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S. HRG. 112–813 

EXAMINING THE PROPER SIZE OF THE NUCLEAR 

WEAPONS STOCKPILE TO MAINTAIN A CREDIBLE U.S. DETERRENT 

HEARING 

BEFORE A

SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE 

COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS 

UNITED STATES SENATE 

ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS 

SECOND SESSION 

SPECIAL HEARING 

JULY 25, 2012—WASHINGTON, DC 

Printed for the use of the Committee on Appropriations 

( 

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/browse/ 

committee.action?chamber=senate&committee=appropriations 
(II) 

COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS 

DANIEL K. INOUYE, Hawaii, Chairman 

PATRICK J. LEAHY, Vermont 

TOM HARKIN, Iowa 

BARBARA A. MIKULSKI, Maryland 

HERB KOHL, Wisconsin 

PATTY MURRAY, Washington 

DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California 

RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois 

TIM JOHNSON, South Dakota 

MARY L. LANDRIEU, Louisiana 

JACK REED, Rhode Island 

FRANK R. LAUTENBERG, New Jersey 

BEN NELSON, Nebraska 

MARK PRYOR, Arkansas 

JON TESTER, Montana 

SHERROD BROWN, Ohio 

THAD COCHRAN, Mississippi 

MITCH MCCONNELL, Kentucky 

RICHARD C. SHELBY, Alabama 

KAY BAILEY HUTCHISON, Texas 

LAMAR ALEXANDER, Tennessee 

SUSAN COLLINS, Maine 

LISA MURKOWSKI, Alaska 

LINDSEY GRAHAM, South Carolina 

MARK KIRK, Illinois 

DANIEL COATS, Indiana 

ROY BLUNT, Missouri 

JERRY MORAN, Kansas 

JOHN HOEVEN, North Dakota 

RON JOHNSON, Wisconsin 

CHARLES J. HOUY, Staff Director 

BRUCE EVANS, Minority Staff Director 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND WATER DEVELOPMENT

DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California, Chairman 

PATTY MURRAY, Washington 

TIM JOHNSON, South Dakota 

MARY L. LANDRIEU, Louisiana 

JACK REED, Rhode Island 

FRANK R. LAUTENBERG, New Jersey 

TOM HARKIN, Iowa 

JON TESTER, Montana 

RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois 

DANIEL K. INOUYE, Hawaii (ex officio) 

LAMAR ALEXANDER, Tennessee 

THAD COCHRAN, Mississippi 

MITCH MCCONNELL, Kentucky 

KAY BAILEY HUTCHISON, Texas 

RICHARD C. SHELBY, Alabama 

SUSAN COLLINS, Maine 

LISA MURKOWSKI, Alaska 

LINDSEY GRAHAM, South Carolina 

Professional Staff 

DOUG CLAPP

ROGER COCKRELL

LELAND COGLIANI

CAROLYN E. APOSTOLOU (Minority) 

TYLER OWENS (Minority) 

TOM CRAIG (Minority) 

LASHAWNDA SMITH (Minority) 

Administrative Support 

MOLLY BARACKMAN-EDER
(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

Page 

Opening Statement of Senator Dianne Feinstein ................................................. 1 

Statement of Senator Lamar Alexander ................................................................ 2 

Statement of General James E. Cartwright, USMC, Retired .............................. 4 

Prepared Statement of General James E. Cartwright, United States Marine 

Corps (Retired) and Ambassador Thomas R. Pickering .................................... 8 

The Global Zero Commission Aims and Purposes ................................................ 8 

A 2022 U.S. Nuclear Force ...................................................................................... 9 

Strengthening Universal Nuclear Disarmament and Nonproliferation .............. 9 

Reducing U.S.-Russia Nuclear Arms Through Negotiations ................................ 9 

From TRIAD to DYAD: Eliminating the Land-Based Missile Component ......... 10 

De-Alerting Strategic Forces ................................................................................... 10 

Prompt Launch Constrains Presidential Decisionmaking ................................... 11 

New Strategy and Tools to Support Presidential Conflict Deliberation and 

Choice .................................................................................................................... 12 

Downsizing the Nuclear Complex; Risks and Cost Savings ................................. 12 

Downsizing the Nuclear Force Structure; Risks and Cost Savings ..................... 13 

Statement of Hon. Thomas Pickering, Former Undersecretary for Political 

Affairs, United States Department of State ...................................................... 14 

Statement of Keith B. Payne, Ph.D., Professor and Department Head, Missouri State University, Department of Defense and Strategic Studies ........... 16 

Prepared Statement of Dr. Keith B. Payne ........................................................... 19 

Russian Threats of Nuclear Targeting, Including First or Preemptive Uses 

of Nuclear Forces ................................................................................................. 25 

Additional Committee Questions ............................................................................ 41 

Questions Submitted to General James Cartwright, USMC, Retired ................. 41 

Questions Submitted by Senator Susan Collins ................................................... 41 

(1) 

EXAMINING THE PROPER SIZE OF THE NUCLEAR WEAPONS STOCKPILE TO MAINTAIN 

A CREDIBLE U.S. DETERRENT 

WEDNESDAY, JULY 25, 2012 

U.S. SENATE, 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND WATER DEVELOPMENT, 

COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS, 

Washington, DC. 

The subcommittee met at 10:03 a.m., in room SD–192, Dirksen 

Senate Office Building, Hon. Dianne Feinstein (chairman) presiding. 

Present: Senators Feinstein, Tester, and Alexander. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR DIANNE FEINSTEIN

Senator FEINSTEIN. I’d like to convene this hearing and say good 

morning and welcome to the Energy and Water subcommittee’s 

hearing ‘‘Examining the Size of the Nuclear Weapons Stockpile 

Necessary to Maintain a Credible United States Deterrent.’’ 

Ladies and gentlemen, we’re an appropriations subcommittee. 

Where we come into this is the money that’s spent, because this 

is a mandatory security part of our portfolio and the mandatory security part of the portfolio keeps growing, which pushes out other 

parts of the portfolio, such as energy, water, various other programs run by the Army Corps of Engineers, that kind of thing, 

which makes a fair distribution of assets increasingly difficult. 

One of the best things about Washington is that you really have 

access to great minds, people who are good thinkers, people who 

have developed skills over the years. It’s important to listen as we 

form our decisions. So that’s really the purpose of this morning’s 

hearing, to listen to three very prominent people, very skilled, very 

good thinkers, who we will introduce very shortly. 

But let me just put forward a few points on the current plan for 

nuclear weapons modernization. It calls for $215 billion on nuclear 

weapons and delivery systems in the next 10 years. According to 

a recent Stimson Center report, the United States already spends 

about $31 billion a year to maintain nuclear weapons capabilities. 

On Monday, I learned from the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) that the cost of the B61 life-extension program is $8 billion. That’s double the cost of the original estimate. 

An independent Department of Defense (DOD) review puts the cost 

at $10 billion. 

Similarly, the cost of building a uranium processing facility at Y– 

12, with which the vice chairman and I have been dealing, has 
2 

grown from $600 million to $6 billion, 10 times more the cost projected in 2004. An independent Army Corps of Engineers assessment puts the cost of the project as high as $7.5 billion. 

So increased costs and schedule delays have already had a significant impact on modernization plans. The construction of a new 

plutonium facility at Los Alamos has been delayed by at least 5 

years. The reason for this delay was to free up funding to pay for 

higher priorities, such as the B61 life-extension program and the 

construction of the uranium facility at Y–12. 

However, this delay would only save $1.8 billion over 5 years. 

The new B61 extension program cost estimate alone requires 

NNSA to find an additional $4 billion at a time when budgets are 

shrinking and sequestration is a real possibility. 

These are some of the indicators of where we are. Into this came 

a report which caught my eye. The title is ‘‘Global Zero: U.S. Nuclear Policy Commission, Modernizing United States Nuclear Strategy, Forces, and Posture for the 21st Century’’. What also caught 

my eye were the authors: Retired General James Cartwright and 

Ambassador Thomas Pickering. They are two stellar people each in 

their own area, and I will introduce them a bit more fully when 

the ranking member completes his remarks. 

The purpose of this hearing is not to make a decision. It is to receive testimony on a different way of approaching this issue in 

light of the fact that we are going to face an increasing financial 

crunch. 

One of my great delights is to work with the man on my left. 

He’s fair, he’s straightforward, and he’s been a good friend. So I 

will ask the distinguished ranking member if he has any comments 

he’d like to make. 

STATEMENT OF SENATOR LAMAR ALEXANDER

Senator ALEXANDER. Thank you, Madam Chairman. 

Welcome to the witnesses, distinguished folks. I agree with what 

the Senator from California said. This is an opportunity for us to 

learn, so I’ll be doing a lot of listening today. 

Nuclear weapons are an important component of our national defense structure. We all know that. But we have two inescapable 

facts ahead of us. One is that we’re short of money, borrowing 42 

cents of every $1 we spend, and the part of the budget that keeps 

getting squeezed is the part that includes everything from national 

defense to national parks, while the mandatory spending runs 

away. 

So the nuclear modernization costs we’re talking about are all 

part of what’s getting squeezed. And it already, according to the 

Budget Control Act, is only growing at about the rate of inflation 

over the next 10 years. If the mandatory part of our budget were 

growing at the same rate as the discretionary part, we wouldn’t 

really have a fiscal cliff to worry about in a few months. So that 

makes the challenge of dealing with nuclear weapons modernization very difficult. 

The other inescapable fact is we have to do it. Especially if we’re 

going to reduce our nuclear weapons, we have to make sure that 

what we have left works. We want to make sure that as we reduce 
3 

nuclear weapons we’re not left with what amounts to a collection 

of wet matches. 

In December 2010, the President committed to a 10-year plan to 

make sure our remaining weapons work. Then-Defense Secretary 

Gates said at the time, ‘‘There’s absolutely no way we can maintain 

a credible deterrent and reduce the number of weapons in our 

stockpile without either resorting to testing our stockpile or pursuing a modernization program.’’ 

In our Energy and Water bill this year, we reported out an in- creased funding of $363 million for NNSA’s weapons activities. 

That’s a 5-percent increase. It’s a huge increase compared to other 

parts of the budget. Yet it falls short of the amount called for by 

the President by about $372 million, and it doesn’t include the new 

plutonium facility, the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement (CMRR) facility. 

The administration has indicated that we can defer this facility 

for 5 years and is developing an alternative strategy for meeting 

plutonium requirements in the mean time. Some of the testimony 

you’ve submitted touches on this, and I’m interested to hear your 

comments because this has provoked a major dispute within the 

Congress. On the one hand, we have authorizers who don’t believe 

the alternative strategy is acceptable, and we have appropriators 

who followed the administration’s recommendations and are short 

of money. 

So you can help us here in how do we reconcile making sure that 

the nuclear weapons we continue to have work and finding ways 

to save money or not to spend money that we don’t have. 

So I thank the chairman for her vision in putting this subject up 

front and for inviting distinguished witnesses, and I look forward 

to the testimony. 

Senator FEINSTEIN. Thank you very much. 

I’d like to introduce the first two witnesses and then ask Senator 

Alexander to introduce Dr. Payne. 

General James Cartwright retired from Active Duty on September 1, 2011, after 40 years of service in the United States Marine Corps. Unique among Marines, the General served as Commander, United States Strategic Command, before being nominated and appointed as the eighth Vice Chairman of the Joint 

Chiefs of Staff, the Nation’s second-highest military officer. 

General Cartwright served his 4-year tenure as Vice Chairman 

across two presidential administrations and constant military operations against diverse and evolving enemies. He became widely recognized for his technical acumen, vision of future national security 

concepts, and keen ability to integrate systems, organizations, and 

people in ways that encourage creativity. He sparked innovation in 

the areas of strategic deterrence, nuclear proliferation, missile defense, cybersecurity, and adaptive acquisition processes. 

He was both a naval flight officer and a naval aviator who flew 

the F–4 Phantom, the Skyhawk, the Hornet. In 1983, he was 

named Outstanding Carrier Aviator of the Year by the Association 

of Naval Aviation. 

Our second witness is Ambassador Thomas Pickering. His fourdecade-long career in foreign service included ambassadorships in 

Russia, India, the United Nations, Israel, El Salvador, Nigeria, and 
4 

Jordan. Additionally, he served as Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs from 1997 to 2000. He holds the rank of career ambassador, the highest in the United States Foreign Service. 

Following his retirement from the Foreign Service in 2001, Mr. 

Pickering served as Senior Vice President for International Relations at Boeing until 2006. Currently, he is serving as an independent board member at the world’s biggest pipe company, OAO 

TMK, in Moscow. 

Senator, would you introduce Dr. Payne, please. 

Senator ALEXANDER. Thank you very much. 

Welcome to General Cartwright and Ambassador Pickering. It’s 

good to see you again. 

We’re delighted to have Dr. Keith Payne. He was a member of 

the Congressional Commission on the United States Strategic Posture. He was Assistant Secretary of Defense in 2002 and 2003, and 

he’s Professor and head of the Graduate Department of Defense 

and Strategic Studies at Missouri State University. So, Dr. Payne, 

welcome, glad you came. 

Senator FEINSTEIN. Thank you very much. 

What I’d like to do is ask each of you to confine your remarks 

to as close to 5 minutes as you can. It’ll give us an opportunity to 

have a good back and forth. So we’ll begin with you, General Cartwright. 

STATEMENT OF GENERAL JAMES E. CARTWRIGHT, USMC, RETIRED 

General CARTWRIGHT. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman and Vice 

Chairman, Senator Alexander. 

As I sit here and reflect a little bit, the people at this table, we 

have been together for a lot of years, both in studies and consulting 

and operations. So I think you’ll get a pretty diverse view here. 

In context, we are a nation that’s been at war for more than 10 

years. That war is indicative of the conflicts that we’re likely to see 

as we move into the 21st century, and most any study that I’ve 

seen, whether they’re from the intelligence community or the academic community, forecasts a level of persistent conflict as we look 

to the future of the type that we’re seeing. Whether they characterize it as Arab Spring or counterinsurgency, it is that low-level 

conflict that is rising from a population that is represented with a 

maldistribution of wealth, whether that be mineral wealth, homes, 

water, dollars. That maldistribution is out there and it’s unresolved 

and it is leaving for many in the world a calculus that, if I can’t 

feed my family or house my family, my risk for engaging the Government that runs the country I live in is very low, I’m going after 

it, I’ve got to find some way to do something about that. 

Our strategic forces were built in the 1950s and 1960s, finished 

out in the 1970s. That war and that conflict they were designed for 

is behind us. They did what they were designed to do in the cold 

war and they deterred. We got up in the neighborhood of the tens 

of thousands of weapons in the stockpile during that period. We 

have come down substantially over the past 15 years and we are 

today under the umbrella of the New Strategic Arms Reduction 

Treaty (New START), which takes us down to 1,550 or less deployed weapons. 
5 

Recapitalization of that infrastructure that creates our strategic 

deterrent and of those weapons and delivery systems are 50-year 

decisions and all of them are in front of us, whether you’re talking 

about the next generation bomber, the next generation intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM), the next generation submarine 

and submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM), or the infrastructure itself. All of these decisions are 50-year decisions. 

So I think one thing that everybody at this table can agree on 

is that they shouldn’t be just driven strictly by budget; they should 

be led by a thoughtful review of the strategy, which the administration has sought to do, but that should be joined by the academic 

community, by people, I guess the old people at this table, that 

have been around this business for a while, and the public should 

take some understanding of this in a way such that they understand what it is they’re spending their hard-earned money on, how 

much of it they’re willing to put against this capability, and how 

much of it we might need under what constructs. 

The study’s objective was to provide an open discussion about— 

using an illustrative force posture and sizing construct. So in other 

words, take a look at the problems that we think are reasonable 

to consider as you look into the future; come up with an alternative 

sizing construct, in other words, the number of weapons and the 

number of delivery platforms and the size of the infrastructure, 

from what we have today, that would address both what we think 

we know, which we’re almost always wrong at, and what the future 

might bring to us. 

So you look at what’s most likely and what’s most dangerous 

when you consider things like this. Those are the two criteria that 

you try to run as a litmus against any proposal that you might 

make. 

The realities today, we have a bipolar strategic relationship with 

Russia, a legacy of the cold war. But we live in a multipolar, multicountry, nuclear-capable nations world. That’s the reality. To some 

extent, our dialogue with Russia locks out realistic dialogues with 

other nation states that either have, aspire to have, or are thinking 

about moving towards the capability of nuclear weapons in their 

stockpiles. 

The likelihood of an ICBM, strategic bomber war with Russia or 

China is remote, but it is possible. It is not something that should 

be just walked away from or discounted. 

The range of threats and the lethality of those threats in today’s 

world are growing. In other words, as we start to watch cyber come 

into capability, as we watch the capabilities of potential bio and 

chemical type weapons and nuclear weapons, more people have 

them and their lethality is growing. 

Proliferation of the intellectual capital that’s associated with 

these weapons is being fed by global access to information. It is no 

longer whether or not you can build a bomb. What is really the 

question today is whether you want to. In other words, they have 

access to the information. They can get that information. 

Most nation states aspire to weapons of mass destruction as a 

guarantor of their sovereignty. As they think about it, if they build 

these weapons it is to ensure that they can maintain their sovereignty. When you come to the nexus between terrorism and nu-
6 

clear weapons, terrorists tend to want these weapons generally for 

weapons that they can use to either undermine the confidence of 

the people of a nation or to kill as many people as possible in one 

bold strike, both of which tend to come together, undermining the 

confidence in a government in power and the killing of as many 

people as possible, when you put the nexus between nuclear weapons and terrorists together. 

Extended deterrence, the concept that we had for many years 

that was the guarantor of, you don’t need to build these weapons, 

we will put you under our umbrella and we will protect you, is losing its credibility, mainly because the threats these nations face 

are not threats of ICBMs or SLBMs raining down on them. They 

are the threats of their neighbors and short-range delivery or the 

potential that a terrorist might get control of one of these weapons 

and bring it to their country. 

Their thought process is: Should I have these weapons? Do I 

need them? Will the United States be there when I need them, and 

do they have the capability of protecting me from long distances? 

These are the things that undermine, whether you’re talking in the 

Pacific or whether you’re talking in the Middle East or Europe. It 

is a question of will we actually respond in a way that they think 

is in their best interests for their sovereignty. 

With the rise in the number of nations possessing weapons and 

the number of weapons in their arsenal comes also the increased 

likelihood that the loss of control of one of these weapons can occur. 

It’s just the natural thing that more nations have these things, 

there are more weapons out there; the likelihood that one of them 

could be somehow stolen or lost control in some way is increasing. 

The likelihood of a mishap with one of these weapons also increases. It’s not through necessarily intent, but if you are a new 

nation, you’re new at handling these weapons, you’re new at the 

protocols of protecting these weapons, et cetera, the likelihood that 

you will make a mistake early on is increased. That’s just the way 

we looked at it. 

Also, the likelihood of miscalculation of the intent of a neighbor 

or an adversary goes up. So our systems today are aging. The systems in other nations, like Russia and China, in particular Russia, 

systems are aging. Their ability to characterize whether they’re 

being attacked or whether it is something else routinely comes up, 

and sensors that miscalculate or mischaracterize inbound activities 

as potential threats. Time lines for decisions about whether or not 

a country does something about these inbound threats is in minutes. The likelihood of a miscalculation with the increased number 

of states that have these weapons is going to go up. 

So these are the things that are most worrisome as we look out 

towards the future and the proliferation of these weapons and their 

capabilities. 

I’m a person whose glass is half full, okay. We have the world’s 

greatest conventional military. I’m biased. I put that right up front: 

They are the best. We have built the world’s greatest intelligence, 

surveillance, and reconnaissance capability. Nobody comes close. 

We have built the world’s greatest space capability. People aspire 

to it, but nobody’s close yet. 
7 

We have built the world’s greatest regional missile defense. Nobody comes close. It’s growing. Other countries are adopting it. It 

is starting to be integrated into their defenses. It is starting to offer 

nations an alternative to an offensive-only posture, and that’s important. 

We have integrated all of these capabilities. We are building the 

world’s greatest nonkinetic capabilities, whether you think about 

cyber or whether you think about directed energy. All of these capabilities are just on the horizon. 

Our greatest strength is our people and the ability of those people to integrate all of these capabilities and use them in an integrated fashion. It is the vision of what Goldwater-Nichols brought 

to us, the ability to work together, to integrate all the capabilities 

and to never think single dimensionally. 

We are looking at the strategic capabilities in this hearing, but 

we should not discount as nontrivial the capabilities that we have 

built in this Nation in defense, in missile defense, in offensive capability on the conventional side. They are tools. They are credible 

tools that any president would want to use before he or she ever 

considered using a nuclear weapon. That’s important. We should 

not discount those capabilities. We have built them, we have spent 

money on them, and we should in fact understand how nuclear 

weapons play into this integrated force. 

I’ll close by just hitting a couple of the numbers that we have in 

the study and then we’ll be ready to take questions after the other 

two gents have a chance to talk. The study recommends—and this 

is illustrative in nature; it is not a hard number. But we recommend 900 total weapons in the inventory. That’s not like we 

have done treaties up until now, which just recategorizes weapons 

and we still maintain thousands of weapons in other categories. 

This is a total. All other weapons would be eliminated. 900 total 

in the inventory, not deployed. This is the total number, 900. 

Of those, today we would allocate about 720 of them to the Trident force, and we would reduce that Trident force from 12 to 10. 

We would use the force structure that we have today, on the bomber side 18 B–2’s, capable of delivering, and we would have 180 

weapons in that inventory for them. 

Of each of those, the 720 and the 180, only a fraction of those 

would be deployed at any given time. We’re generally in the mode 

of one deployed, two in the pipeline, so to speak, either being recharacterized and going through testing and upgrading or in a 

hedge status that could be brought out in days or weeks if they 

were needed. 

The posture that we would advocate for is a posture that does 

not have these weapons on minute by minute alert. It is a posture 

that would have these weapons available in 24 to 48 hours. We 

worked hard on that activity. We believe that it is doable. There 

are a lot of assumptions in these numbers. There are a lot of assumptions in that posture that we would have to work our way towards. 

PREPARED STATEMENT 

There is no recommendation for unilateral movement to these 

numbers. It should be done in conjunction with the Russians. It 
8 

should be done in conjunction with other nuclear nation states, so 

that as we move we have an understanding of what our adversaries are doing. We potentially can start to change the character 

of the alert posture from one that is offensive weapons on alert to 

defensive weapons on alert, as we develop credible capabilities to 

provide that alternative. 

We believe that we can be well on that path in a period of about 

10 years. The savings that we would think are available here are 

in the $100 to $120 billion in that first 10 to 15 years, depending 

on the pace at which we wanted to move towards this activity. 

Most of that money is cost avoidance. It’s cost avoidance. It’s not 

building as many submarines, it’s not building as many weapons, 

it’s not doing as much on the life-extension program, because we 

don’t need as many weapons. So a lot of this money is cost avoidance. I’ll give you that right up front. But it is still money and we 

still have to think about it. 

Thank you for this opportunity. I stand ready for your questions. 

[The statement follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF GENERAL JAMES E. CARTWRIGHT, UNITED STATES MARINE

CORPS (RETIRED) AND AMBASSADOR THOMAS R. PICKERING

INTRODUCTION

Senators Inouye, Feinstein, Alexander, and other distinguished members, it’s an 

honor and a pleasure for us to present testimony before this august committee. 

Thank you for inviting us and for taking an interest in the findings and proposals 

of the Global Zero U.S. Nuclear Policy Commission on which we served. We hope 

our commission report (Modernizing U.S. Nuclear Strategy, Force Structure and 

Posture, May 2012) and remarks here contribute to your vitally important work in 

protecting America’s national security. Our written joint testimony highlights some 

of the commission’s key conclusions and recommendations as well as answers some 

of the critical questions raised by readers after the report was released to the public. 

THE GLOBAL ZERO COMMISSION AIMS AND PURPOSES

The goal of the commission was simple: conceive and articulate a nuclear strategy, 

force structure, and posture that best address the national security challenges our 

country faces in the 21st century. We first considered present and future threats 

across the spectrum of possibilities, ranging from deliberate or accidental nuclear 

attack by a nation state to terrorist nuclear attack—and everything in between. 

Then we assessed the role of U.S. nuclear weapons in diminishing these dangers 

through deterrence or war-fighting, and also weighed the potential for missile defenses, conventional forces, alliance cooperation and diplomacy to offer non-nuclear 

tools to our kitbag for dealing with these threats. Next we performed a net assessment of both the benefits and risks of further nuclear arms reductions and lowered 

launch readiness (‘‘de-alerting’’). Finally, we formulated a new construct for a 21st 

century nuclear strategy. 

Of special interest to the commission was the paramount goal of broadening the 

scope of nuclear arms reductions to include all countries and all types of weapons 

in their possession. The nearly half-century of arms negotiations with the Russians 

has been an exclusively two-sided affair that has excluded some important players. 

These negotiations need to be extended to China and other nations that maintain 

existing or planned nuclear arsenals. The major risks of nuclear weapons use, proliferation and arms race instability in fact mostly lie outside the U.S.-Russian 

arena, particularly in Northeast and South Asia and in the Middle East. It is essential to begin a multilateral process that brings the rest of the nuclear-armed world 

to the negotiating table to begin to cap, freeze, reduce and otherwise constrain these 

third-country nuclear arms programs. We estimate that U.S. and Russian arsenals 

would need to be downsized substantially—900 or fewer total weapons on each 

side—in order to draw these third-countries into the process. 
9 

A 2022 U.S. NUCLEAR FORCE

Our net assessment concluded that the current U.S. nuclear force remains sized 

and organized operationally for fighting the ‘‘last war’’—the cold war—even though 

threats from that era posed by the Soviet Union and China have greatly diminished 

or disappeared. Russian and China are not mortal enemies of the United States. 

Our geopolitical relations with our former cold war adversaries have fundamentally 

changed for the better. 

The U.S. (and Russian) arsenal is thus over-stocked. Ample latitude exists for further nuclear cuts. The extent of such cuts, the composition of the reduced arsenals, 

and the number of weapons held in reserve as a geopolitical hedge against a downturn in relations are matters worthy of public debate, and of congressional hearings. 

There are a number of alternative force structures that would well serve to maintain a credible U.S. nuclear deterrent and advance other national security interests. 

In the commission’s view, one such illustrative nuclear force would be composed 

of 900 total strategic weapons—total deployed and reserve—on a dyad of ballistic 

missile submarines and strategic bombers. This would represent a steep (80 percent) 

reduction from the current U.S. arsenal, but it would not be a small force, nor a 

humble force designed for minimal deterrence. It would not entail a radical shift in 

targeting philosophy away from military targets to population centers. It is not a 

city-busting strategy. On the contrary, it would hold at risk all the major categories 

of facilities in all the countries of interest—a diverse set of nuclear/weapons of mass 

destruction (WMD) forces and facilities, top military and political leadership, and 

war-supporting industry. It would fulfill reasonable requirements of deterrence visa`-vis every country considered to pose a potential WMD threat to the United States. 

STRENGTHENING UNIVERSAL NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT AND NONPROLIFERATION

At the same time, an arsenal shrunk to 900 total U.S. weapons, matched by comparable Russian reductions, would represent a dramatic cut that should work to 

draw the other nuclear countries into a multilateral process culminating in formal 

arms reduction negotiations among all nations with nuclear arms. 

It should also demonstrate a serious U.S. and Russian commitment to fulfilling 

their disarmament obligations under Article 6 of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and 

thereby help rally the anti-proliferation community to greater efforts to thwart 

would-be proliferators. The idea is not that virtuous U.S. and Russian behavior in 

the form of steep nuclear arms reductions will inspire aspiring proliferators to abandon their quests. We do not subscribe to this naı ̈ve notion. Rather, there are reasons 

to believe that such behavior could inspire our antiproliferation partners to get 

tougher with recalcitrant states seeking the bomb. 

REDUCING U.S.-RUSSIA NUCLEAR ARMS THROUGH NEGOTIATIONS

The commissioners agreed that cuts to 900 total nuclear weapons in the U.S. and 

Russian arsenals should be the aim of the next round of bilateral New START follow-on negotiations. We call upon them to reach a comprehensive, verifiable agreement that provides for equal reductions by both sides down to a total force of 900 

weapons that counts all types of strategic and nonstrategic weapons—with ‘‘freedom 

to mix’’ on both sides—and that counts every individual warhead or bomb whether 

deployed or held in reserve. 

We wish to emphasize that the commission does not call for unilateral cuts by the 

United States. Our view is that the only valid and useful approach should be to negotiate an agreement with the Russians. However, there may well be other ways 

to advance the goal of further reductions. Some unilateral steps, or parallel reciprocal steps along the lines of the 1991 Presidential Nuclear Initiatives, could facilitate the effort. For instance, Russia has already dropped below its allowed ceiling 

of 1,550 deployed strategic forces stipulated by the New START agreement. It may 

behoove the United States to follow in Russia’s footsteps and take advantage of Russia’s unilateral reductions to reduce U.S. forces below the allowed level as an approach designed to remove the incentive for Russia to build its forces back up and 

take advantage of the benefits, set out further in this presentation, of additional reductions. This would serve to lower the ceiling on deployments and maintain momentum for further reductions. It would match U.S. and Russian forces, take advantage of Russian unilateral needs to restrict its force size, maintain stability and 

serve as a further reinforcement of the process of mutual reductions. There is no 

reason why the present verification systems could not be used or adapted for use 

for these kinds of steps. In short, there is some scope for parallel reciprocal steps 

to advance the cause of bilateral arms cuts, but we would certainly pursue the cuts 
10 

through direct negotiations with the Russians, and then would seek to add the other 

nuclear weapons countries to this formal process. 

We envision each side enjoying substantial latitude to choose the composition of 

their own forces according to their perceived security needs as long as they do not 

exceed the 900-warhead ceiling. This potential variation in the composition of forces 

is another reason why we characterize our proposed U.S. force structure as ‘‘illustrative.’’ Our commission strongly supports an open debate on the appropriate 

make-up of U.S. nuclear forces, and acknowledges that honest differences of opinion 

exist. Experts differ on the relative merits of bombers, submarines and land-based 

missiles, for instance, and also debate whether it is necessary to maintain three different types of delivery vehicles in the U.S. arsenal. 

FROM TRIAD TO DYAD: ELIMINATING THE LAND-BASED MISSILE COMPONENT

After evaluating the vulnerability, flexibility, and other key characteristics of the 

different delivery systems, our commission concluded that a dyad of sea- and airbased strategic weapons would meet the post-cold war requirements of deterring a 

WMD attack on the United States. The Minuteman land-based intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) would be eliminated in this scheme. 

The elimination of Minuteman and consequently of the TRIAD of delivery vehicles 

in favor of a dyad stemmed from the fact that Minuteman is vulnerable and inflexible from a targeting standpoint. 

Minuteman is vulnerable to sudden decimation unless it is launched promptly on 

tactical warning of an incoming Russian missile strike. The ability to launch 

promptly the Minuteman force (within a few minutes) is often touted as a virtue, 

but in reality it is a liability. In the (admittedly extremely improbable) event of a 

large-scale Russian nuclear missile strike against the three U.S. Minuteman fields, 

enormous pressure would be exerted upon the National Command Authority rapidly 

to authorize the immediate firing of the force en masse—the deadline for a presidential (or successor) execution decision would be 12 minutes at most. Moreover, the 

unleashing of Minuteman forces would necessitate unleashing other strategic missiles—notably Trident submarine missiles, because of the integrated operational nature of major attack options to assure full coverage of all intended targets. 

The second severe deficiency of Minuteman is its targeting inflexibility. It is suitable for the most unlikely scenario—large-scale nuclear war with Russia—but is unsuitable for nuclear conflict with North Korea or Iran because it would have to fly 

over both Russia and China to reach either of them. In the very unlikely event of 

a U.S.-China nuclear conflict, Minuteman missiles would have to fly over Russia to 

reach China. 

Put differently, the Minuteman force is suitable only for Russia contingencies, our 

least likely adversary in nuclear conflict. The other legs of the commission’s proposed dyad offer means of dealing with almost any scenario involving a WMD threat 

to America from a nation-state adversary. Neither U.S. strategic submarine missiles 

nor strategic bombers are constrained by rigid flight trajectories. These are versatile 

platforms that offer highly flexible angles of attack against practically any target 

on the globe. Although a prompt global strike by Minuteman could be carried out 

with a single warhead, a Trident missile could perform the same mission (if a small 

number would be downloaded to carry a single warhead instead of the multiple warheads now carried) without risk of causing Russia to think it is under nuclear missile attack and ordering a nuclear ‘‘counter-strike’’ in retaliation. Moreover, ballistic 

missile submarines on alert patrol can be fired almost as quickly as Minuteman 

missiles if so desired (15 minutes versus 2 minutes), although the commission did 

not identify scenarios in which the prompt launch of sea-based ballistic missiles 

armed with nuclear warheads fulfilled any evident national security requirement. 

One critic of the proposal to eliminate Minuteman (and cancel any follow-on nuclear ICBM program), the Chief of Staff of the Air Force, recently asserted that a 

critical virtue of this force is that it forces an enemy bent on attacking the United 

States to strike the American homeland. Gen. Norton Schwartz said, ‘‘Why do we 

have a land-based deterrent force? It’s so that an adversary has to strike the homeland.’’ In the commission’s view, the optimal U.S. nuclear deterrent would ensure 

that the U.S. homeland is never struck with nuclear weapons in the event of war 

while preserving the full elements of deterrence currently available to the President. 

DE-ALERTING STRATEGIC FORCES

The commission viewed unfavorably the continuing practice of keeping Minuteman and strategic submarines on launch-ready alert, and especially of gearing the 

nuclear command-control-communications and warning system from the President 

on down to the individual launch commanders for rapidly executing the forces in 
11 

the opening phase of a nuclear conflict. (The Russia system is similarly organized.) 

The short-fused Minuteman and strategic submarine alert forces, together with the 

supporting rapid reaction command system, impose a severe constraint on presidential deliberation and choice during a crisis or conflict. Public reports of past experience with short time lines for decisionmaking have shown that the process is 

flawed and that near cataclysmic errors have been narrowly avoided but made more 

likely by the rushed nature of the process. The President and his top advisors 

should have many more tools at their disposal, including non-nuclear options, and 

be afforded the time to deliberate and exercise these tools, which include diplomacy. 

The day-to-day high alert posture of the United States today also represents a 

threat to Russia that has untoward unanticipated consequences for the United 

States. By dint of possessing the ability to fire U.S. strategic missiles promptly on 

warning (‘‘launch-under-attack’’ in the operating vernacular), the United States concurrently possesses the ability to initiate a sudden massive strike against Russia 

(or any other country). This surprise attack option technically threatens the survival 

of almost all Russian nuclear forces in their day-to-day configuration unless, like the 

United States, Russia launches these forces out from under the attack, on warning. 

