Agence France-Presse,
The United States Thursday defended plans to overhaul its sea-based nuclear arsenal with a new generation of warheads, arguing the program did not pose any extra threat to nations like Russia.
The administration wants to replace much of its Cold War stockpile with a new “Reliable Replacement Warhead” (RRW) that it argues would be safer and cheaper to maintain over the coming decades.
Roughly 2,000 of the new warheads would be deployed, one-fifth of Cold War levels. But the US government insists that it has enough technical know-how to avoid having to scrap its moratorium on nuclear weapons tests.
“Today's stockpile is safe and reliable, and does not require testing,” argued John Harvey, director of policy planning at the National Nuclear Security Administration.
Nevertheless, he told a seminar at the New America Foundation, the Cold War-era warheads now deployed could pose a risk in decades to come as they age.
“The RRW program is simply accomplishing the same goals as life extension,” Harvey said, referring to the decade-old policy of refurbishing older warheads without making or testing new ones.
“It's not seeking to come out with whole new generations of nuclear weapons,” he said. “The idea here is to provide the same military capabilities as the one it replaces.”
Critics in Congress, especially in the Democratic party, argue that the US government risks alarming other nuclear powers like Russia and China with what they say is an unnecessary revamp.
Steven Monblatt, co-executive director of the British American Security Information Council, said the RRW plan looks to other countries “like a build-up” of nuclear weapons by the United States.
“The US has been at best diffident in the non-proliferation arena,” he told the seminar, while other critics noted that the United States has refused to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty despite its own moratorium.
But Harvey said that in an age of “rogue states,” the United States needs to have reliable warhead capacity to cover its global security responsibilities to allies in Europe and Asia.
The United States had notified allies and countries like Russia and China of its warhead intentions, “and we have received a very mild reaction from governments,” he added.
Russia is already seething over US plans to expand its missile shield into Europe, and last month said it had successfully tested a new ballistic missile bristling with multiple warheads.
In March, the US government selected the design of the next-generation warheads based on work submitted by scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California.
Harvey said the winning design came closest to earlier warhead developments, and so had the most chance of working without requiring new underground or atmospheric tests.
The RRW has now entered a new development phase and cost estimates are being calculated. After congressional approval, the new warheads would be produced under the direction of the US Navy.
