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 POSTURESEWO), and de-targeting the land-based missile forces on bothsides. All nuclear wartime operations are strictly governed byEWO, the mastery of which represents the crux of all nuclearwar training. U.S. and Russian planners could readily reviseEWO to ensure that none of their respective strategic forcescould be launched on warning. Simple changes could bemade to increase the time needed to reach a launch decisionas well as the time taken to carry out the decision. Top-leveldeliberations could be prolonged to preclude a hasty decisionand enhance the quality of attack information. In addition,the coordinates of all wartime targets for the land-based intercontinentalmissiles could be downloaded from the computersonboard the missiles or collocated at the launcher. Thiswould really constitute de-targeting and would replace thecosmetic Clinton-Yeltsin de-targeting agreement of 1994. 104Regarding technical measures, they would initially be appliedmainly to the vulnerable, “use or lose” land-based rocket forceson each side. The pressure-packed and short timeline oflaunch-on-warning stems largely from the fact that the stationarymissiles in fixed underground silos and mobile missilesin garages at known garrison locations depend on very rapidreaction for their survival. Stationary missiles in silos and mobilemissiles still in garrison at the time of attack (the latter mayquickly disperse from garrison on warning in a nuclear crisis orlaunch quickly from inside their garages after retracting theirsliding roofs) could be decimated if they were not fired beforethe arrival of incoming warheads whose flight time from theother side of the planet would not exceed 30 minutes.Technical measures that decrease the launch readiness ofRussian and U.S. land-based missiles forces from their currentresponse times of a few minutes to a period of hoursto days in future would effectively de-link this force fromprompt-launch decision-making. However, strategic subma-104 Fully reversing the changes to the emergency war plans wouldrequire significant time – many hours to re-target the 450 Minutemanmissiles, for instance, and many days to reinstate launch-on-warningEWO to its original form. By stripping such targets out of the local computersthat are integral to land- and sea-based missiles and associatedlaunchers and fire control systems, any move to bring forces back to highalert status would incur lengthy delays in re-targeting. For Minutemanmissiles, for instance, it would take 15 minutes to re-target ten missiles,and 12 hours to re-target the entire force of 450 missiles..rines, although they are not “use or lose” forces, should alsobe de-alerted in order to limit their offensive counterforce potentialagainst the other side’s de-alerted land-based strategicforces and to increase warning and decision time, which arecurrently stressed and compressed by the forward deploymentof strategic submarines capable of delivering warheadsin ten minutes. Lastly, mobile Russian land-based missiles ingarrison should be blocked from firing out of their garages,but they should have maneuvering room for a quick egressfrom their garages to hidden and relatively invulnerable positionsin nearby forests.As previously noted, the physical de-alerting of strategic forcesthat currently maintain high day-to-day alert status wouldbe implemented in phases over time. 105 In the very near term– six months after signing the executive agreement – the goalis to physically de-alert 20% of the normal alert force on eachside. This translates into a stand-down of about 170 strategicwarheads. On the U.S. side, this is roughly the equivalent ofone Minuteman squadron (50 missiles with one warhead each,or 50 warheads) plus one Trident submarine (24 missiles withfour warheads each, or 96 warheads). On the Russian side,it is the equivalent of two Russian regiments of silo-basedmissiles (ten SS-19 missiles with six warheads each, or 60105 For additional reading of work to devise de-alerting options, seeSam Nunn and Bruce Blair, “From Nuclear Deterrence to Mutual Safety,”The Washington Post, June 22, 1997, p. C1; Bruce G. Blair, “De-alertingStrategic Nuclear Forces,” in The Nuclear Turning Point: A Blueprint forDeep Cuts and De-alerting of Nuclear Weapons, ed. Harold A Feiveson,(Washington, D.C.: Brookings, 1999); Bruce Blair, Hal Feiveson, andFrank von Hippel, “Taking Nuclear Weapons off Hair-Trigger Alert,”Scientific American, Vol. 277, No. 5, November 1997; David Mosher,David Howell, Lowell Schwartz, and Lynn Davis, Beyond the NuclearShadow: A Phased Approach for Improving Nuclear Safety and U.S.-RussianRelations, (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2003); BruceBlair, “Command, Control, and Warning for Virtual Arsenals,” inNuclear Weapons in a Transformed World: The Challenge of VirtualNuclear Arsenals, ed. Michael J. Mazaar, (New York: St. Martin’s Press,1997); Thomas Karas, De-alerting and De-activating Strategic NuclearWeapons, Sandia National Laboratories, Report 2001-0835, April 2001;Bruce Blair, “De-Alerting Strategic Forces,” in Reykjavik Revisited: StepsToward a World Free of Nuclear Weapons, eds. George P. Shultz, SidneyD. Drell, and James E. Goodby, (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press,2008); Hans M. Kristensen and Matthew McKinzie, Reducing Alert Ratesof Nuclear Weapons, (Geneva: United Nations Institute for DisarmamentResearch, 2012).56
