CSIS Report States U.S. Should Consider Outfitting F-35s with Smaller Nuclear Cruise Missile

Integrating a smaller, shorter-range cruise missile into the both land-based and carrier-based dual-capable F-35s could help the U.S. offset a low global “nuclear threshold” caused by U.S. conventional weapons superiority, according to a nuclear strategy and posture report released yesterday by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). “Project Atom: A Competitive Strategies Approach to Defining U.S. Nuclear Strategy and Posture for 2025-2050” asserts that forward-deployed tactical nuclear weapons can play an integral part in NATO’s deter-and-assure mission. “Dual-capable F-35As (based on land) and F-35Cs (based on carriers) would provide visible manifestations of U.S. extended deterrence and allied burden sharing,” the report states. “Discriminate employment options would be provided by a suite of low-yield, special-effects warheads (low collateral, enhanced radiation, earth penetration, electromagnetic pulse, and others as technology advances), including possibly a smaller, shorter-range cruise missile that could be delivered by F-35s.”

 

Murdock argues that U.S. “conventional superiority” lowers the threshold for other countries to launch nuclear attacks on American soil. Other nations could view such an act as a way to offset U.S. conventional supremacy, the report states. To deter any potential offsetting nuclear strike, the U.S. should maintain “discriminate,” complementary and responsive nuclear options, according to the report. Principally authored by four subject matter experts and co-authored by another five think tank experts, the final version of the report represents only the conclusions of principal author Clark Murdock, Senior Adviser at CSIS’ International Security Program. “As the author of the final report, my views were shaped and influenced by the debate among the independent think tank teams, but did not attempt to bridge the differences on fundamentals between the competing approaches,” Murdock wrote.

 

One co-author, Elbridge Colby, Robert M. Gates Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security, disagreed with Murdock about the status of U.S. conventional superiority, saying during a speech in Washington yesterday that the margin of U.S. conventional military superiority is declining. Colby cited Russia and China as two countries bolstering their conventional military capabilities. “The Pentagon is commendably trying to extend the U.S. military advantages through things like the Third Offset Strategy, and that makes a great deal of sense and I hope it succeeds, but it’s unlikely to lead to a restoration of the degree of military advantages that the United States enjoyed in the 1990s, and the first decade of the century,” Colby said during the report’s rollout at CSIS in Washington. “So these are the kind of basic, I think, background conditions that U.S. nuclear policy needs to take into account.”