Future of the Undersea Deterrent feb2020

Chapter 4 Arms Control and Sea-Launched Nuclear Weapons | Hans M. Kristensen and Matt Korda
Limiting or controlling non-strategic naval nuclear weapons is a
lot more difficult because they are much smaller, more diverse,
and because their launch platforms overwhelmingly are dual-capable.
Nonetheless, the Presidential Nuclear Initiatives of
the early 1990s were carried out without any form of verification
– only declarations and national technical means. They were
made easier by the destruction of entire systems and because
weapons were offloaded from launchers and brought into central
storage facilities that provided some degree of monitoring with
national technical means.
One could also envision confidence-building measures by which
countries agreed to certain types of behaviours to increase the
transparency and predictability of naval nuclear forces. This
could potentially involve disclosing the types of platforms that are
nuclear-capable or disclosing the total number of platforms and
weapons (the United States and France have declared their total
number of nuclear warheads). One could imagine an agreement
to notify others when platforms declared as nuclear-capable
deploy from their home bases (the New START Treaty includes
notifications of strategic bomber movements), an agreement
to only load missiles in the open to enhance transparency and
counter worst-case analysis, and to disclose long-term force
levels plans – just to mention a few (see Table 2).
Finally, one could envision drawing up operational norms. One
might be agreeing not to harass or trail SSBNs (the Incident at
Sea Agreement between the Soviet Union and the United States
included limitations on dangerous operations). One could imagine
an agreement not to do large salvo-launches of missiles or not
to surge large numbers of nuclear launchers in a short period
of time (the 1994 de-targeting agreements between Russia, the
United States, China, and Britain are other examples).
Five of the world’s nuclear-armed states border the Indo-Pacific
and all are either already operating naval nuclear forces or developing
the capabilities to do so. All are modernising their forces
and adding new or improved capabilities. This development is
likely to increase in the years ahead. It is beyond doubt that naval
nuclear weapons capabilities are undergoing significant changes
that require the international community to seek to regulate, to
some extent, their force development, operations, and dynamics.
Type
Table 2:
Potential Arms Control Measures for Sea-Based
Nuclear Weapons
Numerical limits
Operational
norms
Confidencebuilding
Description
• Limit on missile launch tubes
• Limit on re-entry bodies
• Limit on total number of platforms
• Don’t harass, trail, or hunt SSBNs
• Don’t deploy close to potential
adversaries
• Don’t launch more than two missiles
during flight tests
• Don’t surge large numbers of SSBNs
• Disclose which platforms and weapons
have nuclear capability
• Disclose total numbers of platforms
and weapons
• Notify of deployment from home base
• Load missiles in view of satellites
• Exchange test-launch telemetry
• Announce long-term force level plans
• Limit warfighting mission
• Limit strategy to truly retaliatory
second-strike role
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