Pentagon Seeking Cheaper Options for Nuclear Sub

Today's top nuclear policy stories, with excerpts in bullet form.

Stories we're following today: Thursday, July 21, 2011.

Pentagon Could Scrap New Ballistic-Missile Submarine - Jennifer McDermott in The Day [link]

• Marine Corps Gen. James E. Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters in Washington last week that "nothing is off the table" as the Pentagon looks to cut at least $400 billion from the budget through the 2023 fiscal year.
• Instead of building the new ballistic-missile submarine [to replace the current Ohio-class SSBN], Cartwright said, the Navy could make the Virginia class of attack submarines longer so they could carry ballistic missiles
• Norman Polmar, a naval analyst and submarine warfare expert, said he has been advocating for a smaller submarine based on the Virginia design for years because the replacement program, which he believes could add up to $100 billion with research, development and construction costs, is simply unaffordable.

The Right Stuff - Greg Thielmann in Arms Control Now [link]

• Senator Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma) proposed a plan this week for reducing the deficit that includes $79 billion in cuts from the U.S. nuclear weapons budget over the next ten years. In specifying the individual components of a reduced strategic force structure, Coburn deserves credit for helping to break the strait jacket of Cold War thinking, which still burdens considerations of 21st century defense needs.
• Whereas many in the Republican Party are reticent to consider reductions in the U.S. strategic nuclear arsenal below the ceilings established by the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) … Others in his party are likely to join him in revolting against the nearly $200 billion price tag of modernizing the strategic arsenal and the nuclear weapons complex in the decade ahead.
• Coburn joins a growing chorus of defense analysts and military professionals who are re-evaluating Cold War assumptions that have long held sway against the emerging political, fiscal, and environmental realities.
• For Sen. Coburn to enter the fray with a call for faster and deeper reductions than envisioned by New START powerfully legitimizes some additional hard thinking among Members of Congress across the political spectrum about how national security should be defined in the years ahead.

Pakistan-India Arms Race Destabilizing Strategic Balance, Experts Say - Rachel Oswald in Global Security Newswire [link]

• Indian and Pakistani strategies for ramping up their armed might could increase the likelihood of a disastrous outcome in the event of another war between the longtime antagonists.
• While India has used recent massive economic growth to invest in new conventional force capabilities, the much smaller Pakistan … has lacked the financial wherewithal to compete with New Delhi in a traditional military sphere. For this reason, Islamabad is pursuing a significant nuclear arms buildup, according to … retired Pakistani Air Vice Marshal Shahzad Chaudhry.
• Pakistan is widely thought to be expanding its stocks of fissile material at a faster rate than any other nation. After historically possessing a smaller nuclear weapons stockpile than India, Islamabad’s arsenal in the last few years surged past New Delhi and is now thought to number between 90 and 110 warheads.
• India, meanwhile, is pursuing a nuclear triad that would enable it to wield nuclear weapons by air, land, and sea. The nation in December is expected to test its first ballistic missile with a range that is almost long enough to classify it as an ICBM.
• Chaudhry indicated he saw little chance of the two sides agreeing to sit down in the near future for bilateral arms control talks … The strategic environment in South Asia must stabilize before that could occur, he said.

If We Don't End Nuclear Weapons, They Will End Us - National Catholic Reporter [link]

• In 2002, [Vatican ambassador to the United Nations Archbishop Francis] Chullikatt told a U.N. committee … “My delegation wishes to reaffirm its well-known position: Nuclear weapons are incompatible with the peace we seek for the 21st century; they cannot be justified. These weapons are instruments of death and destruction.”
• As long as the superpowers maintain their weapons and plunge forward in upgrading current systems … our nation has no moral authority to demand that other nations abandon their own ambitions.
• ... the U.S. trudges unheedingly down the nuclear path. Now more than ever, we need to attend to the messages of the often marginalized peacemakers in our midst. We may not have many more chances to heed their warnings: If we don’t end nuclear weapons, they will end us.

Former CIA Man: Don't Bet on Israel Bombing Iran on My Speculation! - Robert Baer in TIME World [link]

• Last week, my friend Ian Masters, who hosts the Los Angeles talk-show "Background Briefing", called me up to talk about the Arab spring, and especially what would happen if Israel were to attack Iran.
• "If I was forced to bet," I ventured, "I'd say we're going to have some sort of conflict in the next couple of months, unless this is all just a masterful bluff — which I can't believe the Iranians would succumb to — I think the chances of it being a bluff are remote" … And when Masters asked me when I thought this hypothetical attack might hypothetically occur, I blithely suggested September.
• I don't know where it started, but soon the choice bits of our conversation were being rebroadcast as a danger signal flashing bright red … One former State Department official wrote that my comments were all the proof he needed to know that I'd "gone rogue" … the former State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley started tweeting that I didn't know what I was talking about.
• What I am now certain of … is that my speculative wandering accidentally kicked a hidden hornets' nest … And, here I leave pure speculation to return to fact: It's lucky tweets, talk radio and blogosphere hysteria don't drive the decision making in Jerusalem and Washington.