Revisiting TRIAD (Part 1)

American strategic nuclear forces were designed in the 1960s. The specific weapons platforms and warheads have been modernized over time, but the doctrine of MAD, Mutual Assured Destruction remains the cornerstone of our strategic military posture towards Russia/USSR. By the late 1970s both sides were armed with tens of thousands of thermonuclear warheads aimed at the other. Both sides awakened to the understanding that unleashing a first strike could not destroy enough opposing megatonnage to prevent horrific retribution in kind. In short, no one could win such a war, so the overrideing goal of strategic weapons policy was to build a regime of treaties, weapons reductions and inspections making their use least likely. Today the Russian and American warhead stockpiles stand at about 1650. There are arcane counting rules depending whether the delivery vehicle is a bomber or an ICBM, but the strategic bomb piles are roughly equal. Russia and America have hedged their bets by deploying their warheads accross ICBMs, submarines SLBMs and bombers. This is the TRIAD and it is hoped that the opposition could not find a technological solution to quickly and undetectibly neutralize all three legs and break free of MAD by jeopardizing the certainty of a devastating retaliatory response. Well, American strategic forces are approaching the end of their useful lives. Bombers can only fly a finite number of hours before their engines and wings fail. B52s have been flying for 50 years. Todays bomber pilots can fly the same plane their fathers did. And the Ohio class submarine hulls can only survive so many roundtrips to depth and back. Finally, the Minuteman III ICBMs burried in silos accross our northern tier were also built over 40 years ago. There is more computing power on your IPhone than in a Minuteman command silo. New platforms are required over the next two decades and they will not be cheap. Should we just recapitalize the existing Triad? Do we still need the three weapons platform strategy? What level of weapons is required in todays environment, and how much are we willing to pay? And the costs are daunting, as we will also be in full bore production of the F35, the Ford Class carriers and many other exotic (I.e., expensive) new weapons including hypersonics, directed energy, autonomous systems and the 6th generation fighter. The solution will call for great leadership, great sacrifice or both.