If coupled with U.S. missile defenses designed against Russia’s strategic retaliatory 

forces—a current Russian fear despite American assurances that Russia is not a target of such defenses—the U.S. first-strike threat puts Russia on even greater vigilance and launch readiness. 

The upshot is that both U.S. and Russian forces are kept on quick-launch alert 

because the other side does the same. This entwines the two countries in a proverbial ‘‘hair-trigger’’ dynamic that increases the risks of accidental, mistaken, inadvertent, misinformed, or unauthorized launch with devastating consequences. 

Launch on false warning is doubly worrisome in light of the chronic deficiencies in 

Russian early warning that are not going away anytime soon. This is a serious risk 

not to be undertaken without the greatest care to avoid it, and we believe that can 

be done with our proposals while still protecting the essential security interests of 

the nation. 

These postures also set a terrible example for the other nuclear armed nations, 

who for various reasons have not yet adopted launch-ready postures for their own 

forces. As a rule, their warheads and bombs are kept separate from their means of 

delivery, a safe practice that greatly reduces the danger of an unintended nuclear 

exchange. We can imagine a multitude of grave dangers that would emerge if this 

practice is abandoned in favor of increasing the launch readiness of nuclear forces. 

Acute instability would arise if Pakistan, India, China, and North Korea adopted 

a quick-launch posture requiring execution decisions to be made within minutes and 

seconds on the basis of attack early warning indications from satellite infrared or 

ground radar sensors. The risks of unauthorized launch, or the terrorist capture of 

dispersed assembled weapons, would also grow significantly. 

In short, the current launch-ready postures of the United States and Russia are 

major sources of instability. They not only would generate pressure on leaders to 

make a premature decision on the use of nuclear weapons in a crisis, but they also 

run a risk of unintentional strikes. The postures pose an existential threat to the 

very survival of the United States, and Russia perceives no less cause for concern. 

The commission therefore recommended the de-alerting of U.S. strategic forces in 

tandem with Russian de-alerting. A negotiated agreement that cuts the Gordian 

knot and allows both sides to stand down their forces would well serve their vital 

security and safety interests. In a similar vein, we also proposed that the United 

States deploy only 270 U.S. sea-based strategic warheads on day-to-day patrol, a 

number that is below the approximate threshold of 300 warheads that constitute a 

first-strike decapitation threat to Russia. This reduced deployment level would further allay Russian concern over its vulnerability and encourage it to get off of its 

dangerous ‘‘hair-trigger’’ launch posture. 

If the U.S. strategic arsenal required 24 to 72 hours to generate the ability to fire 

and the Russians followed suit, the world would be far safer and a norm would be 

forged to encourage other countries to maintain their current practice of keeping 

weapons separated from their bombers, submarines, and land-based rockets. Again, 

as we make clear, this is not a unilateral step but a reciprocal one with Russia to 

begin with and others to follow. It would be insured by the levels of reliability we 

have achieved and can achieve through further work on the verification systems and 

procedures that we have already engaged in our nuclear arrangements with Russia. 

PROMPT LAUNCH CONSTRAINS PRESIDENTIAL DECISIONMAKING

While some observers may view this 24–72 hour generation requirement as a constraint that would hobble a U.S. President in a crisis, our commission found that 
12 

the current posture, which exerts pressure on the President to make a nuclear 

choice rapidly, is a far greater constraint. Launch-under-attack pressure severely 

hobbles presidential decisionmaking. It deprives our leaders of the time necessary 

for deliberation and of the tools needed to direct U.S. power to coherent national 

purpose. 

NEW STRATEGY AND TOOLS TO SUPPORT PRESIDENTIAL CONFLICT DELIBERATION AND

CHOICE

This commission recommendation therefore undertakes the responsibility of suggesting a strategy that would relieve the pressure on our leaders and reduce our 

reliance on nuclear weapons as a primary or unique choice in the face of aggression. 

Our report lays out the elements of this strategy, which features a growing role for 

missile defenses and conventional forces including a new ICBM (HTV–2) with a conventional warhead and sufficient range to reach practically any target in the world 

from home bases on U.S. soil without traversing Russian territory during flight. Its 

range and accuracy would provide an unprecedented tool for destroying critical targets globally within 1 hour. At present, the only tool available to the President for 

such a global quick strike is a nuclear warhead atop a land- or sea-based missile. 

Missile defenses and conventional offensive forces as well as other kinetic and 

non-kinetic (cyber) tools of warfare, and various ‘‘soft power’’ tools would be designed 

to buy time for a day or two and exert non-nuclear leverage to resolve a dispute 

before it could escalate to nuclear dimensions. This strategy would empower a president, not hobble him. It would extend the deadline for a nuclear decision. It would 

help stabilize a crisis. Again, it is the paucity of non-nuclear options and the time 

pressure to resort to nuclear options that represents the fundamental problem for 

presidential choice. 

DOWNSIZING THE NUCLEAR COMPLEX; RISKS AND COST SAVINGS

Under the commission’s plan, the number of different types of nuclear weapons 

in the U.S. active inventory would decrease from seven types today to four by 2022. 

The need to re-furbish weapons remaining in the stockpile would greatly diminish— 

almost all of weapons previously requiring it would be eliminated from the active 

inventory. This drastic curtailing of the life-extension program for thousands of 

weapons currently in the pipeline would save at least $10 billion. 

The existing plutonium pit facility at Los Alamos could readily service the regular 

pit manufacturing demands of a 900-warhead arsenal. Assuming a 50-year pit shelf 

life, only 2 percent of the active stockpile, or 18 warheads, would need to be remanufactured each year. The facility has a normal throughput capacity of about 20 

per year with the option to add extra staff shifts in order to raise capacity to 40 

pits per year. With the addition of extra equipment (5–6 years to install), the capacity could be increased to perhaps as high as 80 per year. 

This number would grow higher still if old pits could be re-used and if pits with 

sensitive, conventional high explosives could be re-fitted with insensitive high explosives to improve safety. Current studies underway at the U.S. national laboratories 

to be completed within the next couple of years should determine the feasibility of 

these options. Preliminary analyses suggest that upwards of 50 percent of plutonium pits in the stockpile could be swapped out in these processes, allowing for a 

much faster rate of pit replacement. 

In an emergency in which a systemic defect in one of the four warhead types warranted a crash effort to replace those warheads, it appears feasible that upwards 

of 120 defective weapons per year could be remedied through a combination of pit 

manufacturing and pit re-use. Such a systemic defect is a low-probability event, but 

assuming 225 defective warheads (notionally one-fourth of the 900-warhead total) 

needed to be repaired, it would take approximately 2 years of full-capacity work to 

finish the job. 

In short, the current plutonium facility with some new equipment working overtime with other partners such as the Pantex facility could probably handle an unusual emergency to replace a big chunk of the arsenal. Our commission viewed this 

capability of the existing facilities as obviating the need to build the multibillion dollar new facility now in early construction stage at Los Alamos. However, some small 

additional risk of reduced stockpile reliability must be acknowledged if we shrink 

the variety of warhead types from seven to four, and the margin of comfort for replacing an entire category of weapons in the event of a systemic defect is not large. 

On balance, our commission deemed these risks to be quite low, and acceptable, but 

we strongly recommend a full-scope survey by the pertinent agencies (National Nuclear Security Administration—NNSA, the national laboratories, and Strategic Com-
13 

mand) to determine an optimal infrastructure in support of the 900-warhead arsenal 

outlined in the commission report. 

DOWNSIZING THE NUCLEAR FORCE STRUCTURE; RISKS AND COST SAVINGS

Unforeseen Nuclear Challengers? 

Some readers of our report have raised the question whether our illustrative force 

would be stretched thin and fall short if an unanticipated threat of major proportions emerged from an unexpected source—perhaps an unfriendly state that unexpectedly breaks out a substantial nuclear arsenal, or an existing state such as China 

that greatly expands its nuclear arsenal. (In China’s case, its recent nuclear modernization created an infrastructure capable of substantially increasing its existing 

small arsenal if it chose to do so.) 

The answer to this question has three parts. First, this is an intelligence challenge that warrants an intelligence estimate as to the likelihood of such break-out 

or rapid expansion scenarios over the next 10 years. Our commission found no 

grounds to believe that the intelligence community places any credence in them. A 

Chinese surge is unlikely to yield an arsenal much larger than 250–300 warheads. 

A Russian surge appears both financially and technically implausible. Although 

Russia has begun a strategic modernization program with upwards of $70 billion 

earmarked for this purpose over the next 10 years (an amount far less than the 

planned U.S. strategic modernization budget over the same period), the ability of 

its military-industrial infrastructure to deliver the goods has proven to be quite impaired. Pakistan, currently an unfriendly ally of the United States, is rapidly growing its arsenal, but its focus is India. Other candidates for such a surge are unclear 

to us. In short, while we do not claim clairvoyance, the prospect that any aspiring 

proliferator or existing nuclear-armed nation will undertake a crash build-up on a 

large scale is remote. 

Second, it is highly doubtful that any of the hypothetical possibilities could unfold 

without being detected. Since the beginning of the nuclear age, no nation has ever 

produced enough nuclear weapons material to build a bomb without first being detected by foreign intelligence. (This applies even to the super-secret U.S. Manhattan 

project in the mid-1940s, before the advent of satellite surveillance or on-site inspections.) It strains credulity to project a breakout of such a magnitude over the next 

10 years that the United States would wake up one morning and find itself ‘‘outgunned.’’ 

Third, in any case the proposed U.S. arsenal is sufficient to project a draconian 

threat of retaliation against any and all possible nuclear newcomers or late-bloomers over the next decade and beyond. It is sufficient to deter reliably any conceivable 

threat on the horizon. 

Cost Savings 

A significant cost savings would accrue if our illustrative force structure is implemented. An 80-percent force reduction that includes the elimination of all Minuteman missiles (and cancellation of its replacement), all B–52 bombers and all tactical 

nuclear forces in the U.S. inventory, combined with a scaling back of future strategic submarine construction from 12 to 10 boats and of the strategic bomber replacement aircraft to a minimum number of nuclear-capable aircraft (e.g., 30), 

would save an estimated $100 billion over the next 15 years. As noted earlier, the 

illustrative force would also impose lighter demands on the nuclear complex, saving 

an additional (est.) $20 billion during this period. The total savings for our proposed 

nuclear architecture is roughly estimated to be $120 billion over the next 15 years. 

CONCLUSION

The nuclear strategy, force structure and posture proposed by our diverse commission of generals, diplomats, strategic arms negotiators and policymakers are not necessarily the Holy Grail for the next phase of our Nation’s pursuit of security in the 

21st century. We believe, however, that our recommendations promise to more 

squarely and effectively address the real threats that our Nation will be facing over 

the next decade than current U.S. nuclear policy promises. A fundamental transformation of our nuclear architecture and policy is needed to maintain a credible 

U.S. deterrent against classical risks of nuclear aggression by other nations while 

preserving strategic stability and protecting the nation against nuclear proliferation, 

terrorism, cyber warfare, failed states, organized crime, regional conflict and other 

threats the 21st century has wrought. We appreciate the opportunity to present our 

findings and join the debate. 

Senator FEINSTEIN. Thank you very much, General. 
14 

Ambassador Pickering. 

STATEMENT OF HON. THOMAS PICKERING, FORMER UNDERSECRETARY FOR POLITICAL AFFAIRS, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT 

OF STATE 

Ambassador PICKERING. Thank you very much, Madam Chairwoman and Senator Alexander. It’s a pleasure to be here this 

morning and a particular pleasure to follow on General Cartwright, 

who chaired the commission and whose I think brilliant presentation this morning laid out for you not only the problem, but some 

directions toward which the illustrative figures in the report that 

we prepared can provide a solution. 

I will follow along in his wake literally and talk about some of 

the political points that we believe will be important in dealing 

with some of the areas that he was expressing a deep concern 

about, which I share: the question of proliferation and also the 

question of the stability of forces on both sides and some of the 

problems that we hope will be dealt with by this particular approach in terms of the pressure for very early decision under conditions of some uncertainty, which we have had before. 

Of special interest to our commission was the paramount goal of 

broadening the scope of nuclear arms reductions to include all of 

the countries and all of the types of the weapons in their possession. The nearly half century of arms control negotiations has involved us pretty exclusively with the Russians in a two-sided affair 

that has obviously left aside other important players, such as 

China, Britain, and France, among the five recognized nuclear powers. These negotiations obviously will need to be extended to China 

and to other nations that maintain existing or planned nuclear arsenals, and in my own view they will have to come as well to countries like India and Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea, and if, God 

forbid, Iran becomes such a power, with Iran. 

The major risks of nuclear weapon use, proliferation and arms 

race instability, in fact mostly lie outside, as the General made 

clear, the U.S.-Russian arena. Particularly, they lie in Northeast 

and South Asia and in the Middle East. It is essential to begin a 

multilateral process that brings the rest of the nuclear-armed 

world to the negotiating table and that begins the process that we 

have long established of capping, freezing, and then reducing and 

otherwise constraining these third country nuclear arms programs. 

Our commission estimated that the U.S. and Russian arsenals 

would need to be downsized substantially, to the 900 or fewer total 

weapons on each side that the General spoke about, in order to 

draw these third countries into the process. At the sake time, an 

arsenal shrunk to 900 total U.S. weapons, matched by comparable 

Russian reductions, would represent in itself a dramatic cut that 

should work to draw those countries into the multilateral process, 

culminating in formal arms reduction negotiations among all nations with nuclear arms. 

It should also demonstrate a serious U.S. and Russian commitment to fulfill their disarmament obligations under Article 6 of the 

Non-Proliferation Treaty and thereby help to convince those that 

might be significantly interested in proliferation that the comparable portion of the bargain on the other side, serious reductions 

in the direction of elimination by the U.S. and Russia, was obvi-
15 

ously taking place, and that greater efforts in this direction I think 

would be part of the background for the kind of work that we 

would like to take to enhance our efforts at proliferation. 

The idea is not, Madam Chairwoman, that the virtuous U.S. and 

Russian behavior in the form of steep nuclear arms reductions will 

inspire aspiring proliferators to abandon their quests. We don’t ascribe to that naive or somewhat naive notion. Rather, there are 

reasons to believe that that behavior would inspire our 

antiproliferation partners to get tougher on the recalcitrant states 

that are seeking the bomb. 

The commissioners agreed that a total cut to 900 weapons in the 

U.S. and Russian arsenals would be the aim or should be the aim 

of the next round of bilateral New START negotiations to follow on 

the ones that were successfully completed earlier in the administration. We call upon them to reach a comprehensive, verifiable 

agreement that provides for equal reductions by both sides down 

to the total force we outlined and that counts all types, as the General made clear, of strategic and nonstrategic weapons, with the 

freedom to mix on both sides, that counts every individual warhead 

or bomb whether deployed or held in reserve. 

We want to emphasize that the commission does not call for unilateral cuts by the United States. Our view is that the only valid 

and useful approach should be a negotiated agreement with the 

Russians. However, there may well be other ways to advance the 

goal of further reductions. Some unilateral steps or parallel reciprocal steps along the lines of the 1991 Presidential Nuclear Initiatives under President Reagan could facilitate the effort. 

For instance, Russia has already dropped below its allowed ceiling of 1,550 deployed strategic forces stipulated in New START. It 

may well behoove the United States to follow in Russia’s footsteps 

and take advantage of Russia’s apparent unilateral reductions to 

reduce U.S. forces below the allowed level as an approach designed 

to remove the incentive for Russia to rebuild forces back up to a 

higher level and take advantage of the benefits, including for our 

own budget, if I could put it that way, set out further in our presentation of additional reductions. 

This would serve to lower the ceiling on deployments and maintain momentum for further reductions. It could take advantage of 

Russian unilateral needs to restrict its force size while maintaining 

stability and serve as a further reinforcement of the process of mutual reductions. There’s no reason why the present verification system could not be adapted, expanded, enlarged, and this will require 

some inventive work, to take care of the verification of this kind 

of a process. 

We envisage each side enjoying substantial latitude to choose the 

composition of its forces to meet their perceived security needs, as 

long as they don’t exceed the maximum allowed number, whether 

that be 900 or a different ceiling. This potential variation in the 

compositions of the forces is another reason why we characterize 

our proposed U.S. force as illustrative. 

Much thought needs to be given, much new work needs to be accomplished, before some final view on this can be expressed. But 

we believe that raising it here at the hearings is an important way 

to begin that process, and we thank you for doing that. 
16 

I have a few final words. The commission is recommending that 

the United States undertake the responsibility—or that it undertake the responsibility here in the United States for suggesting a 

strategy that would relieve the pressure on our leaders and reduce 

their reliance on nuclear weapons as a primary or unique choice in 

the face of aggression. Our report lays out the elements of that 

strategy and points as well to the growing role for missile defense 

and conventional forces, including a new ICBM with a conventional 

warhead and sufficient range to reach practically any target in the 

world from home bases on our own soil, without traversing Russian 

territory during the flight. Range and accuracy of this missile 

would provide an unprecedented tool for dealing with critical targets globally within an hour. At present, the only tool available to 

the President for such global quick strike is a nuclear warhead on 

top of a land or a sea-based missile. 

Missile defenses and conventional offensive forces, as well as 

other kinetic and nonkinetic tools of warfare and various soft power 

tools would be designed to build in time for a day or two and exert 

non-nuclear leverage to resolve disputes before they could escalate 

to their nuclear dimensions. I know you and the committee appreciate the value of all of this. 

