101, made its combat debut in Syria in 2015, launching from the Tupolev Tu-160 Blackjack bomber. In November, Russia news outlets said the modernized Tupolev Tu-95MS Bear had fired the Kh-101 against targets in Syria.

Russia retains 70-80 strategic bombers. Adam Lowther, director of the Air Force’s School of Advanced Nuclear Deterrence Studies, said at the Heritage Foundation on Dec. 8 that those bombers and cruise missiles can strike the continental U.S. without leaving Russian airspace. “In terms of their strategic capabilities, they are modernizing all three legs of their triad,” Lowther says. “Look at the Chinese, they’ve done similarly.”

Thomas Karako, director of the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Missile Defense Project, said at the same event that the incoming Trump administration needs to completely review Washington’s standing nuclear and missile defense policies and challenge established norms. He says Trump must revisit the “three ‘no’s” that have guided Obama’s nuclear weapons policy: no new weapons, no new missions, and no new capabilities. This includes figuring out how to replace the capability of the nuclear B61-11 Earth-penetrator and decide if carrier-based Lockheed Martin F-35Cs should be armed with nuclear weapons, similar to the Air Force’s dual-capable F-35A.

“We don’t know where Russia is going to be in 2018 with the New Start deadline for compliance,” he says. “We ought to be hedging in case. They are not where they need to be.”

Karako called for more spending on missile defense and new research and development initiatives. “We need to stay the course with Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD) improvements and there’s a need for an East Coast GMD site,” he says.

The U.S.’s newest nuclear weapon will be the guided B61-12, an update and life-extension of the 1960s free-fall bomb. The primary feature is an inertially guided Boeing tail kit. A low-rate production decision for the tail kit is due in late 2018, and the National Nuclear Security Administration is on track to deliver the first all-up round by 2020.

The Air Force is now integrating the weapon with the Boeing F-15, Lockheed F-16 and F-35A fighters and B-2 bomber. Flight testing is taking place at Eglin AFB, Florida, and the Tonopah Test Range, Nevada.
“It’s a very complex program,” the Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center tells Aviation Week in a recent interview. “We’re on schedule and we’re on budget. We have [development and production] challenges coming up in the next three years, but we’re working to deliver this capability.”

FAS reported in October that Russia maintains 1,790 deployed nuclear warheads, 4,490 stockpiled and 2,800 retired. The U.S. has 1,930 deployed, 4,500 stockpiled and 2,500 retired. The deployed numbers differ from the New Start count because each bomber counts as just one warhead under those rules, no matter how many nuclear free-fall bombs and cruise missiles it carries. France has the next largest stockpile with 300 total warheads, followed by China (260), the UK (215), Pakistan (130), India (120) and Israel (80). North Korea has an unknown number of warheads, having conducted five underground nuclear tests.

The nuclear rhetoric from the U.S. and Russia follows a meeting between Trump and some of the military’s top generals, as well as the CEOs of Boeing and Lockheed Martin, on Dec. 21. It also comes after Moscow reportedly flight tested an anti-satellite missile.