The New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) has recently been much discussed in the press as major or not so major change for American nuclear posture and strategy. What has been missing from the discussion so far are the rather notable effects that the treaty may have on those companies and communities supplying the tools of that strategy. As I cover the industry more than the politics, I'll focus on that today.
The new limits call for no more than 800 launchers, and 700 deployed launchers, and 1550 deployed warheads on each side. The treaty makes no meaningful mention of total warheads, which amount to 5,113 on the US side, and a still unannounced number of the Russian. In treaty terms, the American nuclear force today consists of
96 B-52H Stratofortress bombers, each capable of carrying 20 nuclear cruise missiles
20 B-2A Spirit bombers, each capable of carrying 16 nuclear gravity bombs
450 LGM-30G Minuteman III ballistic missiles, each with a single nuclear warhead
288 UGM-133A Trident II ballistic missiles, each with four nuclear warheads, on 14 Ohio-class submarines.
for a total of 854 deployed launchers and 3842 deployed warheads
The difference in deployed and total launchers is substantially accounted for with submarine refits. The US Navy, for one, generally keeps only 12 of its 14 ballistic missile submarines in service at a time, and thus keeps on hand only enough missiles (288) for the 24 tubes in those twelve ships. Submarines entering shipyards for overhauls offload their missiles once pierside. Those leaving the yards pick up those missiles.
To comply with the treaty obligations, the Obama government announced earlier this month that it would remove from service at least 34 bombers, 30 land-based ballistic missiles, and 54 submarine-launched ballistic missiles. Presumably the bombers to be retired will come from the 96 B-52H Stratofortresses on hand, as they are far older and more vulnerable than the USAF's 20 B-2A Spirits. To get to 54 fewer submarine-launched missiles, the Navy will simply pull four missiles from each of its submarines. For now, all fourteen ships will be kept in service. In the long run, the four tubes freed-up on each ship could be converted to additional stowage space, which is always at a premium on submarines.
As I will explain below, the launcher reductions constitute strange numbers. First, though, consider another curious announcement. As part of its recent review of nuclear weapons strategy, the government also stated that it would "de-MIRV" all its ballistic missiles. This was somewhat surprising, as the government of George H.W. Bush had announced the same move back in 1992. Admittedly, after the demise of the START II treaty, the process was put on hold, but it had already gotten restarted. With the retirement of all the LGM-118A Peacekeeper (MX) missiles, their rather more modern warheads became available for retrofitting onto the Minutemen. The process was to be complete by this year anyway, so it is quite unclear what the Obama government's announcement was meant to signal. This detail has been remarkably overlooked in the press, but could be quite significant--if it indeed applies to submarine-launched ballistic missiles as well.
Getting back to the treaty, the figures 34, 30, and 54 are strange because they hardly meet the reduction obligations alone. That is, assuming that the government intends to render all its ballistic missiles single warhead weapons, its new numbers will be
62 B-52H Stratofortress bombers, each capable of carrying 20 nuclear cruise missiles
20 B-2A Spirit bombers, each capable of carrying 16 nuclear gravity bombs
420 LGM-30G Minuteman III ballistic missiles, each with a single nuclear warhead
232 UGM-133A Trident II ballistic missiles, each with one nuclear warhead, on 12 deployed (and 14 total) Ohio-class submarines
for a total of 742 deployed launchers and 2220 deployed warheads
Thus, even fully de-MIRVing the submarines makes for 42 more deployed launchers than allowed, and 670 more deployed warheads than alllowed. We are left with two obvious questions: why were these incomplete numbers advertised, and where else will the reductions will be taken?
What's notable here is that the 34-30-56 announcement may have been meant to signal the government's willingness to retain all three legs--air, sea, and land--of the so-called nuclear triad of delivery mechanisms. The figure of 30 Minutemen may further represent a small force of ICBMs intended for conversion to conventional munitions as part of the government's "prompt global strike" initiative.
So where could things go next? The willingness to retain all three legs should not be taken as resolve for a so-called peanut butter spread of cuts across the board. After all, the government, assuming that Republican acquiescence to the treaty is forthcoming in the Senate, will have to do something. Some selectively more vertical recissions are worth considering, including two that would effectively end the triad, for the industrial implications that they might have for interested suppliers:
Crazy idea #1: denuclearize all the Minuteman ICBMs, and refit them with conventional warheads. That is, rather than converting 30 Minutemen IIIs to the prompt global strike conventional option, go for all 450. Doing so wouldn't solve the warhead overage alone--in this scenario, the Navy would still need to deMIRV its Trident missiles, and the USAF would still need to retire or convert more B-52Hs. Still, this speculative approach could leave the military with
48 B-52H Stratofortress bombers, each capable of carrying 20 nuclear cruise missiles
20 B-2A Spirit bombers, each capable of carrying 16 nuclear gravity bombs
232 UGM-133A Trident II ballistic missiles, each with one nuclear warhead, on 12 deployed (and 14 total) Ohio-class submarines
for a total of 300 deployed launchers and 1512 deployed warheads
Why might this be appealing? To begin, the government's sudden enthusiasm for the concept of prompt global strike would be admirable if it weren't potentially dangerous. Shooting a ballistic missile at (say) an Iranian military facility from a silo in Montana requires a flight path over Russia. That could stress out the duty officer at Strategic Rocket Forces headquarters outside Moscow, and Vladmir Putin has already said as much publicly. If, however, all the Minutemen were advertised to be conventional weapons, such a launch would reasonably be taken as less than an existential threat. Of course, it's entirely possibly that what troubles Mr. Putin is actually just what conventional Minutemen IIIs could do: attain counterforce relevance with non-nuclear means.