The strategy would empower a president, not hobble him with 

the need for rapid and excruciatingly difficult decisions under tight 

time deadlines. It would extend the deadline for nuclear decisions 

and would help stabilize crises. Again, the paucity of non-nuclear 

options and the time pressure to resort to nuclear options represent 

fundamental problems at the present time. 

I won’t go further into some of the other issues, except I wanted 

briefly to address finally the question of cost savings. A significant 

cost saving would accrue if our illustrative force structure or something like it is implemented. An 80-percent force reduction that includes the elimination of all Minuteman missiles and cancellation 

of its replacement, all B–52 bombers, all tactical nuclear forces in 

the U.S. inventory, combined with a scaling back of future strategic 

submarine construction from 12 to 10 boats as the General has outlined, and of the strategic bomber replacement aircraft to a minimum number of nuclear aircraft, would save an estimated $100 

billion over 15 years. 

As noted earlier in our report and in our testimony, the illustrative force would also pose lighter demands on our nuclear complex, saving perhaps an estimated $20 billion during this period. 

The total savings for our proposed nuclear architecture is roughly 

then estimated at $120 billion over the next 10 years, as an example, Madam Chairman, of the issues that you would like us to have 

discussed. 

It’s been a pleasure to make my presentation and I look forward 

to the questions. 

Senator FEINSTEIN. Thank you very much, Ambassador. 

Dr. Payne. 

STATEMENT OF KEITH B. PAYNE, Ph.D., PROFESSOR AND DEPARTMENT HEAD, MISSOURI STATE UNIVERSITY, DEPARTMENT OF 

DEFENSE AND STRATEGIC STUDIES 

Dr. PAYNE. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. It’s an honor to be 

here this morning. 
17 

The number of U.S. START-accountable strategic nuclear weapons has been reduced by more than 80 percent since the end of the 

cold war. Some analyses, such as the Global Nuclear Zero (GNZ) 

Commission Report, recommend further deep reductions compatible 

with a minimum deterrence policy. I have enormous respect for my 

colleagues at the table and had the pleasure of working with General Cartwright for years, but I believe there are six basic problems 

with this report’s recommendations, as is the case with most proposals for minimum deterrence. 

First, the report recommends deep U.S. reductions that would 

leave only a small U.S. nuclear dyad of sea-based missiles and B– 

2 bombers. When our understanding of opponents suggests that deterring them requires flexible targeting options and a basic threat 

to well-protected leaders, military forces, and internal security 

forces as may be the case, then this minimum deterrence dyad 

would not be compatible with effective deterrence. It would be dangerously vulnerable and inflexible and incapable of addressing even 

the extremely limited targets sets outlined in the GNZ report. 

For more than five decades, all Democratic and Republican administrations have sought to avoid such a dangerous condition. The 

GNZ report essentially answers this concern by asserting that Russia and China are not opponents and are unlikely ever to be so 

again. Over the past several years, however, top Russian leaders 

have made numerous threats of preemptive and preventive nuclear 

strike against U.S. allies and friends. To claim that nuclear weapons will not be salient in contemporary or future relations with 

Russia or China is, I believe, an unwarranted and highly optimistic 

hope, not a prudent basis for calculating U.S. deterrence requirements. 

Second, deterrence must work in contemporary and future crises. 

Yet no one knows what will be the future force requirements for 

a credible deterrent because opponents and threats shift so rapidly. 

Consequently, a priority force requirement now is sufficient flexibility and diversity to adapt deterrence to a wide spectrum of potential opponents and threats. 

Yet the minimum deterrence dyad recommended in the GNZ report would be the opposite of flexible and resilient. What level of 

U.S. forces is compatible with the requisite U.S. flexibility and resilience? In 2001 we defined 1,700 to 2,200 warhead ceiling with 

essentially no limits on launchers of such a force. In 2010 General 

Kevin Chilton, then Commander of Strategic Command, stated that 

the ceilings of the New START treaty are the lowest numbers that 

he could accept, given this need for U.S. flexibility. 

Third, deterrence is not the only goal of U.S. nuclear forces. U.S. 

forces must also contribute to the assurance of our allies and 

friends. Key allies believe that the credibility of U.S. extended deterrence commitments depends on a wide variety of U.S. nuclear 

capabilities, their quantity, and their location, and the U.S. capability to threaten a wide variety of targets. 

Yet the report’s minimum deterrence force levels appear to have 

little or nothing to do with the quantity, types, or location of U.S. 

nuclear forces needed to assure our allies. 

Proponents of minimum deterrence typically respond to this concern with the assertion that is repeated in the GNZ report, that 
18 

conventional forces can provide credible assurance for allies increasingly. However, some allies already openly state that if U.S. 

nuclear credibility wanes they will be compelled to find their own 

independent deterrence capabilities. That could lead to a cascade of 

nuclear proliferation. 

Non-nuclear capabilities may some day be adequate for assurance purposes, but that day has not arrived, per the express view 

of key allies who are concerned about U.S. credibility at current 

force levels. 

Fourth, the basic rationale for further U.S. reductions is to 

strengthen global cooperation on nuclear nonproliferation, a rationale repeated in the GNZ report. The net effect of U.S. movement 

toward minimum deterrence, however, may instead be to increase 

nuclear proliferation, as allies feel compelled to establish their own 

deterrence capabilities. 

Fifth, proponents of minimum deterrence also claim that further 

deep force reductions will save scarce U.S. dollars. To state that 

moneys would not be needed if the triad were to be abandoned is 

to state the obvious. However, the real question in this regard is 

the net cost of deep nuclear reductions, given the corresponding 

necessary buildup of advanced conventional weapons, a need acknowledged by the authors of the report. Claiming savings from a 

transition to minimum deterrence is at best a half truth and we 

should never take risks with our deterrence credibility. The stakes 

are too high. 

Sixth, the GNZ report, unlike others, justifies further deep reductions as a necessary step en route to global nuclear zero. Recall, 

however, that the Bipartisan Congressional Strategic Posture Commission concluded unanimously that, ‘‘The conditions that might 

make the elimination of nuclear weapons possible are not present 

today and establishing such conditions would require a fundamental transformation of the world political order.’’ The establishment of a powerful and reliable global collective security system 

would be such a fundamental global transition. Further U.S. nuclear reductions would not be. 

PREPARED STATEMENT 

The horrific scale of warfare that the world often suffered up 

until 1945, including 110 million casualties in the approximately 

10 years of war of World War I and II, that level has not been repeated since 1945, thanks at least in part to nuclear deterrence. 

Prudence suggests that we not put nuclear deterrence at risk until 

a reliable alternative approach to peacekeeping is in hand, which 

certainly is not now. 

In summary, I’m skeptical of the GNZ report and further U.S. 

deep nuclear reductions, not for reasons of old think, but because 

the supposed benefits are dubious or illusory and the effects may 

be to undermine deterrence, to undermine assurance, and to increase nuclear proliferation in an era of great uncertainty. 

Thank you. 

[The statement follows:] 
19 

1Department of States, Bureau of Arms Control, Verification and Compliance, Fact Sheet, 

New START Treaty Aggregate Numbers of Strategic Arms, April 6, 2012. 2Federation of American Scientists, From Counterforce to Minimal Deterrence: A New Policy 

Path Toward Eliminating Nuclear Weapons, Occasional Paper No. 7 (April 2009), available at: 

http://www.fas.org/pubs/ldocs/OccasionalPaper7.pdf. 3 ‘‘The emphasis in McNamara’s statements on nuclear forces and doctrine shifted after 1963 

to that of Assured Destruction. This doctrine held that a nuclear exchange would, with high 

probability, result in more than 100 million fatalities in both the United States and the U.S.S.R. 

and that attempts to limit damage through active and passive defenses could be readily defeated 

by improvements in offensive forces. The principal test of adequacy of the U.S. strategic force 

came to be the ability of our programmed force to produce civil damage, even against a greater 

than expected threat. The damage criterion settled on by McNamara for determining the size 

of the strategic force was the destruction of 20–25 percent of the Soviet population and 50 percent of its industrial capacity. The programmed forces decided on in the early 1960s readily met 

this test. So readily that it seemed evident that our forces were more than adequate. The primary purpose of the Assured Destruction capabilities doctrine was to provide a metric for deciding how much force was enough: it provided a basis for denying service and Congressional 

claims for more money for strategic forces.’’ Henry S. Rowen [deputy assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, 1961–1964], ‘‘Formulating Strategic Doctrine,’’ in Report 

of the Commission on the Organization of the Government for the Conduct of Foreign Policy, 

Vol. 4, Appendix K: Adequacy of Current Organization: Defense and Arms Control (Washington, 

DC: GPO, June 1975), p. 227 (emphasis in original). 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF DR. KEITH B. PAYNE

The number of United States Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START)-accountable strategic nuclear weapons has been reduced by more than 80 percent since the 

end of the cold war—from more than 10,000 weapons in 1991 to fewer than 1,800 

today.1 We clearly have been well past cold war force levels and strategies for many 

years. There is an on-going debate regarding the wisdom of reducing U.S. nuclear 

forces further. Some analyses, such as the Global Nuclear Zero Commission (GNZC) 

report, recommend further deep reductions; others are skeptical. 

The authors of the GNZC report suggest that the skeptics are driven by a continuing commitment to cold war strategies. In fact, this debate is not between ‘‘new 

think’’ and ‘‘old think.’’ Skeptics of further deep reductions have moved well beyond 

cold war thinking, and I know of no one who considers the prospective employment 

of nuclear weapons to be anything other than a last resort option in the most extreme circumstances. 

Instead, the basis for the differences between those who advocate further deep reductions and those who are skeptical reside in their fundamentally different views 

of deterrence, the current and future security environments, and the appropriate 

methods for measuring ‘‘how much is enough?’’ for the U.S. nuclear arsenal. The 

GNZC report, like similar reports promoting deep reductions, reflects a familiar approach to deterrence force sizing that dates back to the 1960s. 

This approach, often called Minimum Deterrence, considers the U.S. nuclear arsenal to be adequate if it essentially is capable of threatening a relatively small number of opponent targets. The types of targets to be threatened can vary, but the fundamental measure of force adequacy is the number of weapons considered necessary 

to cover targets that are relatively few in number and easy to strike. The force level 

deemed adequate via this methodology can be manipulated easily by defining and 

redefining the targets deemed suitable for deterrence. By defining down the number 

and types of targets considered important for deterrence, the number of U.S. nuclear 

weapons deemed adequate for deterrence can be reduced to low levels compatible 

with an aggressive arms control agenda. Opponents and threats may not have 

eased, but deterrence metrics can be redefined by fiat to be compatible with deep 

U.S. nuclear reductions. For decades, proposals for Minimum Deterrence and related low force levels typically have defined the requirements for deterrence in this 

fashion and thereby have created the deterrence policy narrative necessary for deep 

nuclear reductions.2

In the 1960s, for example, Secretary of Defense McNamara publicly defined 

threats to specific percentages of Soviet population and industry as the appropriate 

measure for U.S. deterrence threats. This formulation facilitated relatively low U.S. 

nuclear force requirements because the Soviet civilian targets declared key for deterrence were relatively few in number and highly vulnerable. According to senior 

DOD officials at the time, the ‘‘primary purpose’’ of this definition of deterrence adequacy was to have a relatively easy-to-meet measure in hand to answer the question 

‘‘how much force was enough’’.3

This Minimum Deterrence methodology for defining force requirements may be 

compatible with very low force levels, but is inadequate for six basic reasons. 

First, calculating the forces adequate for deterrence is not simply a matter of 

identifying some preferred type of U.S. threat that is compatible with very low force 
20 

4Dana J. Johnson, Christopher J. Bowie, and Robert P. Haffa, ‘‘Triad, Dyad, Monad? Shaping 

U.S. Nuclear Forces for the Future,’’ Presentation to the Air Force Association Mitchell Institute 

for Airpower Studies, Northrop, 11, available at http://www.northropgrumman.com/AboutUs/ 

AnalysisCenter/Documents/pdfs/triad-brief-to-afa-121009.pdf. This discussion is adapted with 

permission from Mark Schneider, ‘‘The Future of the U.S. ICBM Force,’’ Comparative Strategy, 

Vol. 3, No. 2 (Spring 2012), pp. 147–148. 5Owen C. W. Price and Jenifer Mackby, eds., ‘‘Debating 21st Century Nuclear Issues,’’ Washington, DC: Center For Strategic and International Studies, 2007, 23, available at http:// 

www.northropgrumman.com/AboutUs/AnalysisCenter/Documents/pdfs/triad-monograph.pdf. In 

1998, the Defense Science Board concluded that, ‘‘Without the ICBMs, surprise attacks against 

a handful of bomber bases and sea-launched ballistic missile facilities, with plausible 

deniability, could drastically alter the correlation of forces.’’ See General (ret.) John A. Shaud 

and Dale L. Hayden, ‘‘The Success of our ICBM Force: Capability, Commitment, and Communication,’’ in Fiftieth Anniversary of Intercontinental Missile, Air Force Space Command, High 

Frontier, February 2009, 8, available at www.afspc.af.mil/shared/media/document/AFD-090224- 

115.pdf. 6William Perry and James R. Schlesinger, America’s Strategic Posture: The Final Report of 

the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States (Washington, DC: 

U.S. Institute of Peace, 2009), pp. 25–26. 7 Ibid. p. 26. 

8See, Schneider, ‘‘The Future of the U.S. ICBM Force,’’ op. cit., p. 148. 

levels. The requirements for the most effective deterrence strategy possible should 

drive our preferred numbers, not vice versa. 

In this regard, Harold Brown, Jimmy Carter’s Secretary of Defense, rightly concluded that deterrence should be based on a credible threat to that which the opponent ‘‘considers most important.’’ This is an initial starting point for prudently 

measuring ‘‘how much is enough?’’ Such deterrence threats will vary for different 

opponents, times and contingencies, and may often be incompatible with the very 

low, fixed number of U.S. nuclear weapons typically recommended by Minimum Deterrence. For example, if our understanding of opponents and their worldviews suggests that deterring them requires a variety of flexible options and a basic threat 

to well-protected leaders, military forces, and internal security forces, as was widelythought to be the requirement vis-a ́-vis the Soviet Union after the 1960s, then a 

Minimum Deterrence-based force would not be compatible with effective deterrence 

in plausible scenarios, even if it would be compatible with an aggressive arms control agenda. 

The GNZC report, for example, calls for the complete elimination of the ICBM leg 

of the traditional U.S. triad of strategic forces (bombers, ICBMs, and sea-based missiles), the elimination of the nuclear B–52 bomber and U.S. tactical nuclear weapons, and deep reductions in sea-based nuclear forces. These recommended reductions would leave a small U.S. dyad of sea-based missiles and B–2 bombers. Multiple expert assessments of a dyad consisting of sea-based missiles, B–52 and B–2 

bombers have concluded that such a dyad would reduce the number of U.S. aim 

points for an opponent targeting of U.S. strategic forces from about 455 to 5.4 A 

study by the Center for Strategic and International Studies concluded that a dyad 

of sea-based missiles, B–2 and B–52 bombers, ‘‘presents the worst case for survivability of all the options. In a ‘bolt from the blue’ attack, just five dedicated nuclear 

strikes could take out all three strategic nuclear bomber bases and the two submarine bases,’’ 5 leaving the United States with just the SSBNs at sea. The GNZC’s 

recommended elimination of ICBMs and nuclear B–52 bombers could worsen this 

situation by further reducing the number of U.S. targets to only three. 

The 2009 Bipartisan Strategic Posture Commission (the Perry-Schlesinger Commission) saw substantial importance in the fact that by sustaining the Triad, including the ICBM force, the United States could not be subject to an effective smallscale counterforce attack.6 It noted that, ‘‘for the foreseeable future, there is no prospect that a significant portion of the ICBM force can be destroyed by a preemptive 

strike on the United States by small nuclear powers, including China.’’ 7

However, at the force levels recommended in the GNZC report and with reported 

normal U.S. operating practices,8 only 3–4 U.S. missile carrying submarines could 

be expected to survive an attack by a handful of nuclear weapons, leaving 135–180 

surviving U.S. warheads. That U.S. retaliatory force could be dangerously inflexible 

and incapable of covering even the extremely limited target sets outlined in the 

GNZC report. For over five decades, all Democratic and Republican administrations 

have sought to avoid such a condition because it could significantly degrade our deterrence strategy and create provocative vulnerabilities. Such recommendations for 

further U.S. deep reductions are all the more troubling in light of the recently declared Russian intention to deploy a nation-wide, missile defense ‘‘umbrella’’ by 
21 

9 Chief of the Russian General Staff, Gen. Nikolai Makarov, as quoted in Bill Gertz, ‘‘Inside 

the Ring,’’ The Washington Times, January 5, 2011, available at http:// 

www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/jan/5/inside-the-ring-442522451/print/. 10See, U.S. Senate, Committee on Armed Services, Hearing to Consider the Nominations of 

General James E. Cartwright, USMC, For reappointment to the Grade of General and Reappointment as the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, July 9, 2009, p. 8. 11See, ‘‘Russia’s Top General Says Preemptive Strike Against Missile Shield Possible,’’ VOA 

News, May 3, 2012. 

