A group of experts and policy makers on Wednesday urged the incoming Donald Trump administration to make cuts to the U.S. nuclear arsenal and modernization program, along with adopting several nuclear policy changes. All the proposals are outlined in a new Ploughshares Fund report, 10 Big Nuclear Ideas for the Next President.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) repeated in the report their plea for cancellation of the controversial Long-Range Standoff (LRSO) nuclear cruise missile, arguing again that the weapon would increase the risk of miscalculation by an adversary and would take funding away from other nuclear programs and conventional capabilities.
Valerie Plame, a former covert Central Intelligence Agency operations officer famously outed during the George W. Bush administration, called for adoption of nuclear no-first-use and no-launch-on-warning policies and suggested that a large part of the arsenal could be eliminated for major cost savings: $238 billion over several decades by phasing out land-based ballistic missiles, and $20 billion by cancelling the planned LRSO.
Former Defense Secretary William Perry echoed this call to save hundreds of billions of dollars. He said the plan to build a new class of nuclear-armed submarine, which “alone is sufficient for assured deterrence,” and the development of a new bomber, the B-21, as a backup to the submarines, offer enough accuracy to let the current Minuteman III ICBMs phase out upon reaching their end of life, which is expected to occur by 2030.
Todd Harrison, director of defense budget analysis at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, noted at a report launch event Wednesday that in terms of modernizing the nuclear triad, “the Trump administration does not actually have to add anything to the budget because those programs are already baked into it.” The U.S. nuclear modernization program is set to cost $1 trillion over 30 years.