GLOBAL ZERO COMMISSION ON NUCLEAR RISK REDUCTION REPORTDE-ALERTING AND STABILIZING THE WORLD’S NUCLEAR FORCE POSTURESwarheads, and ten Topol-M SS-27 missiles with one warheadeach, or ten warheads), two Russian regiments of land-basedmobile rockets (18 Topol M missiles with one warhead each,or 18 warheads), and one Russian strategic submarine (DeltaIV submarine with 16 missiles and 64 warheads).The measures described in Appendix A provide an amplemenu of options from which to choose for eliminating launchon warning and de-alerting increments of the forces overtime until none stand on high alert. As noted earlier, governmentswill decide what forces to de-alert, and how to de-alertthem. This report nominates these particular units becausethey represent a good cross-section of the various deployedforces and a balanced diversity of verification methods thatwill need to be devised. The de-alerting measures describedin detail in the appendix should be viewed as illustrative possibilities.They by no means exhaust the creative possibilities,and moreover they are incompletely analyzed. They raise asignificant number of questions that are flagged in the appendixand that constitute grist for the mill of future analysis bygovernments and official and unofficial task forces.X. OVERALL EVALUATION BASED ON FIVECRITIERARussian and U.S. strategic forces armed with 170 warheads oneach side are de-alerted under this plan in an initial tranchemeant to stand down 20 percent of the forces on each sidewithin one year of signing an executive agreement. The planassumes the implementation of the set or a subset of thede-alerting options found in the appendix. The regime is evaluatedusing five criteria:Criterion A: Time to re-alert, which measures how long itwould take to reverse de-alerting and restore forces to theiroriginal launch-ready configuration. The longer the timeneeded to re-alert the forces, the greater the merit of theoption. It is important to recognize that the time to re-alerta given weapon may vary greatly depending upon its positionin the queue of the larger force of similar weapons. Thuswhile it may take several hours or days to re-alert one or ahandful of nuclear forces, such as Minuteman missiles, it maytake many weeks or months to re-alert all of the weapons inthe same category of forces. This paper generally gauges boththe time needed to re-alert the first batch of weapons and thetime needed to re-alert the bulk or all of the weapons.Criterion B: Impact on strategic stability, which for de-alertedpostures places special emphasis on the stability of dynamicre-alerting. De-alerting should not create exploitableadvantages from breaking out and re-alerting. It especiallyshould not be possible to seize a disarming first-strike advantageby reconstituting faster than an opponent can. Retaliatoryforces need to be sufficiently survivable under normalpeacetime circumstances as well as during a crisis period inwhich restraint may break down. It is assumed that the certaintyof retaliation is far more important to deterrence thanis the timing of retaliation, and that stable deterrence wouldnot be adversely affected by delays in retaliation.Criterion C: Degree of transparency/verifiability. This refersto monitoring the operational status of nuclear weapons,placing emphasis on monitoring non-deployed forces as theimportance of reserve forces increases during the transitionto a nuclear-free world. Monitoring and verification shouldsupport the goal of preserving strategic stability (CriterionB) as well as help pave the way to the elimination of nuclearweapons (Criterion D).Criterion D: Foster progress toward <strong>global</strong> <strong>zero</strong>. De-alertingoptions should serve to downgrade the role of nuclear weaponsin national security policy and strengthen diplomatic effortsto curb and reverse proliferation. They should also servethe technical purpose of bringing reserve as well as operationallydeployed warheads under surveillance in order to establisha baseline database of warhead numbers and types. Anaccurate <strong>global</strong> audit of warhead inventories is a preconditionfor the eventual verifiable elimination of nuclear weapons.Criterion E: Impact on today’s risk of accidental, mistaken,or unauthorized launch or theft. Measures that reduce theserisks and strengthen safeguards against terrorist exploitationof Russian and U.S. nuclear postures are critical today. Wideningthe margin of safety in these areas is arguably the overridingpriority of the post-Cold War era. De-alerting optionsshould above all enhance nuclear safety.57
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