According to recent press reports, the Biden administration has approved a secret nuclear strategy designed to adapt U.S. defense planning to the anticipated rise of China as a third nuclear superpower, continuing competition from Russia, and possible challenges from North Korea. The highly classified document approved in March 2024 seeks to adjust what is called “Nuclear Employment Guidance” to a new international environment of competing and colluding, hostile nuclear powers.
In June 2024, Pranay Vaddi, the senior director for arms control and nonproliferation at the National Security Council, noted that the new strategy emphasized “the need to deter Russia, the PRC, and North Korea simultaneously.” The Biden strategy reflects the Pentagon’s projections that China will expand its long-range nuclear weapons to 1,000 by 2030 and 1,500 by 2035, approximately the same numbers as those currently deployed by the United States and by Russia.
On the other hand, noted scholar and national security analyst Theodore Postol contends that the Biden strategy is no more than a tacit acknowledgment of a decade-long U.S. technical program to improve U.S. capabilities “to fight and win nuclear wars with both China and Russia.” According to Postol, a relatively new “super-fuse,” already being fitted onto all U.S. strategic ballistic missiles, more than doubles the ability of the Trident II D-5 Submarine Launched Ballistic Missiles (SLBMs) to destroy Russian and Chinese nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) in hardened silos.
As he explains, the current U.S. nuclear ballistic missile submarine (SSBN) force has “about 890 W-76 100 kt and 400 W-88 475 kt warheads.” The 400 W-88 warheads equipped with the super-fuse have the combined accuracy and yield to destroy Russian silo-based ICBMs before they can be launched. However, these numbers of W-88s are insufficient to destroy both Russian and (expected numbers of) Chinese ICBMs before launch. Therefore, arming the W-76 warheads with super fuses means that:
“It is now possible, at least according to nuclear-war-fighting strategies, for the United States to attack the more than 300 ICBM silo-based ICBMs that China has been building since about 2020 with the copious numbers of available 100kt W-76 Trident II warheads. The rapid expansion in “hard-target kill capability” of the 100kt W-76 warhead also makes it simultaneously possible for the United States to attack the roughly 300 silo-based Russian ICBMs.”
