Nuclear Reset - Program on Strategic Stability Evaluation (POSSE)

Chapter 2. The Modern Arsenals of <strong>Nuclear</strong> States69“boutique” nuclear warhead production and intercontinental ballisticmissile tests.As strange as it may sound, despite having the most powerfuldeployed nuclear capabilities (at least in terms of strategic weapons),the United States stands last among the nine nuclear-weaponpowers, both in terms of scope and rates of nuclear weapons development.A string of six successive decades has been broken bya unique interval during which Washington has not commissioneda single new nuclear weapon. Washington’s activity in this field hasbeen limited to extending the terms of existing weapons. However,it has also been modernizing and modifying existing systems andweapons (which includes the “unloading” of warheads from ICBMsand SLBMs, replacing multiple-warhead missiles s with more powerfulsingle-warhead ones, and retrofitting submarines, bombers, and,most likely, ballistic missiles for delivering non-nuclear munitions).In addition, Washington has been developing a new type of ALCM,the ECM air-launched cruise missile.At the same time, Washington has been pouring enormous resourcesinto the improvement of command and control systems (includingthose based in space). It is also improving the performance of weaponcomponents, changes that steadily upgrade the SNFs’ nuclearcapabilities despite the rounds of quantitative arms cuts. Moreover,the United States has also been developing an entirely new rangeof conventional strategic offensive and defensive systems.Washington’s future plans include the design of a new generationof heavy bombers and cruise missiles. The Obama administrationmay also have to pay the price of ratifying the START and CTBTtreaties by launching the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW)program (and perhaps even developing a sub-kiloton deep penetratingwarhead to be used against hardened targets).<strong>Nuclear</strong> Strategies of the Main PlayersDespite the vast diversity among the doctrines and strategic conceptsof the nuclear-weapon powers, the differences in their approachesto propaganda, and the varying degrees to which they reflecttheir true nuclear intent, they can nevertheless be systemized.For example, the conditions under which the use of nuclear armswould be seen as justified can be broken down as follows: