Responding to China’s and Russia’s Nuclear Escalation

During the Cold War, the United States maintained a diverse arsenal of nuclear weapons to support deter Soviet aggression. This arsenal included land-based, theater-range missiles operated by the U.S. Army. Such systems complicated Soviet decision-making and provided the President with additional, credible options to respond to escalation.

The Army retired all its nuclear weapons at the end of the Cold War and largely exited the nuclear mission. At the same time, the overall number of non-strategic U.S. nuclear weapons plummeted, going from roughly 7,000 nuclear weapons in Europe at the height of the Cold War to roughly 200 today.

However, 35 years since the end of the Cold War, Russia and China are expanding and modernizing their non-strategic nuclear arsenals and increasingly relying on nuclear coercion to achieve their aims. Russia has violated virtually all nuclear arms control treaties and possesses a large advantage in the number of deployed non-strategic nuclear weapons. Meanwhile China is the fastest growing nuclear power on the planet, fielding nuclear capable anti-ship and land-attack missiles, which has eroded America’s deterrent.

Consequently, the United States must adapt both its conventional and nuclear strategic deterrent posture. In this vein, the Army should rejoin the Navy and the Air Force in the nuclear mission and once again assume responsibility for providing mobile, land-based nuclear capabilities to strengthen deterrence, hedge against growing strategic risks, and ensure the President has the tools needed to respond flexibly to nuclear escalation.

Through much of the Cold War, the Army fielded various non-strategic nuclear weapons, ranging from small artillery-based munitions to ballistic missiles. The Lance and Pershing II ballistic missiles were low-yield, theater-ranged ballistic missiles that provided the President with additional options to hold enemy targets at risk, thereby strengthening America’s theater deterrent posture.

Today, the United States maintains only one type of forward deployed non-strategic nuclear weapon, the B-61 gravity bomb—a relic of the Cold War that can be delivered by nuclear capable fighter-bombers.

While necessary and useful, such gravity bombs are not stand-off and must be dropped close to a target, potentially over enemy air space and potentially in a contested air environment, where enemy planes and air defenses may be operating. To alleviate some risk, a large entourage of conventional support aircraft would be required, which could likely reduce the operational tempo of the U.S. air campaign.

Alternatively, the presence of mobile, ground-based nuclear options would increase the range of objectives able to be targeted, as the range of the missiles themselves are in the hundreds to even thousands of kilometers.

These challenges of distance are magnified in the Indo-Pacific, where the lack of forward-deployed assets and the reliance on short-range delivery platforms like the B61 gravity bomb severely limits credible options and highlights the advantages of ground-based options such as Ground-Launched Cruise Missiles (GLCM) and Ground-Launched Ballistic Missiles (GLBM).

Ground-based systems are mobile and concealable, making them survivable to preemptive attacks by an adversary. GLCMs are maneuverable, have small radar cross sections, and often fly relatively close to the ground, making them less detectable by radar.

GLBMs are significantly faster and often larger than GLCMs, but more easily detected by radar. They can be made with maneuverable reentry vehicles, though, which aids in the penetration of adversary air and missile defenses.

Intermediate-range GLBMs, particularly those that have maneuverable or hypersonic reentry vehicles, are ideally suited for the Indo-Pacific given their extended range and the lack of basing options in that theater.

Further, ground-launched systems are prompt, highly likely to penetrate adversary defenses, effective against a range of targets, survivable, and can be forward deployed in Europe and Asia. This latter characteristic is important, in that forward deployment in allied countries assures and allies in a way that forces generated within the United States cannot be—and also be available immediately without requiring a deployment decision or sending potentially undesirable signaling.

The military maintains thousands of retired nuclear warheads at Kirtland Underground Munitions Maintenance and Storage Complex in New Mexico. If the Army’s new Precision Strike Missile (PrSM) were made nuclear capable, it would provide a highly accurate ground-based, theater-ranged non-strategic nuclear weapon that would give the President additional ways to respond to nuclear escalation and strengthen the country’s deterrent effect at the theater level.

The Army is perfectly suited to the task, given their specialization in ground-based warfare and weapon systems and their Cold War legacy of being a nuclear service. The U.S. Army also could take initiative by examining the utility of integrating nuclear warheads in their forthcoming Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon, which would provide a low-yield and highly survivable nuclear weapon.

The United States walk-back from non-strategic nuclear weapons—and the Army’s divestment from the nuclear mission—made sense during the post-Cold War era. But the U.S. Army’s withdrawal from land-based, theater-range nuclear capabilities has created a gap in deterrence, especially as Russia and China expand their tactical nuclear arsenals and missile technologies.

To regain its edge, the U.S. must reintegrate mobile, tactical nuclear weapons resembling the Pershing II and Lance missiles, and invest in nuclear-capable hypersonic systems. Nuclear-capable GLCMs and GLBMs would provide the U.S. with flexible, credible deterrence options, countering the growing threats from adversaries and ensuring a robust response to nuclear escalation.

‘Robert Peters is a Senior Research Fellow for Strategic Deterrence at the Heritage Foundation.