global_zero_commission_on_nuclear_risk_reduction_report

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GLOBAL ZERO COMMISSION ON NUCLEAR RISK REDUCTION REPORTDE-ALERTING AND STABILIZING THE WORLD’S NUCLEAR FORCE POSTURESE. THE SPECTER OF NUCLEARCONFRONTATION BETWEEN RUSSIA ANDTHE UNITED STATES 51Tension between Russia and the West over the Ukraine crisishas brought the parties one step closer to the precipiceof nuclear brinksmanship, the point at which nuclear riskskyrockets. It is then that leaders strike belligerent poses andbecome stubborn adversaries out to cow the opponent. Thenuclear cudgel is brandished not only to deter but also tocoerce or otherwise threaten the opponent’s very survival.As traditionally practiced, the aim of such brinksmanship isto warn an adversary’s leadership that it had best back downor not interfere or else face an escalating risk of nuclearwar, caused not so much by premeditated aggression, as byevents spinning out of control.This tension is uncharacteristic of their post-Cold War partnership,but it has flared to the point that it is producingdangerous misunderstandings and action-reaction cycleswith strong escalatory updrafts. Rightly or wrongly, the opposingparties view one another with growing suspicion.Russia sees aggressive encroachment by the West backed byforward deployment of NATO rapid reaction forces, missiledefenses and active wartime contingency planning withEastern European NATO allies. The West sees a Russian territorialgrab and hears veiled nuclear warnings backed byintensified Russian strategic bombers operations and otherunusual military activities. 52 The situation has reached apoint at which warplanes fly in international airspace withtheir transponders turned off, thus becoming invisible to51 Scenarios of nuclear confrontation among other nuclear weaponscountries are considered in a later section of this report.52 President Putin revealed in a Russian state television documentary onCrimea that Russia was ready to put nuclear weapons on alert. (“Ukraineconflict: Putin ‘was ready for nuclear alert,’” BBC News, March 15, 2015,http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-31899680.) For other instancesof veiled nuclear threats, see Greg Botelho and Laura Smith-Spark,“Putin: You better not come after a nuclear-armed Russia,” CNN, August30, 2014, http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/29/world/europe/ukraine-crisis;Zachary Keck, “Russia Threatens Nuclear Strikes Over Crimea,” TheDiplomat, July 11, 2014, http://thediplomat.com/2014/07/russia-threatens-nuclear-strikes-over-crimea.commercial flights crossing their paths. Close encountersbetween Russian and Western military aircraft have spiked. 53NATO fighters have intercepted Russian aircraft hundredsof times this year. Russian warplanes are also engaged inmuscular interdiction: for instance, a U.S. spy plane (RC-135) recently fled into Swedish airspace to escape close-intrailing by Russian fighters.Accidents and spontaneous escalation seem almost inevitable.The situation is reminiscent of the early 1980s when Sovietfighters shot down a similar RC-135 spy plane probingSoviet territory in 1983 – or so they thought. Tragically, theplane turned out to be a Korean airliner that had strayed intoSoviet airspace. (The United States has made similar tragicmistakes, such as the case of mistaken identity that resultedin a U.S. naval ship shooting down a civilian Iranian airlinerin the 1980s resulting in extensive loss of innocent lives.)This ersatz Cold War is far from a full-blown nuclear crisis,but it is a slippery slope. The stakes are high, and there arehigh-rolling risk-takers in the game. Deliberate or inadvertentescalation to a higher plane of nuclear threat is quitepossible if the current situation worsens and Russia and theWest remain at loggerheads. The situation is getting worse,and relations are increasingly adversarial. The belligerentsare moving closer to the point at which events begin to spinout of control.F. NUCLEAR WAR POSTURING:SELF-FULFILLING PROPHECY?Preparing for nuclear conflict continues to be serious businesson both sides. The U.S. spy plane chased into Swedenroutinely probes Russian borders looking for holes in airdefenses through which U.S. strategic bombers could penetrateto drop bombs on Russia during a nuclear war. Thelast U.S. nuclear weapon to explode in an all-out war wouldlikely be a bomb dropped on downtown Moscow by a B-2stealth bomber that had managed to worm itself through oneof those holes. It would be the last of about 100 nuclear weap-53 See appendix D.32
