Rust to obsolescence or modernize to deter. Peter Huessy, a defense and national security analyst for more than 50 years, delivered that line toward the end of the 25th annual Nuclear Triad Symposium presented by BRF, LSUS, and the National Institute for Deterrence Studies on June 20.

That message underlined the entire symposium (hosted by LSUS), which evaluated the United States’ positioning in the nuclear world with a conventional conflict raging in Ukraine against Russia and the possibility of future conflict with China.

While the United States has maintained its nuclear arsenal in compliance with the New START Treaty signed in 2010, Russia has abandoned that treaty, which was designed to decrease the number of warheads in both countries’ active stockpiles.

Vladimir Putin’s visit to North Korea earlier this year, which resulted in a mutual defense pact, sends signals of Russia’s apparent willingness to supply North Korea with weapons and potentially boost Kim Jong Un’s nuclear program with submarine and ballistic missile technology.

Huessy, along with a host of nuclear deterrent experts and high-ranking members of the American Air Force and Navy, emphasized that the U.S. needs to modernize its nuclear arsenal, with the possibility of expanding its stockpile to counter Russia and China’s nuclear expansion.

The Triad, which consists of America’s three legs of its nuclear arsenal (land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles, bombers capable of firing nuclear warheads, and submarines with nuclear missile capabilities), remains a cornerstone of national defense. The command of the land and air Triad legs is under the Air Force Global Strike Command, housed at Barksdale Air Force Base.

The symposium, which attracted nearly 200 local, regional, and national defense industry members, was the third hosted at LSUS. The event offered an environment to share unclassified information pertinent to the defense industry.

Losing the nuclear numbers game

With Russia no longer adhering to the New Start Treaty, which included inspections of nuclear facilities, Chris Yeaw said the Putin government has already expanded well past the treaty’s allowable number of nuclear warheads. China, a relatively new player in the nuclear realm, is also rapidly expanding its ICBM missile fields with current projections of surpassing the U.S. in number of nuclear armaments in the next decade. Russia could have as many as double the U.S. current stockpile of about 2,000 operationally relevant warheads by 2034.

Yeaw, an associate executive director for strategic deterrence and nuclear programs at the National Strategic Research Institute, said the United States, which doesn’t have plans to expand its nuclear stockpile, has a decision to make.
“We’re at an inflection point in nuclear weapons and in geopolitics – it’s a unique point in our history,” Yeaw said. “While Russia and China are not allies, they are aligned on the world stage.

“(After World War II), our goal for our nuclear program was to have a deterrent that was second to none. We could be No. 3 by 2034.”

One common image of nuclear war is one country pushes a red button to launch all of its nuclear missiles, then the other country launches its entire stock, resulting in mass death and a nuclear winter that ends mankind. But a much more likely scenario – if nuclear war were to take place at all – is the use of low or ultra-low yield nuclear warheads in a conflict in the Indo-Pacific.

While America’s conventional military might and the quality of the systems and platforms to deliver nuclear missiles are still unrivaled, the one advantage adversaries like Russia and China could perceive to have is in a nuclear conflict in the Indo-Pacific theater.
“The United States doesn’t have any nuclear weapons in that theater,” said Adam Lowther, head of research at the National Institute for Deterrence Studies. “If China attacks Taiwan, we don’t really know their thinking on using nuclear weapons to begin that attack or at any point in the attack. Russia has invested in a lot of low and ultra-low yield nuclear weapons.”

Yeaw and Lowther argue that if China or Russia view nuclear war in the Indo-Pacific theater as an advantage, and perhaps their only advantage in a potential conflict with the U.S., is America’s current nuclear arsenal enough of a deterrent?

U.S. allies like South Korea, Japan and Australia are also concerned about America’s nuclear capabilities and its willingness to defend these allies.
“If the U.S. is perceived to be in a weakened position, then the international system as we know it could fall,” Lowther said.

“That has consequences such as the declined use of the U.S. dollar and the English language around the world. That could also push our non-nuclear allies into pursuing nuclear weapons for their own defense, and that’s not in America’s best interest either.

