“To me, it is all about deterrence. We need some capacity to be able to fill a deterrence gap. If we leave the gap, then we are at risk.”
By Jeff Schogol | Published Jun 24, 2022 9:00 AM
Lawmakers are betting $45 million that a nuclear war does not automatically mean the end of the world.
Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.) recently added an amendment to the House version of the Fiscal 2023 National Defense Authorization Act that would provide $45 million for the Nuclear-Armed Sea-Launched Cruise Missile, even though President Joe Biden’s administration has indicated it wants to stop the program.
Defense officials have not said publicly how powerful the Nuclear-Armed Sea-Launched Cruise Missile is, but Pentagon spokesman Oscar Seára described it as a “low-yield weapon.”
The missile would give the U.S. military a relatively small nuclear weapon that is meant to deter Russia and China from using their own low-yield nuclear weapons because they assume the United States would not respond with far more powerful strategic weapons.
“Expanding flexible U.S. nuclear options now, to include low-yield options, is important for the preservation of credible deterrence against regional aggression,” according to the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review. “It will raise the nuclear threshold and help ensure that potential adversaries perceive no possible advantage in limited nuclear escalation, making nuclear employment less likely.”
The Biden administration continues to stand by its decision to cancel the Nuclear-Armed Sea-Launched Cruise Missile in the proposed Defense Department budget for fiscal 2023, a National Security Council spokesman said. That decision was based on the findings of the 2022 Nuclear Posture Review – which the Pentagon completed earlier this year but has not yet released an unclassified version of the review – as well as an interagency process led by the Defense Department.
It is too early to tell whether funding for the missile will be included in the final version of the National Defense Authorization Act, which will likely be negotiated by lawmakers at a conference committee much later this year. Even if the $45 million is included in the final law, the House Appropriations Committee did not include any money for the missile in its version of the defense appropriations bill, which funds the U.S. military.
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