GLOBAL ZERO COMMISSION ON NUCLEAR RISK REDUCTION REPORTDE-ALERTING AND STABILIZING THE WORLD’S NUCLEAR FORCE POSTURESons assigned to hit greater Moscow in such a war today. 54All of the nuclear weapons countries in fact are preparingdutifully for the unthinkable. And in doing so they riskcausing it – by miscalculation or accident, inadvertent escalation,or sans authorization. 55 The risk becomes more acutein a crisis when war preparations become mutually reinforcingand <strong>zero</strong>-sum maneuvering accelerates.The danger that nuclear war planning becomes a self-fulfillingprophecy is perhaps most evident in the high attackreadiness of U.S. and Russian strategic missiles. Hundredsof them, armed with a total of nearly 1,800 warheads, can belaunched in seconds or minutes, even in normal peacetimecircumstances. Both sides are operating one-half of theirstrategic forces as though a virtual state of war exists.Either side could issue the go-code triggering launch in aninstant. For the United States, the go-code comes as a messagethat is the length of a tweet. 56 After validating the order,U.S. underground crews can fire all of their missiles in 60seconds. 57 (Minuteman missiles are so named for a reason.)As many as approximately 450 Minuteman missiles eacharmed with a single high-yield warhead – for a combinedyield of 150 megatons – could thus quickly depart their silosfor their 30-minute flight to targets on the other side of theplanet in China, Iran, North Korea, Russia and/or Syria. 5854 Bruce G. Blair, “Lowering the Nuclear Threshold: The DangerousEvolution of World Nuclear Arsenals toward Far-Flung Dispersal,Hair-Trigger Launch Readiness, and First Use Doctrines,” presentedto the Vienna Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of NuclearWeapons, Austria, December 8, 2014, http://www.bmeia.gv.at/fileadmin/user_upload/Zentrale/Aussenpolitik/Abruestung/HINW14/Presentations/HINW14_S2_Presentation_Bruce_Blair.pdf.55 Ibid.56 Ibid.57 As an official document puts it, “The entire launch sequence (up torocket ignition) takes less than 60 seconds. Normally, two LCCs (launchcontrol centers) are required to ‘vote’ to execute a launch. A single-votecapability and the Airborne Launch Control Center (ALCC) provideback-up capability.” Hill AFB, Utah Ogden Air Logistics Center, “MinutemanWeapon System History and Description,” July 2001, p. 7.58 Assumes 95% launch readiness/reliability.Eleven minutes later, on the heels of Minuteman launch, U.S.Trident submarine missiles onboard the four to five Tridentsubmarines routinely patrolling within their launch stationsin the Northern Atlantic and Western Pacific (two to threein each ocean) in peacetime could be fired. 59 U.S. submarinecrews can start the sequential firing of their missiles (24per boat, each armed with four warheads on average) outof their launch tubes in 12 minutes. (It takes 12 minutes tospin up the gyroscopes on the submarine’s missiles, duringwhich time all other launch preparations including levelingthe boat at the proper depth can be completed.) 60 A total ofnearly 500 Trident submarine warheads combined with 450Minuteman warheads for a grand total of nearly 1,000 warheadsthus stand ready for immediate firing in peacetime.In a crisis, the United States could expeditiously generatean additional five strategic submarines to high-alert status,including surging within days several in port undergoingreplenishment and minor maintenance, and repositioningseveral more already at sea performing training and othertasks or transiting on modified alert (4-8 hour communicationsreceive cycle) to relieve alert Trident submarines nearingthe end of their 78-day patrol. The launch-ready arsenalwould thus grow to nearly 1,500 warheads within a shortnumber of days.In addition, U.S. strategic bombers normally kept off alert inpeacetime at three bases in the United States could be generatedwithin 24-48 hours by uploading their payloads residingin nearby storage bunkers. Approximately 500 additionalbomber warheads could thus be placed on bomber aircraftpoised on runway (10-minute taxi and takeoff) or airbornealert, for a grand total of nearly 2,000 deliverable strategicnuclear weapons on high alert during a crisis, a doubling of59 The Trident submarine fleet consists of 14 boats, of which two arenormally in overhaul, nine are normally at sea, of which four to fivepatrol on combat alert, and three are normally undergoing short- toextended-maintenance of days to weeks before they could surge to sea.60 For a complete step-by-step description of the launch procedures forTrident submarines, see Douglas C. Waller, Big Red: Three Months OnBoard a Trident Nuclear Submarine (New York: HarperCollins, 2001),pp. 203–237.33
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