Top Air Force officials have in recent days defended current U.S. nuclear posture that avoids officially declaring no-first-use of nuclear weapons, despite calls from lawmakers to President Barack Obama to adopt such a policy during his remaining time in office.
Lt. Gen. Jack Weinstein, Air Force deputy chief of staff for strategic deterrence and nuclear integration, said Thursday at a Peter Huessy breakfast, “It’s dangerous to come up with a policy when right now what you want to have is a little bit of ambiguity and give the president options.”
Current policy allows U.S. first use against nuclear-weapon states under extreme circumstances. Democratic lawmakers from both houses of Congress wrote letters to Obama last month calling on adoption of a no-first-use policy, arguing it would decrease the likelihood of accidental nuclear-weapon use and war.
These lawmakers expressed some optimism that the policy might change before a new president takes office, while Obama administration officials have largely dismissed rumors of such a switch.
Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James earlier this week told Defense News that “I would be concerned with it,” referring to adoption of the no-first-use posture.
“When you start taking things off the table, that changes the calculus on how other nations behave,” Weinstein said, noting that having fewer options could create problems for a future administration.
“The strongest thing you can do is for other nations to know you have a capability and to not have a declaratory policy that’s so black and white,” he said. “The president needs options.”
Weinstein also acknowledged debates over shifting the U.S. nuclear deterrent to a less costly dyad, but defended preserving the nuclear triad of air, sea, and land-based systems.
“What deters other nations from using nuclear weapons? That is not a question you can answer in a vacuum. So having strategic discussions about going to a dyad, or going to a monad, are really interesting to me, but the question is: What deters Russia from using nuclear weapons? What deters China from using nuclear weapons?”
“Since the late [1950s], early [1960s] . . . it has been the triad that has kept the peace,” he said.
Weinstein also defended the need for the new Long-Range Standoff nuclear cruise missile (LRSO), whose critics in Congress claim it would be destabilizing because it could carry both conventional and nuclear warheads and therefore might cause miscalculations by U.S. adversaries.
“Not having a strong deterrent force is destabilizing for our nation,” Weinstein argued.
The Air Force on July 29 released a request for proposals for the technology maturation and risk reduction phase for the LRSO, for which it plans to award two contracts in the final quarter of fiscal 2017. The details of the RFP to the defense industry for the contentious new weapon system are classified.
Weinstein said the classified nature of the acquisition is not intended to conceal the cost of the weapon, but rather to protect technical information on its capabilities. “The reason why we’re protecting LRSO is the capability that it will provide at a certain detail,” he said.
The Defense Department is expected to spend roughly $1 trillion over 30 years to build new weapons for each leg of the triad.