2020.9 In light of such considerations, Gen. Cartwright’s previous emphasis on the 

value of the U.S. Triad and the ICBM force is much more prudent.10

The GNZC report, however, essentially dismisses this concern by asserting that 

Russia and China are not now opponents and are unlikely ever to be so again: ‘‘The 

risk of nuclear confrontation between the United States and either Russia or China 

belongs to the past, not the future.’’ Such a prediction fits the narrative for further 

deep reductions, but it does not appear to fit Russian or Chinese actions and statements concerning their ambitions and nuclear developments. Over the past several 

years, top Russian leaders have made numerous threats of pre-emptive and preventive nuclear attack against United States allies and friends. Most recently, the Chief 

of the Russian General Staff, Gen. Nikolai Makarov threatened a pre-emptive attack 

against NATO States, and the threat was implicitly nuclear.11 (Please see the attached compilation of Russian nuclear threats since 2007 by Dr. Mark Schneider at 

the end of this prepared statement). 

Such threats challenge Western sensibilities and faith in a powerful, global nuclear ‘‘taboo,’’ but they are within the norm of Russian behavior and doctrine regarding nuclear forces. To claim that nuclear weapons will not be salient in contemporary or future United States relations with Russia or China is an unwarranted 

and highly optimistic prediction, not a prudent basis for calculating U.S. deterrence 

strategies and forces. If wrong, Minimum Deterrence and corresponding low force 

levels could invite serious risk and provocations. 

Second, the question of having an adequate deterrence capability cannot be answered simply by determining if we can threaten some given, contemporary set of 

targets. Deterrence must work in contemporary and future crises, and we will come 

to those crises with the forces we have in hand. No one knows with confidence ‘‘how 

much of what force’’ will be necessary for credible deterrence now, and future requirements are particularly arcane because opponents and threats can shift rapidly 

in this post-cold war era and the requirements for deterrence correspondingly can 

change rapidly. This reality complicates the task of calculating ‘‘how much is 

enough’’ for deterrence. The priority deterrence question now is whether we have 

sufficient force options and diversity to threaten credibly the wide spectrum of targets that opponents may value over the course of decades. In some plausible scenarios, a small and undiversified U.S. nuclear force may be adequate for deterrence, 

in other cases, effective deterrence may demand a large and diverse nuclear arsenal 

with capabilities well beyond those envisaged for Minimum Deterrence. Confident 

declarations that some fixed Minimum Deterrence force level will prove adequate 

cannot be based on substance; they reflect only hope and carry considerable risk. 

Instead, the flexibility and resilience of our forces to adapt to differing deterrence 

requirements should be considered a fundamental requirement of U.S. force adequacy, and our standing capabilities must be sufficiently large and diverse to adapt 

to a variety of shifting deterrence demands. It may be convenient to pick some fixed, 

low number and claim that 300, 400, or 500 weapons will be adequate for deterrence 

now and in the future, but no one can possibly know if such statements are true. 

We do know that the more diverse and flexible our forces, the more likely we are 

to have the types of capabilities needed for deterrence in a time of shifting and uncertain threats, stakes, and opponents. But force diversity and flexibility does not 

come automatically. It is important that our nuclear force posture and infrastructure incorporate these characteristics and that they are manifest to opponents and 

allies for deterrence and assurance purposes respectively. 

This need for force diversity and flexibility is one of the reasons why the bipartisan Congressional Strategic Posture Commission recommended unanimously to 

sustain the Triad, as did the 2010 Nuclear Posture Review and the current and recent past Commanders of Strategic Command. The Congressional Strategic Posture 

Commission reviewed arguments in favor of a dyad and instead unanimously highlighted the importance of the ‘‘resilience and flexibility of the triad,’’ qualities which 

have ‘‘proven valuable as the number of operationally deployed strategic nuclear 
22 

12Perry, Schlesinger, America’s Strategic Posture: The Final Report of the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States, op. cit., pp. 25–26. 13See Adm. Richard Mies, USN (ret.), ‘‘Strategic Deterrence in the 21st Century,’’ Undersea 

Warfare (Spring 2012), p. 19. 14Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, Annual Report to the President and the Congress 

(Washington, DC: GPO, 2002), pp. 88–89, available at http://history.defense.gov/resources/ 

2002lDODlAR.pdf. 15Quoted from, U.S. Senate, Committee on Armed Services, Hearing to Consider the Nominations of General James E. Cartwright, USMC, For reappointment to the Grade of General and 

Reappointment as the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, July 9, 2009, p. 22. 16Gen. Kevin Chilton, Senate Armed Services Committee, Hearing to Receive Testimony on 

the Nuclear Posture Review, April 22, 2010, pp. 8, 13, 14; and Gen. Kevin Chilton, House Armed 

Services Committee, Hearing, U.S. Nuclear Weapons Policy and Force Structure, April 15, 2010, 

p. 11. 

weapons has declined’’ and ‘‘promise to become even more important as systems 

age.’’ 12

In contrast, moving to a Minimum Deterrence Dyad as recommended in the 

GNZC report would be the opposite of sustaining a diverse force with flexibility and 

resilience. Minimum Deterrence force requirements typically are intended to be 

compatible with deep arms control reductions, as is stated in the GNZC report, but 

could easily prove to be too narrow and inflexible to provide effective deterrence in 

a shifting threat environment. 

Adm. Rich Mies, a former Commander of Strategic Command, observed recently 

that ‘‘every STRATCOM force structure analysis’’ in which he was involved yielded 

two general truths: ‘‘Diversity affords a hedge against single-point failures and significantly complicates a potential adversary’s offensive and defensive planning considerations [and] there is tyranny in low platform numbers that greatly restricts the 

flexibility, survivability and resiliency of the force.’’13 Indeed, a small, undiversified, 

Minimum Deterrence force: 

—Will offer fewer choices among warheads and delivery modes, thereby limiting 

U.S. flexibility and the prospective effectiveness of U.S. deterrence strategies; 

—Is less likely to compensate for weaknesses in one area of our nuclear force 

structure by strengths in another area; 

—Will, vis-a`-vis peer or near peer powers, inevitably move U.S. deterrence strategies toward threats against civilian targets and/or threats against a relatively 

small set of military targets: 

—the first such threat may well be incredible; and 

—the second inadequate; 

—Eases the technical/strategic challenges for opponents who might seek to 

counter our deterrence strategies, now or in the future; 

—Will encourage rather than dissuade some opponents to compete and challenge 

our deterrence strategies. 

What level of U.S. forces is compatible with the requisite U.S. flexibility and resilience? This question rightly elevates the discussion of deterrence requirements beyond a fixed number of warheads to include their diversity, and the number and 

diversity of their launchers. In 2001, we judged 1,700–2,200 operationally deployed 

warheads as sufficient, with no negotiated limits on launchers in the Moscow Treaty.14 In 2009, Gen. Cartwright stated publicly that he would ‘‘be very concerned if 

we got down below’’ 800 launchers,15 and in 2010, Gen. Kevin Chilton, then-Commander of Strategic Command, stated publicly that the 1,550 warhead ceiling of the 

New START treaty was the lowest he could endorse given this need for flexibility.16

In contrast, the GNZC report, as with most proposals for Minimum Deterrence, recommends far lower force levels for weapons and launchers. 

Third, deterrence is only one among several goals by which to measure the adequacy of U.S. nuclear forces. It is impossible to measure U.S. force requirements by 

focusing on deterrence alone. United States forces must also contribute to the assurance of our allies and friends. This assurance goal is different from deterrence and 

has different specific requirements. The United States has nuclear assurance commitments to 30 or more allies and the push for Minimum Deterrence undoubtedly 

threatens our capability to assure allies in some important cases. 

Assurance commitments establish diverse quantitative and qualitative requirements not included in Minimum Deterrence calculations. For example, President 

John Kennedy identified ‘‘second-to-none’’ as the appropriate standard for the purpose of protecting allies and friends; the Nixon administration identified ‘‘essential 

equivalence’’ as a necessary measure. And, most recently, some allied leaders have 

identified specific quantitative and qualitative standards for U.S. nuclear forces to 

provide assurance. 
23 

17 ‘‘North Korea’s Nuclear Threat/Reinforcing Alliance With U.S. Helps Bolster Nuclear Deterrence,’’ The Daily Yomiuri, 23 March, 2007. 18Perry, Schlesinger, American’s Strategic Posture: The Final Report of the Congressional 

Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States, op. cit., pp. 20–21; and, testimony 

of Dr. Johnny Foster regarding the report of the Congressional Strategic Posture Commission, 

in, U.S. Senate, Senate Armed Services Committee, Hearing on the Report of the Congressional 

Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States, May 7, 2009, available at: http:// 

votesmart.org/speechldetail.php?sclid=458591&keyword=&phrase=&contain=. 19See Keith Payne, Thomas Scheber, Kurt Guthe, U.S. Extended Deterrence and Assurance 

for Allies in Northeast Asia (Fairfax, VA: National Institute Press, 2010), pp. 9–10. 20 In 1999, allies saw persistent and concerted NATO conventional air strikes fail to destroy 

a deep tunnel complex at the Pristina Airport in Kosovo. As a British inspector present at the 

time reported, ‘‘On June 11, hours after NATO halted its bombing and just before the Serb military began withdrawing, 11 Mig-21 fighters emerged from the tunnels and took off for Yugoslavia.’’ Tim Ripley, ‘‘Kosovo: A Bomb Damage Assessment,’’ Jane’s Intelligence Review, Vol. 11, 

No. 9 (September 1999), p. 11. 

For example, Japanese Defense Minister Fumio Kyuma explicitly linked quantitative and qualitative standards to the credibility of the U.S. extended nuclear deterrent: he called for ‘‘highly accurate nuclear-tipped cruise missiles,’’ and stated 

that, ‘‘The strongest deterrence would be when the United States explicitly says, ‘If 

you drop one nuclear bomb on Japan, the United States will retaliate by dropping 

10 on you’.’’ 17 More recently, key allies have argued that the credibility of U.S. extended deterrence commitments depends on specific types of U.S. nuclear capabilities, including low-yield and penetrating nuclear weapons, the U.S. capability to 

threaten a wide variety of targets, and the capability ‘‘to deploy forces in a way that 

is either visible or stealthy, as circumstances may demand.’’ 18 Again, it is very convenient to claim that 300, 400, or 500 U.S. weapons will be adequate for assurance, 

but such a target-based measure may have little or nothing to do with the quantity 

or types of U.S. nuclear forces needed to assure our allies of the credibility of our 

extended nuclear deterrent. U.S. unilateral reductions to low force levels as recommended by the GNZC report certainly would destroy any remaining U.S. claims 

of ‘‘second to none’’ or ‘‘essential equivalence,’’ and raise deep concerns among at 

least some key allies and friends. 

Proponents of Minimum Deterrence typically respond to this concern with the assertion—repeated in the GNZC report—that conventional forces can provide assurance for allies that is ‘‘far more credible’’ than are U.S. nuclear forces. This narrative fits the policy line for further deep nuclear reductions, but, U.S. movement 

to advanced conventional strategic forces has been slow and limited, and the actual 

evidence is that some allies find unique assurance in a credible U.S. nuclear guarantee. They now state openly that if U.S. nuclear credibility wanes, they will be 

compelled to find their own independent deterrence capabilities. Japanese, South 

Korean and Turkish leaders have openly made this point, as have some friends and 

allies in the Middle East. This should not be surprising: West Germany was clear 

that it could agree to the 1969 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty only because of the 

assurance it found in a credible U.S. nuclear umbrella. The same was true for South 

Korea.19

This need expressed by some allies for credible U.S. nuclear assurance is fully understandable. U.S. advanced conventional forces are very likely to contribute usefully to deterrence in some cases. But, in the context of a conventional conflict involving United States ‘‘shock and awe,’’ the threat of ‘‘more of the same’’ may simply 

be insufficient to deter a committed aggressor.20 In contrast, nuclear weapons pose 

the threat of escalation to incalculable consequences and thereby appear unique in 

countering the overly-optimistic expectations or high cost-tolerances that often inspire aggression. This factor may explain why nuclear deterrence appears to have 

been the reason Saddam Hussein did not employ chemical or biological weapons 

during the first gulf war. In addition, given events over the past decade, the U.S. 

will to engage in another high-cost, large-scale projection of conventional force into 

a distant theater on behalf of friends and allies may appear insufficiently lethal or 

credible to assure some vulnerable allies or to deter some determined or eccentric 

foes. Non-nuclear threats may someday be an adequate substitute for nuclear 

threats for assurance purposes, but that day has not arrived per the expressed 

views of some key allies. And, with regard to the U.S. goal of assurance, it is their 

views of U.S. adequacy that matter. 

Fourth, the push for Minimum Deterrence puts at risk the U.S. capability to deter 

and to assure for the purpose of strengthening global cooperation on nuclear nonproliferation—the rationale repeated in the GNZC report. To be specific, the claim 

is that further U.S. nuclear reductions would somehow contribute greatly to nuclear 

non-proliferation. This asserted positive linkage between further U.S. nuclear reduc-
24 

21See the pertinent discussion by Chris Ford, ‘‘Disarmament Versus Nonproliferation?’’ posted 

at the New Paradigms Forum Web site on October 29, 2010, available at: http:// 

www.NewParadigmsForum.com/NPFtestsite/?p=531. 

tions and more effective non-proliferation efforts is wholly speculative, and I believe 

mistaken.21 Further U.S. nuclear reductions are unlikely to improve the behavior 

of recalcitrant proliferators or their enablers. And, on the available evidence, it is 

reasonable to expect that a U.S. transition to Minimum Deterrence would increase 

the incentives for some U.S. friends and allies who now rely on the U.S. extended 

nuclear deterrent to develop or acquire their own independent means for nuclear deterrence. Consequently, the net effect of movement toward Minimum Deterrence 

may well be to increase nuclear proliferation rather than to strengthen nonproliferation. This would be a serious mistake from which we might not easily recover. 

The GNZC report also asserts that further U.S. unilateral nuclear reductions 

would encourage Russia and China to consider ‘‘comparable unilateral actions.’’ Perhaps so; but experience suggests not. Harold Brown’s observation about the Soviet 

Union appears to apply equally to Russia and China today: ‘‘When we build, they 

build; when we cut, they build.’’ 

Fifth, proponents of Minimum Deterrence also claim that further deep force reductions will save scarce U.S. defense dollars. I am dubious of this claim. The 

United States and NATO came to rely on nuclear deterrence in general because it 

was judged to be a feasible and much cheaper avenue for security than the buildup 

of conventional forces otherwise necessary. There obviously is a cost to sustaining 

a flexible and diverse nuclear arsenal, including the nuclear Triad. But, to state 

that monies would not be needed for this purpose if we abandoned such an arsenal 

is to state the obvious. The real question in this regard is the net cost of further 

deep nuclear reductions and Minimum Deterrence given the corresponding, necessary buildup of advanced conventional arms, a buildup acknowledged by the authors of the GNZC report. I certainly support advanced U.S. conventional forces as 

a complement to U.S. nuclear capabilities. But to claim savings from Minimum Deterrence without also calculating the added cost for the advanced conventional forces 

that supposedly can substitute for deterrence purposes is a common error. I do not 

know how comparisons of net costs might appear at this time, but I do know that 

claiming savings simply from Minimum Deterrence and abandonment of the Triad 

is at best a half-truth. 

Sixth, and finally, the GNZC report, like others, justifies the push for Minimum 

Deterrence as a necessary step en route to global nuclear zero—one of the Obama 

administration’s stated priority goals. It should be recalled, however, that the bipartisan Congressional Strategic Posture Commission concluded unanimously that: 

‘‘The conditions that might make the elimination of nuclear weapons possible are 

not present today and establishing such conditions would require a fundamental 

transformation of the world political order.’’ The establishment of a powerful and 

reliable global collective security system for the first time in history would be such 

a fundamental global transformation; further, U.S. reductions would not. Winston 

Churchill noted along these lines: ‘‘Be careful above all things not to let go of the 

atomic weapon until you are sure and more than sure that other means of preserving peace are in your hands.’’ There is no evidence at this point of movement 

toward a serious, reliable global collective security system; much less do we have 

it in hand. 

Consequently, before the pursuit of nuclear zero puts at risk U.S. capabilities to 

deter and to assure credibly, and also threatens to increase nuclear proliferation, 

it is important to recall that over the course of centuries we have learned, unfortunately, that conventional deterrence periodically fails catastrophically. During the 

final five non-nuclear decades of the last century, the world suffered approximately 

110 million casualties in just 10 years of warfare. The subsequent almost seven decades of nuclear deterrence have been much more benign by comparison (see the attached pertinent graphic by Adm. Richard Mies, used here with permission). Humankind was at the nuclear zero ‘‘mountaintop’’ from the beginning of history until 

1945, and that condition often was ugly and brutal on a scale not repeated since 

1945, thanks at least in part to nuclear deterrence. Simple prudence suggests that 

we not put U.S. strategies for nuclear deterrence at risk in a quest to go back to 

that mountaintop we so desperately sought previously to leave. 

In summary, I am skeptical of the GNZC report and further U.S. deep nuclear 

reductions at this point not for reasons of ‘‘old think,’’ but because the supposed benefits are dubious or manifestly illusory and the effects may be to undermine deterrence and assurance, and to increase nuclear proliferation. Gen. Larry Welsh, a 

former Commander of the Strategic Air Command and Air Force Chief of Staff, recently observed, ‘‘The only basis for the idea that drastically reducing the number 
25 

1 ‘‘Russia Reserves Right to Preemptive Strikes,’’ Moscow Agentstvo Voyennykh Nosostey, February 7, 2007. Transcribed in Open Source Center, Doc. ID: CEP200707950213. 2 ‘‘General says Russia may target missile defence sites in Eastern Europe,’’ Moscow Channel 

One Television, February 19, 2007. Translated in Open Source Center, Doc. ID: 

CEP20070219950390. 3 ‘‘Solovtsov: Russian Missiles May Be Targeted At US ABM Sites in Europe,’’ Moscow, 

Agentstvo Voyennykh Novostey, December 17, 2007. Transcribed by Open Source Center Doc. 

