Translation Introduction:

Patrick Tucker, the technology editor at Defense One, prepared a report published by the American website, in which he dealt with the effects of the use of technology on the development of nuclear weapons, explaining how China preceded the United States in the field of hypersonic weapons, and also discussed the effectiveness of American nuclear deterrence systems, Especially after this debate was sparked recently after Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the Russian president's brandishing of his nuclear readiness.

Translation text:

The risks associated with nuclear weapons have risen again, according to what the heads of three US intelligence agencies recently told lawmakers in Congress, coinciding with the Russian invasion.

And it wasn't supposed to go this way. At the end of the Cold War, US President "George Bush" Sr. boasted that his country had managed to reduce its nuclear forces.

However, today's arsenals - and global politics itself - are very different from what they were in 1991, as US leaders face threats from authoritarian states in Moscow, Beijing, Tehran and Pyongyang, all racing to build new nuclear bombs while searching for ways to launch them.

As it turns out, technology makes the task of limiting the spread of nuclear weapons difficult, forcing us to fundamentally reconsider nuclear deterrence.

Thirty years after the end of the Cold War, the United States is spending hundreds of billions of dollars on 21st-century versions of the strategic bombers, nuclear-powered submarines, and ICBMs that make up the “nuclear triad.”

Meanwhile, China, Russia and the United States are developing new types of supersonic ballistic missiles that maneuver at five times the speed of sound, making the old generation of ICBMs left over from the Cold War era look like a worn-out patrimony of classic cars. the sixties.

However, these new missiles do not replace the old ones. They are just one of the things that every country has to purchase to keep pace with those around it.

Some argue that US leaders have had the opportunity to exploit the peace dividends of the Cold War era to dismantle global nuclear arsenals, but instead the Pentagon's ambition to acquire newer missile defense technology has spurred emerging authoritarian regimes to respond in kind, and heavy US investment in missile development A new defensive ballistic has in turn stimulated the current path of both Russia and China towards developing hypersonic weapons with highly maneuverable capabilities.

The South Korean military says North Korea has launched what is believed to be a submarine-launched ballistic missile from waters off its east coast

Several senior US military commanders have declined interview requests for this article, as Defense Department leaders keep current nuclear concerns under wraps.

However, in 2019, the Air Force issued a number of research papers in which leaders expressed their concerns, as Major Jeff Hill said in one of these papers that the new American defenses against Russian and Chinese missiles “made these two countries aggressively pursue the development of their programs for faster missiles than Highly maneuverable sound… Russia in particular highlights US military technological leaps, including its defensive ballistic missile program, as a deterrent concern,” Hill cited the work of Christine Finn Brosgaard, one of the most prominent Western academic experts. In the study of Russian nuclear strategy.

The complexity of the nuclear race

“There are a number of very fundamental assumptions that we have made over the past 30 years that are no longer valid at all,” Admiral Charles Richard said at a symposium on deterrence last September.

Richard commands the US Strategic Forces, or what is known as "STRATCOM", which oversees the military's nuclear arsenal.

Richard adds: "After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the American success in Operation Desert Storm (the second Gulf War), we reached a national security environment in which the possibility of discussing the danger of failure in strategic deterrence, especially the danger of failure in nuclear deterrence..., we began to take this matter for granted." With it, we forgot all the things we had to do from the perspective of strategic deterrence.”

One such assumption was that China posed a negligible nuclear threat.

In 2006, the Chinese People's Liberation Army had only 18 nuclear-capable missiles that could reach the continental ocean of the United States, each carrying only one warhead.

As nuclear researchers Kerr Lieber and Daryl Press wrote at the time: "If the United States can destroy Russia's long-range nuclear systems with a first strike, then it is likely that China's strategic nuclear arsenal is much weakened (in the face of a similar strike)."

However, China has expanded its arsenal significantly since then, and in 2020, Pentagon officials estimated the size of its arsenal at "a little over two hundred" and that it could double that number.

