After a decades-long post-Cold War halt to designing, manufacturing, and testing new nuclear arms, the United States is implementing a three-decade-long, $1.7 trillion program to modernize and increase its already sizable arsenal of nuclear weapons, according to a recent New York Times report by W. J. Hennigan. This program, which is already over budget and behind schedule (as most weapons programs tend to be in the Pentagon’s uncompetitive procurement environment), is also an overreaction to other nuclear weapons powers. It should be pared back significantly.

During the nuclear insanity of the Cold War, during the late 1980s, the world had around 70,000 nuclear warheads, up from roughly 3,000 in 1955. As a result of arms control and the end of the Cold War, the number now stands at about 12,000 globally. The United States currently has about 5,748 warheads in its nuclear arsenal compared to Russia’s 5,580. Together, both arsenals contain more than 90 percent of the world’s nuclear warheads. When New START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty), which limits long-range nuclear warheads and delivery systems, expires in early 2026, the United States is considering adding warheads to its arsenal. China currently possesses 500 warheads, is on schedule to double that number by the turn of the decade, and may build up its force further by 2035. Russia has also overhauled its nuclear arsenal. 

Hennigan seems to accept that nuclear and conventional military activities by Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran should govern the size of the U.S. nuclear arsenal. Nonetheless, he laments that the “future of arms control appears bleak” after forty years of progress in reducing the number of nuclear warheads; appears to blanch at the staggering cost of U.S. nuclear modernization; and argues that although Congress decided the United States needed to modernize its nuclear arsenal more than a decade ago, the American public is still woefully uninformed about the nature of a program slated to cost nearly double each year ($57 billion) what the entire World War II-era Manhattan Project did.

However, Hennigan comes up with few solutions to what seems to be an incipient nuclear arms race. He is correct in three of his four assumptions, but the solution can be found by correcting the erroneous remaining one. Hennigan is correct that the program's cost is already astonishing and growing, that most of the American populace is entirely ignorant of it, and that the prospect for bilateral or multilateral arms control is gloomy. That gloom stems from the impression that China plans to break out of its previously astute posture of maintaining only a nuclear force for minimum deterrence. With China unconstrained in its nuclear modernization, the United States (and maybe Russia, too) is leery of continuing the constraints of the New START Treaty.

Yet even if other countries continue their nuclear refurbishment or buildups, is it smart for the United States, which has a debt held by the public of $26.3 Trillion (about 98 percent of the GDP), to do so on such a grand scale?

Currently, the United States is modernizing (and maybe augmenting) all three legs of its Cold War-era nuclear triad. The triad consists of land-based long-range intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) based in silos in the Western states, long-range bomber aircraft that can deliver nuclear weapons, and stealthy, and therefore invulnerable, ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs) that can now deliver nearly 1,000 powerful warheads. During the Cold War, the United States could afford such overkill in its massive destruction capability. The American people should now ask whether the United States could adopt a less costly but adequate minimum deterrent strategy, such as China did in the past, to use the savings to help facilitate an economic miracle.

Two legs of the triad are vulnerable to an adversary’s nuclear first strike. New ICBM (Sentinel) missiles deployed into stationary and easily targeted land-based silos are not likely to get any less vulnerable to an enemy first strike than the existing Minuteman III missiles. New long-range, nuclear-capable U.S. bombers (the B-21 Raider) would be vulnerable to a surprise attack on the ground before takeoff or, if they do get airborne, vulnerable when trying to penetrate very capable Russian or Chinese air defenses.

The United States (and other great powers) really only need a nuclear force surviving an enemy’s first strike that can hit all major targets in the attacking country to deter other great powers from launching nuclear attacks on it in the first place. If there are 500 major targets in Russia or China and two warheads are needed to destroy each target, the United States could take out those targets by creating a survivable but powerful, minimum nuclear deterrent with about 1,000 warheads placed aboard twelve invulnerable undersea Columbia-class SSBNs. (Any small nuclear arsenals of North Korea and Iran are lesser included cases). 

Thus, the ICBM and bomber modernization programs could be scrapped. Building only those twelve submarines would cost $130 billion instead of the $1.7 Trillion to modernize the entire triad force, according to the Times report. Critics will label this nuclear “monad” unilateral disarmament, but it is really just eliminating the costly and wasteful massive overkill in our current nuclear forces. The foolish nuclear arms race among the great powers may continue, but the United States safely can unilaterally choose to opt out of it.

Ivan R. Eland is a Senior Fellow at the Independent Institute and Director of the Independent Institute’s Center on Peace & Liberty. Dr. Eland graduated from Iowa State University with an M.B.A. in applied economics and a Ph.D. in Public Policy from George Washington University.

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