ID: CEP20071217950364. 4 Yuriy Gavrilov, ‘‘The Nuclear Reaction: Strategic Missile Complexes Could Be Retargeted at 

Poland and the Czech Republic,’’ Moscow Rossiyskaya Gazeta, September 11, 2008. Translated 

by Open Source Center Doc. ID: CEP20080911358018. 5 ‘‘Baluyevskiy Says US European Missile Defense Poses Threat to Russia,’’ 

InternetWebDigest. RU, May 3, 2007. Translated in Open Source Center, Doc. ID: 

CEP20070504358001CEP2007054358001. 6 ‘‘Russia will use nuclear weapons if necessary—chief of staff,’’ Moscow ITAR–TASS, January 

19, 2008. Transcribed in Open Source Center, Doc. ID: CEP20080119950015. 7Damien McElroy, ‘‘Russian general says Poland a nuclear ‘target’,’’ August 15, 2008, available at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/georgia/2564639/Russian-generalsays-Poland-a-nuclear-target-as-Condoleezza-Rice-arrives-in-Georgia.html>. 

of nukes we have would magically make us safer and help eliminate other nuclear 

dangers is hope. But hope is not a plan, and hope is not a basis for security. Hope 

does not defend us.’’ And, I will add, the unwarranted hopes reflected in the GNZC’s 

most recent proposal for Minimum Deterrence should not be the basis for our calculations of ‘‘how much is enough?’’ 

RUSSIAN THREATS OF NUCLEAR TARGETING, INCLUDING FIRST OR PREEMPTIVE USES

OF NUCLEAR FORCES

DR. MARK SCHNEIDER

SENIOR ANALYST, NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR PUBLIC POLICY

Then-Defense Minister, Sergei Ivanov, February 2007: 

‘‘As regard to [the] use of nuclear weapons in case of aggression, of course [it will 

use them in this case]. What else were they built for?’’ 1

Statements by Colonel General Nikolay Solovtsov, then commander of the Strategic 

Missile Troops 2007–2008. 

‘‘[Correspondent] Russia has reacted sharply to the statement by the prime ministers of Poland and the Czech Republic. The commander of Strategic Missile Troops 

[SMT], Nikolay Solovtsov, said that if need be, our missiles would be targeted on 

the new ABM facilities, if they are built.’’ 2

‘‘We have to take measures that will prevent the devaluation of the Russian nuclear deterrence potential. I do not rule out that our political and military administration may target some of our intercontinental ballistic missiles at the aforesaid 

missile defense facilities in Poland and the Czech Republic.’’ 3

‘‘I cannot exclude that, in the event that the country’s highest military-political 

leadership will make the appropriate decision, the indicated missile defense facilities in Poland and the Czech Republic and also other similar facilities in the future 

could be selected as targets for our intercontinental ballistic missiles’’, the general 

stated. ‘‘The RVSN is compelled to take steps, which will not permit the devaluation 

of the Russian nuclear deterrence potential under any conditions.’’ 4

Statements by General Yury Baluyevskiy, then Chief of the General Staff, 2007–2008: 

‘‘If we see that these facilities pose a threat to Russia, these targets will be included in the lists of our planners—strategic, nuclear or others. The latter is a technicality.’’ 5

‘‘We do not intend to attack anyone. But all our partners must realize that for 

the protection of Russia and its allies, if necessary, the Armed Forces will be used, 

including preventively and with the use of nuclear weapons.’’ 6

Colonel General Anatoly Nogovitsyn, Defense Ministry Spokesman, August 2008: 

‘‘Poland is making itself a target. This is 100 percent’’ certain, Russia’s Interfax 

news agency quoted General Anatoly Nogovitsyn as saying. 

‘‘It becomes a target for attack. Such targets are destroyed as a first priority,’’ Gen 

Nogovitsyn was quoted as saying. 

He added that Russia’s military doctrine sanctions the use of nuclear weapons 

‘‘ . . . against the allies of countries having nuclear weapons if they in some way 

help them,’’ Interfax said.7
26 

8 ‘‘Russia to broaden nuclear strike options,’’ Russia Today, October 14, 2009, available at: 

<http://rt.com/news/russia-broaden-nuclear-strike/>. 9 ‘‘Russia may face large-scale military attack, says Strategic Missile Troops chief,’’ Moscow 

ITAR–TASS, December 11, 2009. Translated by Open Source Center Doc. ID: 

CEP20091216950151. 10 ‘‘Russian Strategic Missile Troops general details re-armament, structure—more,’’ Moscow 

Ekho Moskvy Radio, September 5, 2009. Translated by Open Source Center Doc. ID: 

CEP20090911950207. 

Nikolay Patrushev, the Secretary of the Russian Security Council October 2009: 

‘‘We have corrected the conditions for use of nuclear weapons to resist aggression 

with conventional forces not only in large-scale wars, but also in regional or even 

a local one... There is also a multiple-options provision for use of nuclear weapons depending on the situation and intentions of the potential enemy. ‘In a situation 

critical for national security, we don’t exclude a preventive nuclear strike at the aggressor’.’’ 8

Lt. General Andrey Shvaychenko, then Commander of the Strategic Missile Troops, 

December 2009. 

In Shvaychenko’s opinion, ‘‘this defines a key role played by the RVSN [the Strategic Missile Forces] and the strategic nuclear forces as a whole in ensuring Russia’s 

security. In peacetime, they are intended to ensure deterrence of large-scale nonnuclear or nuclear aggression against Russia and its allies. In a conventional war, 

they ensure that the opponent is forced to cease hostilities, on advantageous conditions for Russia, by means of single or multiple preventive strikes against the aggressors’ most important facilities. In a nuclear war, they ensure the destruction of 

facilities of the opponent’s military and economic potential by means of an initial 

massive nuclear missile strike and subsequent multiple and single nuclear missile 

strikes,’’ the commander explained.9

Lt-Gen Vladimir Gagarin, then-Deputy Commander of Russia’s Strategic Missile 

Troops, December 2009: 

‘‘So, the situation is then analysed and orders are issued—either, maybe, to 

launch a massive nuclear strike with the use of everything involved in that initial 

massive nuclear strike; or it could be group strikes, that is to say with part [of the 

forces] used; or it could be single strikes, one or two launch systems. Once again, 

the authorization for the launch to be executed, to be carried out, is issued by the 

Russian Federation president, by our supreme commander-in-chief.’’ 10

Lt.-General Sergei Karakayev, Commander of the Strategic Missile Troops, December 

2011: 

‘‘From a technical viewpoint, there are no restrictions on the possibility of the use 

of missiles by RVSN. It does not take a long time to select a target and enter it 

in the flight duty of an intercontinental ballistic missile,’’ Karakayev said in response to a question as to whether changes may be made to the plans of RVSN combat use due to the creation of objects of the U.S. missile defense systems in Europe 

and the lack of progress in the negotiations between Russia and the U.S. on the 

matter. 

Statements by President Putin, 2007–2008: 

Just before a summit with President Bush he stated, ‘‘I draw your attention and 

that of your readers to the fact that, for the first time in history—and I want to 

emphasize this—there are elements of the U.S. nuclear capability [missile defense 

interceptors] on the European continent . . . If the American nuclear potential 

grows in European territory, we have to give ourselves new targets in Europe.’’ 

‘‘We will have to target our missiles at sites which, in our opinion, may threaten 

our national security.’’. 

3) In a press conference with the President of Poland he stated, ‘‘If such systems 

are deployed on the territory of Poland, which we believe will be used to attempt 

or to neutralize our nuclear missile potential, leading to total disruption of the strategic balance in the world and will threaten our national security, then what should 

we do? We will have to take some retaliatory measures, which may include retargeting some of our strike missile systems onto those facilities, which in our opinion 

will be a threat to us. We would not like to do this.’’ 

At a press conference President Putin said, ‘‘Our General Staff and experts believe 

that this system [the proposed deployment of a missile defense site in Poland] 

threatens our national security, and if it does appear, we will be forced to respond 
27 

11 ‘‘Russian President Putin’s uncensored and amazing Interview with G8 Newspaper Journalists,’’ June 9, 2007, available at: http://engforum.pravda.ru/index.php?/topic/124795-russianpresident-putins-uncensored-and-amazing-interview-with-g8-journalists/.: ‘‘Russia may target 

missiles at Ukraine in case of security threat—Putin,’’ Interfax, February 14, 2008, available at: http://en.trend.az/news/cis/russia/1135177.; ‘‘Putin presser: Russia may have to retarget missiles at Poland,’’ Moscow Vesti TV, February 14, 2008. Translated by Open Source Center Doc. 

ID: CEP20080214950197.; ‘‘Highlights from Putin’s 14 Feb News Conference,’’ OSC Feature— 

Vesti TV, February 14, 2008. Translated by Open Source Center Doc. ID: FEA20080215541987. 12 Robert Bridge, ‘‘Border Alert: Nuke war risk rising, Russia warns,’’ November 17, 2011, 

available at: http://rt.com/politics/makarov-nuclear-russia-nato-575/. 13 ‘‘No understanding between Russia, West on missile defense—General Staff,’’ ITAR–TASS, 

December 7, 2011, available at: http://www.itar-tass.com/en/c154/291946.html. 14 ‘‘Russia Might Strike European Missile Defense Sites Preemptively—Military Official (Part 

2),’’ Interfax, May 3, 2012, available at: http://www.interfax.co.uk/russia-cis-general-newsbulletins-in-english/russia-might-strike-european-missile-defense-sites-preemptively-militaryofficial-part-2-2/. 15 ‘‘Medvedev Russia will deploy Iskander in Kaliningrad to neutralize U.S. missile threats,’’ 

available at: http://mishasrussiablog.blogspot.com/2008/11/medevev-russia-will-deploy-iskandersin.html. 

in an appropriate manner. We will then probably be forced to retarget some of our 

missile systems at these systems, which threaten us.’’ 11

General Nikolai Makarov, Chief of the General Staff, 2011–2012: 

‘‘‘The possibility of local armed conflicts virtually along the entire perimeter of the 

border has grown dramatically,’ Makarov said. ‘I cannot rule out that, in certain circumstances, local and regional armed conflicts could grow into a large-scale war, 

possibly even with nuclear weapons’.’’ 12

‘‘Asked about whether there existed a risk of local conflicts near Russian borders 

developing into a full-scale war General Makarov said, ‘‘I do not rule out such a possibility.’’ 13

‘‘Taking into account a missile defense system’s destabilizing nature, that is, the 

creation of an illusion that a disarming strike can be launched with impunity, a decision on preemptive employment of the attack weapons available could be made 

when the situation worsens,’ Makarov said at an international conference on Missile 

Defense Factor in Establishing New Security Environment in Moscow on Thursday. 

The deployment of new attack weapons in the south and northwest of Russia to 

strike missile defense sites, including the deployment of the Iskander missile systems in the Kaliningrad region, is among the possible options for destroying missile 

defense infrastructure in Europe.’’ 14

Statements by President Medvedev, 2008–2011: 

‘‘During televised remarks President Medvedev said, ‘I would add something 

about what we have had to face in recent years: what is it? It is the construction 

of a global missile defense system, the installation of military bases around Russia, 

the unbridled expansion of NATO and other similar ‘presents’ for Russia we therefore have every reason to believe that they are simply testing our strength. Of 

course we will not let ourselves be dragged into an arms race. But we must take 

this into account in defense expenditures. And we will continue to reliably protect 

the safety of the citizens of Russia. Therefore, I will now announce some of the 

measures that will be taken. In particular measures to effectively counter the persistent and consistent attempts of the current American administration to install 

new elements of a global missile defense system in Europe. For example, we had 

planned to decommission three missile regiments of a missile division deployed in 

Kozelsk from combat readiness and to disband the division by 2010. I have decided 

to abstain from these plans. Nothing will disband. Moreover, we will deploy the 

Iskander missile system in the Kaliningrad Region to be able, if necessary, to neutralize the missile defense system. Naturally, we envisage using the resources of the 

Russian Navy for these purposes as well.’.’’ 15

‘‘Second, protective cover of Russia’s strategic nuclear weapons will be reinforced 

as a priority measure under the programme to develop our air and space defences. 

Third, the new strategic ballistic missiles commissioned by the Strategic Missile 

Forces and the Navy will be equipped with advanced missile defence penetration 

systems and new highly effective warheads. 

Fourth, I have instructed the Armed Forces to draw up measures for disabling 

missile defence system data and guidance systems if need be. These measures will 

be adequate, effective, and low-cost. 

Fifth, if the above measures prove insufficient, the Russian Federation will deploy 

modern offensive weapon systems in the west and south of the country, ensuring 

our ability to take out any part of the United States missile defence system in Eu-
28 

16 ‘‘Statement in connection with the situation concerning the NATO countries’ missile defence 

system in Europe,’’ Office of the President of the Russian Federation, November 23, 2011, available at: http://eng.kremlin.ru/news/3115 able and constructive approach from our Western partners. 17 ‘‘Russian defence minister explains missile deployment statement,’’ Interfax, February 19, 

2010, available at: http://wnc.dialog.com/. 

rope. One step in this process will be to deploy Iskander missiles in Kaliningrad Region.’’ 16

Statement by Defense Anatoliy Serdyukov February 2010: 

‘‘If additional threats emerge in Europe, the Iskander will be deployed (in 

Kaliningrad Region).’’ 17
29 

Senator FEINSTEIN. Thank you very much, Dr. Payne, and thank 

all three of you. 

We’ll now begin a round of questions. 

As both General Cartwright and Ambassador Pickering have 

pointed out, Russia is already below the New START limits on deployed strategic delivery vehicles and warheads, and this is because they’re retiring their older systems faster than they’re adding 

new systems. However, it’s my understanding that Russia is considering the development of a new intercontinental ballistic missile 

that can carry up to 10 warheads. 

So here’s the question: Could reciprocal reductions or a new bilateral arms control agreement dissuade Russia from moving forward with its destabilizing nuclear modernization programs, such 

as a new ICBM? Who wants to take that? General Cartwright. 

General CARTWRIGHT. I’ll start and let the others follow on it. 

Senator FEINSTEIN. Okay, we’ll go down the line. 

General CARTWRIGHT. I think that, one, you’ve characterized the 

Russian reductions very accurately as to the probable motive of the 

transition from older systems to newer systems. The development 

of those systems, the pace at which they’re being fielded, is behind 

the pace at which they’re retiring. We’ve faced much the same 

problem in this country. We’ll go through that same evolution as 

we start to move forward. 

I’m not sure that it’s a question of dissuading them, although 

that may be one of the attributes of the discussion. It’s probably 

a question of giving them to opportunity for an alternative approach, and that’s what Ambassador Pickering was trying to, I 

think, illustrate, is that if we were to follow suit now, which would 

require no treaty change, but move from where we are, instead of 

taking 7 years to get down to 1,550, to move more quickly to match 

the Russians and have that dialogue with them, which requires no 

real change in any treaties, the demonstration of where we’re heading would be confirmed for them and that may alter their calculus 

about how much they want to spend and how much they want to 

build and how much they need to modernize. 

Like us, they may choose to modernize one element over another 

or they may choose to just have smaller forces and have them of 

the same character. That’s really up to them. But you can see in 

the open press that the character of their force is moving away 

from strategic towards tactical. They believe the adversaries they 

have to worry about on the most likely side are adversaries that 

are much closer to their homeland. They are not the ICBM-type 

threats that they’re worried about. 

As they change the character of their force, the opportunity to 

have a dialogue with us to create a stable transition so that they 

can change the character of their force and the size of it and we 

can do the same I think is an opportunity, not a vulnerability. 

Senator FEINSTEIN. Ambassador, do you have a comment? 

Ambassador PICKERING. I would only add, I’ve spent a lot of time 

in Russia and a lot of time after having been in Russia with Russians. My sense is that they understand the enormous devastation 

that would result from the failure of deterrence. 

They themselves have had a famous incident or two in which 

they were called upon seemingly to make very critical decisions on 
30 

very short notice and found it extremely difficult and very destabilizing. I think that they value highly the ability to speak with us 

about where and how these directions of change might be mutually 

advantageous. It’s been true for the last 25 years. 

So I agree entirely with what General Cartwright has said, that 

there is an opportunity for further new openings of discussion. 

There are extreme budgetary pressures on them as well that have 

in fact helped, if I could put it that way and use that word advisedly, to guide the direction of their own strategic construction, and 

they seem to be moving for another generation to be moving for another generation, to seem, but deliberately and very carefully, and 

maybe obviously wishing to solve completely all the technical problems before they invest significant amounts of new money. 

That deliberation is very helpful. So your suggestion that would 

we find a way rapidly to convince them not to go in a particular 

direction is probably a conclusion that’s more informed by optimism 

than reality. But nevertheless, the general process I think can be 

a very useful one, and if we look back over the 20 to 25 or 30 years 

we’ve been engaged in these processes with the Russians, I believe 

that it is well worth our time and our effort in investing in those 

kinds of conversations, to see in fact whether we can produce a 

more stable, more realistic, still primarily heavily biased toward 

defending our own interests, kind of a political and strategic set of 

relationships, and the effort here is to try to outline that. Obviously, it takes us beyond where we have been in traditional cold 

war thinking, and I think that Dr. Payne, whose views I respect 

very, very much, is still pretty much giving us the traditional cold 

war thinking about this. 

