September 13, 2020
RESPONSIBLE STATECRAFT
Why Trump’s secret weapon isn’t so secret
and not much of a weapon
Written by
Joe Cirincione
Donald
Trump’s reveal to the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward of a new, secret nuclear
weapon would be a major security breach and a trigger to an accelerated nuclear
arms race, if true.
In
an interview with Woodward on December 5, 2019, Trump said,
“I have built a nuclear — a weapons system that nobody’s ever had in this
country before. We have stuff that you haven’t even seen or heard about. We
have stuff that Putin and Xi have never heard about before. There’s nobody —
what we have is incredible.”
It
is an amazing statement to a journalist and, thus, to our adversaries about a
new U.S. military capability unlike anything Russia or China or anyone else
has.
“With that comment alone, the president has just launched a new nuclear arms
race,” MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow warned this week. “That stray comment,” she added,
“will drive the creation of new classes of previous unknown nuclear weapons by
China and Russia.”
Fortunately,
Trump’s claim is likely not true. There is no new super weapon.
Other
officials did confirm the existence of a secret new weapons system, as Woodward
reports, but they did not characterize it the same way as Trump did. Trump is
almost certainly talking about a program that is not very secret and not much
of a weapon.
While
it’s true that the government doesn’t disclose everything about its weapons
systems, it would be hard to hide a major new program. These take years to
develop and require billions of dollars appropriated by Congress. By the time
they go into production thousands or tens of thousands of people are involved.
Trump could be referring to a new hypervelocity missile (a weapon that flies
many times the speed of sound) or the new program to replace the B-2 bomber.
Both are under development and have many classified aspects (including the huge
budget of the new B-21 bomber). It is more likely, however, that he was talking
about the new “low-yield” nuclear warhead now deployed on some U.S. strategic
submarines.
The
Trump administration pushed for this new weapon in its Nuclear Posture Review
of February 2018. Despite determined efforts to block it, Congress approved
funding for the program and the first one was manufactured in February 2019.
But at the time of Trump’s interview with Woodward 10 months later, much was
still classified about the program, including its deployment schedule.
A
few weeks after Trump talked to Woodward, the USS Tennessee slipped into the
waters off Kings Bay, Ga. to begin patrols beneath the surface of the Atlantic
Ocean. For the first time, and in secret, it had this new warhead atop one or
two of its 20 long-range ballistic missiles. The patrol remained secret until
prominent nuclear weapons experts Hans Kristensen and William Arkin disclosed the
deployment at the end of January 2020. The Pentagon confirmed the
report a week later. So, as Trump claimed, it is likely that neither Putin nor
Xi knew about the deployment of the new weapon at the time he talked to
Woodward, though they certainly knew of the program.
The
weapon, the W76-2 warhead, is the brainchild of nuclear war fighters who want
to make nuclear weapons more usable. They fear that
military and political leaders are “self-deterred” from using nuclear weapons
because of the huge destruction they cause. Instead of a weapon that would
destroy all of New York, for example, they wanted a weapon that would destroy
just midtown. Instead of killing hundreds of thousands of civilians, a smaller
weapon would kill thousands. This, they believe, makes it more acceptable and
could break the nuclear taboo that has held for 75 years.
Such
a bomb could be used against hardened targets such underground centrifuge
plants. Or, in the twisted logic of nuclear war-fighters, it could
“de-escalate” a crisis by destroying only part of a city instead of vaporizing
it entirely, thus encouraging retreat or surrender. Some also hope this weapon
will help justify the continuation of a massively expensive nuclear complex
increasingly irrelevant to 21st century threats.
The
new W76 has a yield of five kilotons, or five thousand tons of TNT. This is
many times the size of even the largest conventional weapon (the 11-ton Massive Ordnance Air Blast), but still only one-third the size of the bomb that destroyed
Hiroshima. By nuclear standards this is tiny. It is 1/20 to 1/90 the size of
the hydrogen bombs that are carried by most of the missiles on the Trident
submarines, which clock in with yields of 90 kilotons and 455 kilotons.
The
nuclear laboratories could produce this new weapon so quickly because it was a
relatively easy modification of the existing W76-1 warhead.
Inside
every big bomb is a little bomb. Every hydrogen bomb has a supply of hydrogen
isotopes that are fused into helium by the heat, pressure, and radiation of a
smaller fission bomb, like the bomb that destroyed Nagasaki. Fusing atoms
releases many times the energy of splitting them, up to millions of tons of
TNT. Take away the hydrogen fuel and you are left with a basic atomic bomb.
That is what the labs did. It is the only weapon that Trump initiated that he
could produce in his first term. It is no wonder that he wanted to brag about
it.
The
total system is, indeed, “incredible.” The Trident D-5 missiles can fly
thousands of miles in minutes, striking targets smaller than a football field
anywhere on Earth. But the “low-yield” warhead is fairly common. Many
nuclear-armed nations have these smaller weapons. The United States already has
over 1,000 weapons of this size carried by cruise missiles or dropped by
airplanes. It is not, as Trump claimed, a weapon that “nobody’s ever had in
this country before.” We have had low-yield atomic bombs since the 1950s.
What
is correct is that we never before deployed these weapons on strategic systems
like land- or sea-launched ballistic missiles. That is because it is a dumb
idea. It duplicates a capability we already have and, if used, could trigger a
full-scale nuclear war, not stop one. An adversary would see the missile flying
towards its territory and would have no idea of the size of the warhead. There
would be tremendous pressure for China or Russia to launch a retaliatory
strike, as they have trained and planned to do.
In
sum, it is unlikely that Trump stupidly revealed the existence of some magic
weapon system that would give the United States nuclear dominance and make our
adversaries quake. But Maddow is right — bragging about nuclear weapons to
impress a journalist is pathetic but also very dangerous. It encourages each
nuclear-armed nation to counter the other’s capabilities, real or imagined.
Nuclear
braggadocio doesn’t make us stronger. It makes us less safe and more afraid.
Written by
Joe Cirincione
©2020 Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, Inc. All Rights
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