Moreover, China has established its own nuclear triad that includes nuclear stealth bombers and 4 "094" class ballistic missile submarines.

Chinese "094" class ballistic missile submarines

The expansion of the Chinese arsenal poses new challenges.

For example, American officials believe that the Chinese Liberation Army is building more silos than its ICBMs, and if Pentagon planners do not know which silos are full and which are empty, they should assume that they are all full.

Thus, China would deter a nuclear strike by using fewer warheads, a different approach from the "warhead-to-warhead" approach used by the United States and the Soviet Union.

According to Richard, the emergence of a large third nuclear arsenal complicates the theory of deterrence itself, adding: "In general, the theory of deterrence does not take into account the emergence of a tripartite race. How can deterrence be achieved with three competing counterparts possessing nuclear capabilities? The Cold War was a competition between only two parties so far".

Meanwhile, US military planners are changing their definition of "strategic" deterrence.

During the Cold War, the term most often referred to nuclear war, but today's planners use the term to include non-nuclear threats and technology that could have devastating effects—such as destroying an enemy's ability to see or respond to an attack.

Robert Sofer, the former deputy assistant secretary of defense for nuclear and missile defense policy, said that a strategic attack of this kind would include an attack using a non-nuclear weapon against a nuclear command and control unit, or early warning satellites.

In February 2021, then-Deputy Chief of Staff General John Hyten publicly advised the incoming Biden administration to ensure that the next nuclear posture statement included all new ways in which the enemy might conduct a "strategic attack."

Most likely, future nuclear weapons, including intercontinental ballistic missiles, will be part of a complex and intertwined digital structure, and will often include "some level of interdependence with the rest of the war system," according to forecasts issued in 2016 by "Warner Dam", which He then served as Chairman of the Air Force's Scientific Advisory Board.

His warning came ahead of a large, unpublished study conducted by the Air Force to find out how feasible nuclear weapons would be if they were all networked together.

Super maneuverable nuclear warheads

Test launch of what state media said was a North Korean "new type" of intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM)

Perhaps the biggest change to nuclear deterrence is the emergence of new types of hypersonic weapons.

Unlike the ICBMs of the Cold War era, the new class of supersonic weapons being pursued by China and Russia (along with the United States) are guided missiles, allowing a much deeper area to be targeted with a single missile and defending against such missiles. A very difficult thing.

Chinese and Russian supersonic missiles will be able to carry nuclear warheads, but the United States is pursuing hypersonic missiles for precision strikes using conventional or non-nuclear warheads.

"We don't want to be confused," says Mark Lewis, executive director of the National Defense Industrial Association's Emerging Technologies Institute.

According to Lewis, the United States was once a leader in the development of supersonic cruise missiles, but it gave up that leadership, adding that "while the Air Force has been formulating its vision five or six years ago, it has not focused on cruise missiles, but rather on strengthening Missile flight. It has since been remedied and corrected, but that made us a little late."

Air Force Colonel John D. Varelec leads Operations Center 608, which will oversee US air assets during a nuclear war.

“The Chinese have monitored the start-and-stop measures of American hypersonic weapons programs and have been investing in this technology for years, we don’t know exactly how many,” Farlick wrote 3 years ago. It is not known exactly when the Chinese embarked on their hypersonic weapons programs, but The first successful tests of Chinese perceptions in this field came in 2014, and served as a catalyst for more focused US research and development in the field of supersonic weapons.

A prototype of the HD-1 ground-based supersonic cruise missile system at the China International Air and Aerospace Exhibition

The United States, China and Russia often use simulations to test supersonic flight.

China has invested in wind tunnels to produce the data needed for the simulation, which has allowed it to make some breakthroughs in supersonic systems. They even claim to have a secret tunnel that will allow their army to simulate conditions of up to Mach 30 (the Mach number is the ratio between the speed of an object in a medium and the speed of it). The sound is in the same medium)*.

"In August 2018, China's supersonic glide system [Starry Sky-2] was reported to have flown for 10 minutes at speeds of up to Mach 6," Farelek wrote.

