Command and Control in the Nuclear Posture Review: Right Problem, Wrong Solution

If the U.S. nuclear command-and-control system were a fictional character, it might be 11-year-old Harry Potter living under the Dursleys’ staircase on Privet Drive—desperately underappreciated and chronically underfunded, yet absolutely critical to avoiding the worst outcome imaginable. The result of its neglect, according to the Nuclear Posture Review published Friday, is that the system for detecting nuclear strikes on the United States and relaying orders to U.S. nuclear forces is “subject to challenges from both aging system components and new, growing 21st Century threats.”

The Pentagon put potential adversaries on notice that the U.S. might respond with nuclear weapons if it is the target of a major nonnuclear attack. The warning, which is contained in a new plan called the Nuclear Posture Review, doesn’t specifically detail the circumstances that might lead the U.S. to retaliate with nuclear weapons. But it is widely seen as a message that enemies that engage in cyberwarfare or attacks using germ weapons risk an American nuclear response.

But the idea of mixing strategic and tactical nuclear warheads on one ballistic missile submarine creates the potential for a “discrimination problem,” said Vipin Narang, an associate professor of political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who focuses on nuclear proliferation. “Very simply, how is an adversary supposed to know if the [ballistic] missile headed its way has a single low-yield nuclear weapon or a full complement of eight 475-kiloton strategic nuclear warheads? These things are not color-coded,” he said. “They would have no way of being able to detect or discriminate what was on even a single SLBM launch, let alone several.”

Russia challenged U.S. compliance with a key nuclear arms control treaty Monday and warned that the Trump administration’s new nuclear strategy lowers the threshold for using atomic weapons. The dire assessment came as Moscow said it has met its own requirements under the New START agreement that was signed in 2010 and entered into force a year later. It restricts both the U.S. and Russia to 1,550 deployed strategic nuclear warheads on a maximum of 700 deployed intercontinental ballistic missiles and strategic bombers. The deadline to verify both countries’ compliance was Monday.

Vladimir Putin is no friend of the United States. The Russian president seeks to undermine many core interests of the United States, our allies, and our partners. In 2014, Putin annexed territory in Europe, seizing control of Crimea, and then intervened in eastern Ukraine, sparking a war during which more than 10,000 people have died. In 2015, Putin intervened militarily in Syria to prop up one of the most ruthless dictators in the world, and protects Bashar al-Assad’s rule even in the face of repeated use of outlawed chemical weapons. And in 2016, Putin violated American sovereignty by stealing data and spreading propaganda to influence our presidential election. Tragically but necessarily, the United States and our allies must seek to develop more effective strategies for containing Russian aggression, just as we did during the Cold War.

Renewed interest in nuclear cooperation between the United States and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) has relaunched debate over whether Washington should insist upon a legally binding “gold standard” commitment from the KSA that forecloses Saudi deployment of sensitive nuclear fuel cycle technology.  The KSA aims to eventually enrich uranium itself. Riyadh might mine its own uranium, but without any enrichment infrastructure currently, where would it obtain enough help to enrich uranium for power reactor fuel?