Not that I would advocate being fast and loose with any of this. 

I think every step of the way we have to be exquisitely careful, particularly over the verification systems that will buttress and undermine our confidence that breakout is not on the mind of anybody. 

Senator FEINSTEIN. Thank you very much. 

My time has expired, but, Dr. Payne, I do want to give you a 

chance to respond, and then we’ll go to Senator Alexander. 

Dr. PAYNE. Thank you. I’d be happy to respond shortly to that. 

I see a real disconnect here, particularly with the recommendations 

from the commission’s report, because in addition to the new heavy 

ICBM, Madam Chairwoman, that you rightly described, the announced Russian plans are for two other new ICBMs, a new 

stealthy bomber, and the deployment of new nuclear cruise missiles. There’s also a report of a development of a fifth generation 

nuclear-carrying, nuclear missile-carrying submarine, and to carry 

nuclear cruise missiles. New advanced nuclear warheads are reportedly being deployed, including low-yield, low collateral damage 

warheads. And more recently, the Russians have announced plans 

to move towards nationwide ballistic missile defense, including by 

the year 2020. 

My concern is that with that level of modernization program and 

with that emphasis on nuclear weapons, that the Russians have 

both the strategic level and at the tactical level, it would be extremely difficult to engage the Russians in negotiations if we were 

to follow the program outlined in the commission’s report. Essentially, you have a very robust nuclear modernization program on 
31 

the Russians’ side, leading towards heavily MIRVed nuclear systems, and I believe that those are a real problem, particularly if 

we move to a direction of a vulnerable force structure such as is 

presented in the commission’s report. 

As I said, there’s a disconnect between the Russians moving in 

that direction, our moving in a much less robust direction, and 

then expecting us to be able to come up with a good arms control 

agreement with the Russians in that context. 

Senator FEINSTEIN. Thank you very much. 

Senator Alexander. 

Senator ALEXANDER. Thank you, Madam Chairman. 

General Cartwright, your testimony says the existing plutonium 

facility at Los Alamos—I believe it says this—could accommodate 

plutonium pit requirements in the future, producing as many as 80 

pits a year; and that the new facility, which we call CMRR, 

wouldn’t be needed. I talked not long ago with the Los Alamos director, who told me he’d be hard pressed to make more than 30 pits 

per year. 

Can you discuss that discrepancy? Also, isn’t it true that as long 

as we have nuclear weapons, even a lower number, that we’ll still 

need a new plutonium facility in the future? 

General CARTWRIGHT. I think we’re within four, five, six of the 

same number. In other words, what the commission looked at was 

taking the planned smallest option, which was an option that got 

you somewhere between 30 and 40 for a single shift for a year, and 

going to dual shift in a crisis that would take you up to somewhere 

in the 70 to 80 number depending on what you could get. 

The tooling, the floor space of those issues, the floor space was 

one of the critical issues. 

Senator ALEXANDER. So you’re saying it’s as simple as going to 

two shifts? 

General CARTWRIGHT. It’s not simple because you have—— 

Senator ALEXANDER. But you’re saying it could be done? 

General CARTWRIGHT. Right. But it can be done in an extreme. 

We would say, and I would agree with him, that you would want 

to stay in a production rate that was somewhere in the 15 to 20 

per year, just to replace and to ensure that you protect the pedigree of the test, the quality of the material that we have today. But 

if you increase the number of shifts, it is believed that the floor 

space then becomes the constraint and that constraint would limit 

you to somewhere in the neighborhood of 80 per year in running 

the plant, so to speak, full up. 

Senator ALEXANDER. Well, that’s interesting. I mean, I didn’t ask 

you about shifts, so I’ll do that next. 

But isn’t it true that as long as we have nuclear weapons, even 

a lower number, we’ll need a new plutonium facility in the future? 

Or do you think the current one we have is adequate? 

General CARTWRIGHT. The current one that we have is adequate 

today, but I do agree that we will eventually need a facility. The 

question is to size it appropriately and to understand exactly why 

you’re building it under the stockpile stewardship side of the equation also, the science part of this. 

The question becomes do you need it now, number one; and then, 

number two, do you have existing infrastructure that could accom-
32 

modate it or do you need a whole new facility? That’s the question, 

and I would certainly turn to the experts to get the answer to that. 

But what I believe is right now the thought process is we need it 

now. I think the administration has demonstrated already that 

that’s not necessarily the case. 

Senator ALEXANDER. Ambassador Pickering or Dr. Payne, do you 

have any comment on that? 

That’s a very important point, General Cartwright, and one 

which I hadn’t even considered, about the two shifts in terms of the 

need for the CMRR. 

Are you familiar enough with that process to say whether a different sort of facility is needed, a new way? Do we need a new 

strategy for producing plutonium pits within the current facility? 

Are you familiar enough with the process to make a comment on 

that? 

General CARTWRIGHT. No, it would be the same process. In fact, 

we’ve already invested and bought the tools for a second group to 

run. It is a floor space issue. This again is to the level of detail that 

you probably don’t want to go to, but you have two buildings sitting 

side by side—— 

Senator ALEXANDER. I’ve seen that. 

General CARTWRIGHT [continuing]. With a gap between. You can 

connect and increase the floor space to what people believe would 

get you somewhere in the neighborhood of the ability to do 80 per 

year. 

Senator ALEXANDER. So you’re basically saying that, whatever 

the current level of production is, whether it’s 20 or 30 or you think 

it might be even higher than that, that if the floor space issue is 

solved that you can double that production within the same facility? 

General CARTWRIGHT. With additional shifts. 

Senator ALEXANDER. With additional shifts, would double the facility. Do you have any idea as to the cost? Is solving the floor 

space issue a substantial cost? 

General CARTWRIGHT. No, it’s not. It has been costed out by the 

lab. 

Senator ALEXANDER. Thank you, Madam Chairman. My time is 

up. 

Senator FEINSTEIN. Thank you very much, Senator. 

Senator Tester, welcome. It’s good to have you here. 

Senator TESTER. Thank you, and thanks for having this hearing. 

I want to thank everybody for being here, of course. 

You started out, General Cartwright, by saying these are 50-year 

decisions and I don’t really know where to start, so I’m going to 

start 50 years ago. In 1962 I was entering elementary school, my 

first year, and I live in the neck of the woods in north central Montana where they were building ICBMs, where the teacher would 

tell us what we were to do in the case of a nuclear attack, head 

to a bomb shelter. 

I remember this stuff very vividly, where when we were out 

riding horses we’d see tinfoil that looked like it was shredded and 

wrapped in paper, that my folks said: Don’t touch that; that’s radioactive and it could have some impacts on you. The Cuban nuclear crisis was evident. 
33 

So what I want to talk about, because the deterrent value of 

these nuclear forces has been something that has been part of what 

I’ve, quite frankly, lived through since I can remember, and the 

ICBMs have been a big part of that deterrent. Not to put you on 

the spot, but 3 years ago, General Cartwright, you had testimony 

that endorsed the value of the triad, the nuclear triad, and our 

ICBM force, saying it was a key priority for our military to preserve that triad. What has changed in the last 3 years? 

General CARTWRIGHT. Three years ago we were still developing 

missile defense. We did not have what I would call a robust technical line towards a conventional alternative to the ICBM force 

that we have today, in other words, the same missiles with conventional warheads. That has changed. It’s not ready for fielding yet, 

but it is real and in the test programs. 

We did not have the nonkinetic capabilities that we have today. 

We had a very capable conventional force 3 years ago. That part 

of the capability had come. But the passive defenses were also not 

in place, and when I talk about passive defenses I’m talking about 

the things that protect the buildings, that go underground to protect the leadership, things that you would bring in on a natural 

basis, that not only address the strategic side, but address the terrorist side of the equation—standoff distances from buildings and 

what-not. 

So you have now what in the last two administrations prior to 

this were the things that they wanted to see built out, which the 

commission that Keith, Dr. Payne, had referred to, were the things 

that we did not have in a credible state of capability at that time. 

Over the next 10 years, where we are today, it’s reasonable to 

expect that our missile defenses are in fact going to be capable and 

are capable today, particularly at the regional level. We are not 

trying to make them capable yet at the strategic level. That’s something we’ve avoided for stability reasons. 

Conventional capabilities that are prompt global strike in nature, 

that allow us to address problems that today we can only address 

with nuclear weapons, give us plausible alternatives. So it is that 

stack-up, in addition to the fact that our infrastructure and our delivery systems need to be reconstituted over the next 10 to 15 years 

as we start into that program, that this is the time to have that 

discussion. So that in general is the reason. 

Senator TESTER. Let me kick it, because this has been a nice discussion—let me kick it over to Dr. Payne. You heard what the General just said. Where do you disagree with that? 

Dr. PAYNE. I agree with General Cartwright’s endorsement of 

ballistic missile defense and advanced conventional weapons, very 

much so, as he knows. My concern with the recommendations from 

the report, however, are that the reductions identified would leave 

U.S. retaliatory forces vulnerable to a handful of nuclear weapons. 

It’s probably the worst of all worlds, is to have a lethal capability 

that is very vulnerable to an opponent. 

The force structure that is recommended in the report would be 

quite vulnerable, because it eliminates the ICBM, it eliminates the 

B–52. Essentially what you’re doing is reducing down to essentially 

a handful of targets that an opponent might envision, envisage, as 

the target set to strike the United States. That strikes me as a 
34 

very dangerous condition to put the United States in, and it’s something, as I said in my opening remarks, that all Republican and 

Democratic administrations have sought to avoid for 50 years. 

Senator TESTER. Okay. I don’t know if I’ll be around for the next 

round because I’ve got a meeting at 11:15. I would just say this. 

I think things have changed. One of the things I don’t understand 

is why the ICBMs, which were the most cost-effective of the triad, 

are the ones that are being eliminated, number one. 

Number two, I think we do have different challenges than we 

had when I was growing up. I mean, Russia was going to lob them 

over on us, we would lob them on them, and so it was mutual destruction for both of us, and so nothing happened. And it’s why, as 

you pointed out, we haven’t had the kind of losses—or maybe it 

was Dr. Payne—since World War II. 

On the other side of the coin, it is a different world now in that 

terrorists and people can figure out how to make these bombs, and 

how do we stop that? Along with what Chairman Feinstein talked 

about, the fact that Russia—and you guys, too—may be developing 

new weapons that we need to be concerned about. When they say 

they’re reducing their stockpile, are they really? You know what I 

mean? I mean trust and verify stuff. 

Thank you guys very much. 

Senator FEINSTEIN. Thank you very much, Senator Tester. If you 

want to take more time, you’re welcome to do it. 

Senator TESTER. Well, I would love that. If I could just ask, why 

the ICBM? We’re going from a triad to a dyad—why the ICBMs 

when they’re the most cost-effective of the triad? 

General CARTWRIGHT. A couple of things that we looked at. The 

first is that the ICBM in a conventional form is something we 

ought to retain, but not at the numbers we have of the nuclear. I 

mean, we’re talking somewhere in the neighborhood of 25 to 50 is 

probably the maximum that we want. That would be an alternative. 

Senator TESTER. In a conventional form? 

General CARTWRIGHT. In a conventional form. In the strategic 

form that they exist in today, which is termed as their launch positions in those States is set up for a minimum energy trajectory, 

what it’s called, but a basic arc from point A to point B. That arc 

must traverse Russia in order to get anyplace else in the world. 

When you lay the map out flat, you must traverse Russia. 

That means that any time you contemplate using the ICBMs as 

they’re currently based today, you run the risk of the Russians misinterpreting and retaliating. It’s a very difficult scenario, but we’ve 

played it out I don’t know how many times certainly in my time, 

and Keith I think in the time that he’s worked on it. 

So that’s one of the issues that we’re concerned about, is the 

malpositioning of the basing. It was done appropriately for the 

time, but today it doesn’t address the rest of the world and it puts 

in jeopardy the potential of a mischaracterization of any activity. 

So you would have to reconstitute the basing concept also. Our 

illustrative scenario of force structure does not foreclose ICBMs. It 

just used the ICBMs because you have these problems of basing, 

location, and overflight issues that make it difficult to use it 
35 

against the broad range of targets that we may need to be able to 

address in the future. 

Senator TESTER. I got you, okay. I understand. I’m putting different countries through my head and you’re correct. Is it true with 

North Korea, too? 

General CARTWRIGHT. It is true, yes. You do have to come down 

across. 

Senator TESTER. Okay. 

General CARTWRIGHT. That’s one of the problems that we have 

with missile defense for North Korea, is that the intercept occurs 

over Russian territory. 

Senator TESTER. Okay. Dr. Payne, do you want to respond? And 

I don’t mean to leave you out, Ambassador Pickering. If you want 

to join in, please do. 

Go ahead. I could ask the question to you first and then cut out 

General Cartwright, too. But go ahead, Dr. Payne. 

Dr. PAYNE. Again, there’s no disagreement between General 

Cartwright and myself on the orbital mechanics involved. But the 

issue is, with regard to the ICBM, that there are enormous advantages to it, which is why I disagreed with the report’s recommendation to eliminate the ICBM. 

Senator TESTER. But specifically what he talked about—and I’m 

a big proponent of ICBMs because I was raised with them. He 

talked about the fact that if you use them Russia may misinterpret 

their use. Could you respond to that? 

Dr. PAYNE. Sure. This is an example of, I think, conflating issues 

of deterrence and issues of warfighting. Remember that deterrence 

is all about withholding the weapon, not about using the weapon. 

So I’m looking at the ICBM as a withheld weapon for the purposes 

of deterrence. As a withheld weapon, it gives the President the 

most time to consider options because it is prompt. So it gives the 

most time for the consideration of options by the President, which 

I think is a very good thing. 

It’s cost-effective, as I believe you mentioned, Senator. Absolutely, it’s the most cost-effective part of the triad. And I think 

most importantly, it denies any opponent a relatively easy theory 

of destroying the majority of U.S. forces with a very small 

counterforce shot. 

Without the ICBMs, you’re looking at a target structure that 

could be attacked with a handful of weapons. So that’s a really important consideration when we’re thinking about stability and instability and deterrence in general. And by the way, that’s not limited to a cold war concept. That’s very much a current concept that 

we need to remember. 

Senator TESTER. Go ahead, Ambassador. 

Ambassador PICKERING. General Cartwright may have his own 

views on this, but as long as we maintain the sea-based force—and 

we’re here looking at an illustrative force posture for 10 years—the 

best information I have is that we have a highly reliable, highly 

survivable deterrent force. 

Senator TESTER. Once again, I want to thank the panel, and I 

want to respectfully thank Madam Chair. Thank you very much for 

your flexibility. 

Senator FEINSTEIN. Thank you very much. 
36 

I’d like to just ask another question and it’s on the need for a 

hedge. I think, General Cartwright, you spoke about a hedge and 

maintaining a larger nuclear weapons stockpile is to hedge against 

geopolitical or technical surprise, and that we currently maintain 

two to three weapons in reserve for every actively deployed weapon. 

Now, as I understand your recommendation, it’s to have 450 

strategic weapons deployed and 450 in reserve, which means a 

ratio of only 1-to-1 for deployed and reserve warheads. So how do 

you overcome those concerns about the geopolitical and technical 

surprise? 

General CARTWRIGHT. I think this is a really important point, 

and it is a judgment issue that we need to consider. But in the 

1950s when we put together the construct for the national labs for 

building weapons, for deploying weapons, et cetera, it was a time 

industrially so that you built the weapon as a single entity, not as 

components. So if one weapon failed, you took that weapon off line 

and you put another weapon in its place, either of the same make 

or of a different make, and you used diversity in your inventory to 

protect you at the end item level and you used large numbers—or 

a large inventory to assure that your hedge was available and credible when you needed it. 

Manufacturing has moved a long way since the 1950s. Today we 

work at the component level, and we get diversity at the component level to protect us against either geopolitical or technical risk 

that could occur. In other words, a particular component within the 

weapon all of a sudden at a certain age dies, malfunctions, whatever the issue is. 

So the money that you have put towards the industrial base, so 

to speak, the labs’ capabilities, is to move from end item sparing 

and large inventories of weapons to component sparing. So you 

have less of the end items and you have more component diversity 

to allow you to do that. It’s just a manufacturing logistics, inventory management system that is much more effective. 

Several studies have indicated, both at NNSA and inside of our 

federally funded research and development center (FFRDC) structure, that you could get down to a 1-to-1 or a 1-to-1.12 level of sparing, which is substantially below where we are today, protect the 

test pedigree that we have, and have a combination of the 80-pit 

construct if it were an emergency and the ability to mix and match 

existing pits in the stockpile to increase the number of weapons 

that not necessarily were available but are available to be used. 

So the belief is, through these studies, is that that’s the method 

by which you bring the hedge down, don’t have a large part of your 

force characterized as being a hedge and therefore not counted, and 

you manage your inventory in a way that’s fundamentally different 

than we do today. 

NNSA is trying to move in that direction and they believe it will 

take you somewhere, the last I heard from them was, somewhere 

in the 15- to 20-year timeframe to get all of the components updated, cleaned up, and spareable. 

Senator FEINSTEIN. Are you saying that there is one generic pit 

that will fit the different warheads? 
37 

General CARTWRIGHT. Actually what I’m saying is that there is 

more than one, but you don’t need to have two separate weapons 

to be able to bring them together. In other words, the test pedigree 

will allow you to mix and match in ways that we have not in the 

past, and that’s the theory behind augmenting the 80 per year. 