However, last July, China shocked the world by conducting an around-the-ground test of a glide vehicle and a hypersonic missile.

The Financial Times wrote that the test "suggested that the Chinese military could strike targets anywhere in the United States with nuclear weapons."

For the current strategic technology race, the event was described by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, as a "Sputnik moment" (the first satellite successfully launched by the Soviet Union in 1957).

The United States has not yet conducted a similar test.

The development of these new "indomitable" weapons has sparked a synchronized arms race to forge new perceptions of their defeat.

One of the US responses has been to develop and use new satellite structures to monitor hypersonic missiles as they advance in flight, as well as use new sensors and object-finding software to identify things like mobile rocket launchers.

The Chinese, in turn, are racing to develop supersonic defenses.

"Scientist [Qian Qihu] recently boasted of what he called the Great Underground Steel Wall of China, capable of intercepting missiles that were previously too fast to be intercepted," Farelek writes.

The new nuclear weapon will not replace the old

So, what is the reason for the continued construction of ICBMs?

On the one hand, eliminating such missiles, or at least not spending on building new ones from them;

An easy political decision for the United States.

In a 2021 report, researchers from the Federation of American Scientists said that the majority of Americans support alternatives to developing ICBMs, and that they do not derive a sense of security from them.

ICBMs have also long been viewed as the weakest side of the nuclear triad, because the locations of missile silos are known to the enemy.

It is also the rib that represents the greatest danger of an unintended launch, as the US president must decide whether or not to strike it within minutes of receiving the warning of an upcoming strike.

The commander in chief can wait a little longer before giving orders to launch nuclear weapons such as bombers or submarines stationed close to their targets.

But Tom Collina, director of policy at the Plowshares Fund, said any politician, not least the US president, who tried to reduce the nuclear arsenal would face immediate opposition from Stratcom leaders, whose officials have testified in support of spending on ICBMs. for nuclear modernization.

"This is one of the main reasons why it is so difficult for presidents to make changes on this issue," Colina said. "They are so opposed to the top brass, and no president wants to be on the wrong side of the argument on this."

Unfortunately, as impressive and terrifying as maneuverable supersonic weapons may sound, they don't really change the strategic equation about the need to maintain or replace ICBMs, Lewis said, adding that this fact has "a number of reasons, Supersonic doesn't really give you much of an advantage over a (non-maneuverable) nuclear weapon, and looking at what China and Russia are doing, where they're hoarding supersonic maneuvering systems and nuclear weapons... that tells us more about their politics than their capabilities. In doing so, they are only trying to raise our fear and our attention, but how this will change the strategic equation, it does not change it much.”

Russian K-266 Orel nuclear-powered cruise missile submarine

But why does nothing change in the strategic equation?

Because no country would be able to build enough of these systems to make a difference, Farilek writes, “because of the engineering difficulties and materials required that represent such a large cost to such a program, it is unlikely that any country would manufacture these weapons in sufficient quantities to threaten the status quo. for deterrence."

During the Trump administration, the United States tried to bring China and Russia to the negotiating table to craft a new arms control agreement;

To replace the bilateral New START treaty between the United States and Russia, and cover new types of launch systems.

“The idea is that we are running out of time,” said a former White House official familiar with the process, who added, “The Russians got it right that Biden… would extend New Start for another five years, which he did.”

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has heightened military leaders’ concerns about the United States’ ability to deter a Russian or Chinese nuclear attack: “Today we are faced with two peers nearly equal in their nuclear capabilities, who have the ability to unilaterally escalate to any possible level of violence, and in Any area around the world, what instrument of national power they have, at what time,” Richard, the leader of Stratcom, spoke to congressional lawmakers recently. Resilient, especially nuclear deterrence. And if strategic or nuclear deterrence fails, there is no other plan or capability within the Ministry of Defense that will fulfill the role it was designed for."

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This article is translated from Defense One and does not necessarily reflect the Meydan website.

Translation: Hadeer Abdel Azim.