Modernization is on the horizon

America’s new stealth bomber (B-21 Raider) took its first flight in late 2023 with orders for “at least” 100 B-21s to bolster the nation’s bomber taskforces.

While not only an aircraft that can deliver a nuclear strike (the B-21 can carry conventional missiles as well), this new stealth bomber is designed to cloak itself from any known radar system and deliver a precision strike on targets anywhere in the world.

American bomber taskforces are seen as a military and diplomatic weapon, with countries around the world requesting bomber presence in integration flying exercises.

U.S. bombers for the first time integrated with the air force of India (in 2023): now the world’s most populous country, a nuclear power, and a neighbor to China who has a heavy hand in Asian geopolitics.

Modernization efforts aren’t limited to the air.

The Navy began construction on a new Columbia class of nuclear-equipped submarines that are expected to come online sometime in the next decade.

America’s land-based ICBM system is in the early stages of a redesign, which will swap out the Minute Man III system with the new Sentinel system.

Progress with respect to the ICBM switch is slower than many in the nuclear enterprise would like.

“We haven’t done anything close to this magnitude since we built the system in the 1960s,” said Brigadier General Colin Connor, director of intercontinental ballistic missile modernization in the Air Force Global Strike Command. “We’re making this shift while maintaining an ICBM system that offers deterrence 24/7.

“So we’re sustaining and operating the system we have while also planning and installing the new system.”

Connor said the shift to Sentinel employs a host of new technologies, even down to fiber communication lines to replace current copper lines.

“The framework is beginning to be put into place from a military construction standpoint at multiple sites,” Connor said. “A great deal of work has been done on the missile itself. Refurbishing the existing things with all the new technologies that are available is an even more time-intensive process than building the original system in the 1960s.”

Atrophied Industry

When the United States eased away from the nuclear enterprise starting in the 1990s, the industry surrounding that enterprise “atrophied.”

Atrophy is part of the American manufacturing story overall, but when military spending budgets weren’t consistent in nuclear and surrounding industries, investment in those industries declined.

There’s been a groundswell of support for the nuclear industry in the past decade, but many at the symposium on June 20 believe that attention and resources need to be directed at the modernization of the nuclear arsenal more urgently for the U.S. to keep its nuclear deterrent status.

“There were certain production lines that were shut down for cost-savings purposes, but now we’re having to regenerate and reinvigorate that industrial base,” said Kelly Lee, director of plans and programs in the Navy’s Strategic Systems Programs. “Modernization efforts will present the opportunity to use new technology to open more possibilities.”

Aging workforces are also a concern as many of the older guard have retired or are nearing retirement, taking much of the hard-earned knowledge and relationships from the 1980s and 1990s with them.

While engineers and other careers requiring advanced college degrees will always be sought after, defense industry leaders stressed the need to increase the number of skilled workers with vocational backgrounds who actually build and repair the ships, planes, missiles, systems, etc.

Small business wants to help

Defense industry giants like General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, and Lockheed Martin have numerous defense contracts and invest in research and development.

But small business has a role to play, especially in the technology and software realm with emerging industries like artificial intelligence.

Local businesses like Ingalls Information Security, Praeses, and OuterLink provide mission-critical components and applications, but the steep barriers to entry and slow pace of government evaluation of companies and ideas make participation in this area difficult.

“Small businesses are more nimble and more flexible,” said J.D. Hunsicker, vice president of government relations for Praeses. “Our biggest constraint is a risk-management one, what it takes to get the authority to operate. How do I get permission from the government, the Department of Defense, either on a classified or unclassified level? Half of the cost of small contracts from businesses like us is related to the time that it takes to work with and get approval from the bureaucracy.”

One huge hurdle for both small business and the government is for projects to be protected from adversaries, which means high-level cybersecurity networks.

For security reasons, the government has to vet each individual, company, and their idea before any access can be given to project details or developments that are classified or involve controlled unclassified information.