Let’s just say that 100 weapons all of a sudden were malfunctioned in some way. The ability to reconstitute could be a combination of your ability to build new and a combination of taking old 

and putting it in in different combinations inside the weapon. 

That’s the theory behind it, and it’s more than theory. This has 

been a lot of intellectual work and a lot of work on the part of the 

scientists at the two main labs to believe and to set out and to actually prove that they could protect the test pedigree and still do 

this. 

Senator FEINSTEIN. I didn’t know that. I didn’t know that that 

was a possibility, that you could essentially use the same pit. 

General CARTWRIGHT. In a different weapon. 

Senator FEINSTEIN. Senator, did you have a question? 

Senator ALEXANDER. I only have one, Madam Chairman. 

Senator FEINSTEIN. Okay. 

Senator ALEXANDER. In April, Secretary Kissinger and General 

Scowcroft wrote an op-ed about nuclear weapons reduction and 

they said, ‘‘Lower numbers of weapons should be a consequence of 

strategic analysis’’—which you’ve said to us today—‘‘not an abstract preconceived determination. Strategic ability is not inherent 

with low numbers. Excessively low numbers could lead to a situation in which surprise attacks are conceivable.’’ 

Dr. Payne, what’s your reaction to that comment? 

Dr. PAYNE. I certainly concur with the authors’ emphasis on the 

need for flexibility and for the survivability of the forces that we 

have to pose a retaliatory deterrent. Again, that’s one of the reasons why I have the concern with the recommendations of the report, because the recommendations of the report, the force structure that would follow, would be, as I said, highly vulnerable to a 

very small strike. 

Madam Chairman, that gets back to your point about the hedge, 

because there really isn’t a hedge in the force structure that’s identified in the report. Essentially, the only thing that would be—the 

only part of that force structure that would be survivable would be 

the boats, the submarines at sea with nuclear missiles. And if you 

look at the numbers, that would probably be down to as low as four 

or five, given publicly acknowledged operating practices by the 

Navy, which would lead to as few as 180 warheads under the terms 

of the report that would be survivable, and no hedge would necessarily be there because everything else would be rather vulnerable to a strike. 

So my concern falls exactly along the lines that the article that 

you mentioned, Senator Alexander, lays out, and it gets back to 

your question about the hedge, Madam Chairwoman. The basic 

point about the hedge is that the more viable the industrial and 

NNSA infrastructure, the lower the need for a standing arsenal of 

reserve forces for a hedge. But what we do have needs to be survivable, particularly the hedge. And the recommendations from the report I believe have the risk that I just outlined, leaving both the 
38 

forces and the hedge vulnerable to a very small number of weapons. 

Senator ALEXANDER. Ambassador Pickering or General Cartwright, do you have a comment on the concern of Secretary Kissinger and General Scowcroft that low numbers could lead to a situation in which surprise attacks are conceivable? 

Ambassador PICKERING. Well, I think that one can figure a set 

of circumstances that does produce vulnerability. I think Dr. Payne 

plays a little fast and loose with our figures, but we’ll leave that 

for the report and for you to digest. 

But my own sense is of course that’s true. It depends very heavily on things like verification. It depends heavily on the kind of assurance you have the other side is behaving. You don’t want to put 

yourself in a position where you put all your eggs in a basket and 

say, here they are, come and get them. We all understand that. 

So there has to be, I think, a lot of careful thinking given to the 

question at any level, but particularly at these levels, of how and 

in what way you deal with the problem of vulnerability. None of 

our proposals, I believe, put us into a position of excessive vulnerability. That was not our intent and we certainly looked at that 

very, very carefully. 

The problem of one or two strikes should be something we contemplate very, very carefully and guard against, and the kind of 

force that we have and the dispersion of the weapons and the dispersion of the launch vehicles, I think, gives us some more than 

adequate hedge against that, particularly if you look carefully at 

the numbers we propose and the in-commission and in-service 

rates of the weapons systems engaged. 

Senator ALEXANDER. General Cartwright. 

General CARTWRIGHT. I think it’s been covered pretty well, that 

you’ve got both sides of that. The only piece that I would probably 

add to this is that I go back again to the infrastructure side of the 

equation, because it’s important that if a nation decides to break 

out and build larger arsenals, that we may need to adapt our arsenal. So having the ability to do that with a viable infrastructure, 

rather than building inventory needlessly—you can call it 

minimalist, but the reality here is that that inventory—we learned 

it in the conventional side: If you build an airplane for a conflict, 

you have it for 5 years and then the conflict comes, you’re going 

to have to update that airplane for the conflict you’re actually in. 

We’re probably going to have to make adjustments as we go to 

the future. But you do not want to build this huge inventory that 

you have to make adjustments with as some sort of an artificial 

edge for the last conflict and not have what it is you need to be 

able to build for what you’re really facing. 

So this subcommittee really sits on that adaptability, it really 

does. It’s that infrastructure, it’s that intellectual capital at the 

labs, along with the ability to adapt and look at what we have and 

move forward, and are we building them the cushion, I think is 

what certainly Dr. Kissinger and Perry are looking at, key. 

Could you sneak in in the middle of the night and attack? The 

idea that only 300 nuclear weapons or 200 or whatever it is is insignificant if they’re launched against somebody is wrong, it’s just 

patently wrong. Any president—it doesn’t matter whether they call 
39 

it tactical or strategic. If it blows up, it is a catastrophic event in 

this world, and we shouldn’t undercharacterize that. 

So the likelihood of somebody launching 300 missiles over the 

pole at us and what-not should not be dismissed. But the retaliation capability that we’re preserving here—and you can mix and 

match; you can have more ICBMs and less of something. But the 

retaliatory capability of 300 nuclear weapons on anybody’s territory 

is catastrophic, catastrophic. 

Senator FEINSTEIN. The sizes are all classified, and when you 

know the sizes then you see the catastrophe. That’s the hard part. 

Senator ALEXANDER. I have no more questions, Madam Chair. 

Senator FEINSTEIN. In any event, are there any final comments 

that anyone would like to make? I think this has been a very useful discussion and we’ve all learned something. Dr. Payne, would 

you like to make a comment? I’ll give everybody an opportunity for 

a closing comment. 

Dr. PAYNE. If I might, and thank you, Madam Chairwoman. 

I’ve been accused of many things, but never of being fast and 

loose before. So I sort of appreciate that. 

Let me suggest that the points that I was—— 

Ambassador PICKERING. I say it with the greatest respect. 

Dr. PAYNE. Indeed. 

The point is not that 200 to 300 weapons would be insignificant. 

But again, deterrence is not warfighting and warfighting is not deterrence. They’re two different things. What we’re talking about for 

deterrence is a withheld threat. The requirement for deterrence 

over decades is to have as flexible and resilient capability as you 

can, so the President can adapt the force to very different circumstances. 

The force structure recommended in the report would indeed 

leave the United States with only 200 or so survivable weapons, all 

SLBMs. That is the opposite of a flexible and resilient force. So it’s 

not that 2 to 300 weapons wouldn’t cause enormous catastrophic 

damage. That’s easily recognized, absolutely true. General Cartwright and I are in complete agreement on that. That’s not the 

question. 

The question is would it provide a robust, reliable, credible deterrent for decades? And my answer to that is it would not be flexible, 

it would not be resilient, and therefore we would be putting at risk 

our ability to deter war possibly for decades. This isn’t something 

that we want to minimize. We want the best deterrent that we can, 

and that calls for a force structure, I believe, that’s flexible and resilient and very different from the one recommended in the commission’s report. 

Senator FEINSTEIN. Thank you. 

Ambassador Pickering. 

Ambassador PICKERING. I would only say the following, that 

we’ve given the most careful consideration to the force structure 

that we are advocating. It’s illustrative at the moment. It isn’t 

something that we would say every piece of every point of every 

presentation we made is fixed in concrete somewhere. But we believe overall it provides an extremely solid and resilient and careful 

perspective. 
40 

Dr. Payne wants us to look ahead several decades. General Cartwright has made it clear that what we have put on the table has 

to be adaptable, it has to be available to be adapted, it has to be 

rebuildable if other circumstances come none of us are clairvoyant 

enough to know. We have taken a look for 10 years in our illustrative proposal, and we believe that what we have provided provides the stability and the security and the resilience over that period of time. We have taken a look at how to go from that into the 

next 10 years and beyond, and General Cartwright I think explained that extremely well. 

So we believe that this is a force very much worth looking at. It 

is a force that will, we hope, begin to help to move in the direction 

that you set out, Madam Chairwoman, at the beginning of the effort of can we be smarter and more capable and indeed more effective in defending our country. 

Senator FEINSTEIN. Thank you very much. 

General Cartwright, why don’t you give your wrap-up comments? 

General CARTWRIGHT. I don’t disagree with the attributes that 

Keith is putting out. We’re very much aligned there. I believe that 

flexibility is gained through an adaptable infrastructure that can 

respond to the threats as they emerge and through the other arms, 

like conventional forces, missile defense. 

But it’s a question, and it’s debatable, and all of those will be adjusted because if we move to a multipolar, multilateral type of construct, then we have to be able to convince—because deterrence is, 

as Keith said, is really in the mind of your adversary. It’s do they 

believe that you hold something they hold dear at risk and that you 

are willing to actually use it. So you have to talk about the 

warfighting side. Otherwise you really lose the element of deterrence that is the credibility, which is at the essence. 

I would bring up just two other subjects here that we haven’t 

talked about, just so that it’s there for consideration. One is in fact 

our undeclared strategy for using these weapons. There are nations 

in the world today that would like to see us and others move to 

a no-first-use policy. We’ve debated it in this country. The question 

is, with the changing of times and the changing of the threat, is 

it time to go back and look at that again? 

Much of what you have in this arsenal is to protect you against 

something that happens in the middle of the night and a whole 

bunch of weapons that come raining down on you in a first strike, 

decapitating our Government or whatever. Those things could be 

the things of future treaties and verifiably watched, such that if 

you could remove that kind of capability you could in fact, or reduce it, you could in fact change your posture in significant ways. 

We ought to explore that more. That’s a policy issue rather than 

a technical issue, but it has technical ramifications. 

The second is that as we go forward the costs that have been associated, as you laid out in your testimony, Madam Chairwoman, 

of the B–61—we have to get our arms around how to cost these extension programs, because we are going to do them for the next 50 

years. The likelihood of going to zero is probably not inside that 

window. So we have to find a way to understand what it costs, 

what the implications of a large inventory are versus a small inventory, and do a good business case. 
41 

Even though it is warfighting and it is strategic and it is our security, it should not escape the business case of how you do it and 

how you think about the trades that you have inside of it. I think 

we have not gotten that business case nailed down, just based on 

the cost growth that we have today. So I just throw that on the 

table. 

ADDITIONAL COMMITTEE QUESTIONS

Senator FEINSTEIN. Let me just briefly respond to you about that, 

because Senator Alexander and I have been very concerned about 

that. The inability to keep these programs within initial budget 

confines, they go up exponentially, is a problem. So we are on that. 

Senator Alexander has specifically suggested that we look at root 

causes. As late as yesterday afternoon, we met with NNSA and Mr. 

D’Agostino and others with some questions we have and, I think, 

set into motion at least a process where we will be able to have 

regular reports on a monthly basis from one person who is in 

charge of these systems and begin to understand, if there are problems, what are they going to do about the problem, because you 

can’t go on and estimate something at $600 million and have it 

come in at $6 billion. So that what you’ve pointed out is a very 

acute problem that we are aware of and doing our best to solve. 

Do you want to make a comment? 

Senator ALEXANDER. No. 

[The following questions were not asked at the hearing but were 

submitted to the witness for response subsequent to the hearing:] 

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED TO GENERAL JAMES CARTWRIGHT, USMC, RETIRED

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY SENATOR SUSAN COLLINS

Question. In your report, you discuss bilateral U.S.-Russia negotiations as the 

only legitimate means to reduce the level of both nations’ current stockpiles to 900 

weapons. You mention China as a player in future reductions, but discuss its participation only when the stockpile reaches 1,000 weapons. In my view, the report 

underestimates the importance of Chinese participation in future rounds of arms reductions. By some accounts the size of their arsenal could already be approaching 

3,000 weapons. I am also not certain that Chinese participation can be assumed, 

despite claims by the Foreign Ministry that China aspires to nuclear disarmament. 

More so than any time in its history, the image of a monolithic Chinese Government 

is more fiction than fact. There are multiple competing interests within the government, many of which would oppose any effort to reduce its own stockpile. 

What is the basis for taking China at its word and assuming that it is ready or 

willing to enter into disarmament negotiations? 

Answer. In the area of nuclear weapons policy, China has not deviated from its 

traditional position, harking back to Mao Zedong’s guidance a half century ago, emphasizing ‘‘minimal deterrence’’ and requiring only a small survivable nuclear force. 

The governing nuclear unit—the 2nd Artillery—under the Chinese General Staff 

has adhered strictly to this time-honored doctrine and the other relevant components of the Chinese Government—the Central Military Commission, the Party, and 

the Foreign Ministry—appear to be ‘‘as one’’ in this regard. The policy reflects a unified and ‘‘monolithic’’ constellation of actors and historically produced a relatively 

small nuclear arsenal. Without venturing into the classified domain, suffice it to say 

that that scholarly estimates in the public domain put the size of China’s arsenal 

at approximately an order of magnitude smaller that the number you cite (300 

versus 3,000). China’s nuclear modernization is qualitatively impressive, however. 

The report intended to emphasize that China’s future participation in future nuclear arms control is very important. The thrust of the report is that it is critically 

important to broaden the scope of nuclear arms control to include China and other 

nuclear weapons countries. The historical bilateral framework served its purpose 

but multilateral nuclear negotiations must be initiated soon to address effectively 
42 

the multitude of nuclear risks and threats that lie outside the U.S.-Russian relationship. Although there are reasons to believe that China would participate in such 

multilateral talks, there doubtless exists some internal interests that oppose entering into a nuclear disarmament process. Thus we should not assume but rather test 

China’s willingness to join the process. Our commission considered, and did not reject, the notion of linking the very deep cuts in U.S. and Russian arsenals to China’s 

commitment to constrain its arsenal. We were and remain open to ideas for drawing 

China into the process. 

Question. I am concerned that tactical nuclear weapons are not thoroughly discussed in your report. While the New START treaty strengthened nuclear nonproliferation efforts, it did not address the significant disparity between the number 

of nonstrategic nuclear weapons in Russia’s stockpile compared to our own. Your report, likewise, describes the value of tactical nuclear weapons as ‘‘virtually nil’’ to 

U.S. operational plans. The Perry-Schlesinger Strategic Posture Commission reported that Russia had an estimated 3,800 tactical nuclear weapons remaining in 

its arsenal, but you advocate that Russia should be encouraged to move these weapons into storage as part of a future agreement. 

Given the lack of any meaningful dialogue with Russia on tactical nuclear weapons during the New START negotiations, what confidence do you have that Russia 

would accede to discuss tactical weapons, or their removal as a tactical tool from 

operational bases, in the next round of disarmament talks? 

Answer. A previously published Global Zero report by a different commission composed of highly experienced European, Russian, and American members (including 

former senior military members) thoroughly examined the issues surrounding U.S.- 

NATO and Russian tactical nuclear weapons deployed on the European continent. 

It discusses the diminished role of U.S.-NATO tactical weapons after the end of the 

cold war, and recommended their complete withdrawal from combat bases to central 

storage in tandem with comparable Russian re-location. (See http:// 

www.globalzero.org/files/gzlnato-russialcommissionlreportl-len.pdf.) 

The report to which I testified before your subcommittee considers the omission 

of tactical nuclear weapons from the U.S.-Russian nuclear talks to be a very serious 

deficiency in need of rectification for the next round. Our view is that future talks 

should be comprehensive and include all categories of weapons—strategic deployed, 

strategic reserve, and tactical—in an effort to regulate the total number of nuclear 

weapons in each arsenal while allowing each side the freedom to mix these categories in whatever fashion they deem best suited to their national security interests. 

Russia’s primary concern today is conflict on her borders and Russia’s perceived 

conventional inferiority in some scenarios (e.g. conflict with China) increases the importance of tactical nuclear weapons for foiling an enemy attack. Russia’s tactical 

nuclear arsenal is thus much larger than the U.S. arsenal. Russia will be very cautious in cutting its active tactical stockpile—the size of which is uncertain given the 

deficiency noted above that to date excludes them from regulation and verification. 

(Estimates in the range of 1,500–2,000 active weapons appear to be reasonable.) 

However, it is clear to me that Russia does not need thousands of tactical nuclear 

weapons to perform this mission. A recent Russian study conducted in response to 

the Global Zero report, chaired by a former Chief of Staff of the Russian Strategic 

Rocket Forces, indicated that Russia could safely reduce to 500 total active tactical 

nuclear weapons. This number is comparable to the size of today’s U.S. tactical nuclear arsenal. In exchange for deep cuts in Russia’s tactical arsenal, the United 

States could deeply cut our nondeployed strategic stockpile, which greatly outnumbers Russia’s reserve strategic stockpile. Whether or not a deal along these 

lines could be negotiated remains to be determined, but our study concluded that 

such an approach has merit and promise. 

CONCLUSION OF HEARING

Senator FEINSTEIN. Well, let me then say thank you all very 

much. I think it’s been a very interesting morning. I’m very grateful both for your mind and your willingness to be here and share 

your thoughts with us. So thank you. 

The hearing is adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 11:31 a.m., Wednesday, July 25, the hearing was 

concluded, and the subcommittee was recessed, to reconvene subject to the call of the Chair.] 
43 

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