After all, the ICBMs are inexpensive as weapons of global range go, and if they really are as accurate as advertised, they could be used to stop a nuclear war before it starts, and without nuclear means. After all, stopping a nuclear war is probably the number one military objective once you're in the midst, or just on the verge of one. And if watching a ballistic missile submarine sink at the pier after an ICBM strike would be unsettling, it would be difficult afterwards to summon up the wherewithal for a nuclear counterstrike.
Finally, there is a domestic political angle as well. Those missiles might be inexpensive, but the jobs they bring to rural Montana, Wyoming, and North Dakota are much appreciated by the local communities. The government of the day might take that into consideration. It also might value the removal of so many nuclear counterforce targets from American soil.
What would this mean for industry? It would obviously be good news for the submarine-building business. As well as the Trident missile works, and as reliably as General Dynamics Electric Boat and Northrop Grumman Newport News are building Virginia-class submarines on budget (if a fairly hefty budget), an eventual follow-on to the Ohio program would be nearly assured. It would also be good news for builders of ballistic missiles, like Boeing (Minuteman) and Lockheed Martin (Trident), whose booster businesses (Atlas, Delta) are combined today in United Launch Alliance. Not only would a new generation of submarine-launched missiles eventually be ordered, but reliance on intercontinental ballistic missiles for global conventional strike might eventually blow through some ammo. And as companies like Alliant Techsystems knew even before 2003, war is good for the munitions business.
Crazy idea #2: denuclearize all the bombers, and retain them for purely conventional missions. The trouble with the bomber fleet, at least under the New START, is that each airplane can carry so many warheads. Each Stratofortress removed from a nuclear role carries 20 cruise missiles; removing six from the inventory is thus the treaty equivalent of 120 Minuteman IIIs. The latter are considerably more survivable, at least until the bombers have been dispersed.
And if it's conceivable that B-52H might salvo 20 nuclear missiles in a mission, it's hard to imagine a mission in which a B-2A might drop sixteen nuclear gravity bombs. It's not that the B-2As cannot carry cruise missiles; it's just that their stealthy characteristics hold them up as penetrating bombers, and if directly penetrating air defenses on nuclear missions is not necessary, then the role could be reasonably taken in the long term by a less expensively maintained airplane. Following this approach would leave room for retaining the MIRVed capacity of the Trident missiles; speculatively, it might leave the military with
420 LGM-30G Minuteman III ballistic missiles, each with a single nuclear warhead
232 UGM-133A Trident II ballistic missiles, each with four nuclear warheads, on 12 deployed (and 14 total) Ohio-class submarines
for a total of 652 deployed launchers and 1348 deployed warheads
Again, this is not to suggest that the nuclear bombers should be retired entirely. The USAF's B-1B Lancers used to have a nuclear role, but their ability to carry nuclear weapons was removed under the START II treaty. Now, most of the bombers have been upgraded with better defenseive systems, and continue to serve as high-capacity, long-endurance bomb trucks in Air Combat Command.
There is also a clear military drawback to this approach. The B-2As could be the preferred delivery mechanism in a small nuclear attack, as they are selective, recallable, and unlikely to alarm the Russians with a transpolar flaming datum. As they can penetrate air defenses with huge conventional explosives (at least at night), the B-2As would be particularly useful for conventional counterforce missions. This suggests that the government might not merely want to retain them, but to consider, in the long run, negotiating a verification regime with Moscow that would permit derating the bombers for fewer warheads, rather as has been done for the submarines.
So what would this mean for industry? Again, an obviously more secure future for the submarine business. Those Minutemen might have great launch-on-warning capacity--if that's really something to be desired--but they're not exactly dispersable. Bombers might be concentrated in peacetime at just a few airfields, but they could fly out of literally any major airport in wartime. That's a hard problem for targeting. But a whole flotilla of submarines is just plain almost impossible to track at once.
Crazy idea #3: convert more Ohios into conventional cruise missile submarines. While someone assuredly has an impressive model justifying it, the reasons for a fleet of 14 ballistic missile submarines are not totally transparent. When the Navy ordered up its initial "Forty-One for Freedom", the original Polaris missile submarines of the George Washington, Ethan Allen, Lafayette, and Benjamin Franklin classes, the whole fleet carried just 656 single warhead Polaris A1 missiles (16 per ship). These weapons were rather dispersed on a large number of hulls, but they also had to be launched within 1000 miles of their targets. That made for a much small set of patrol areas, and a less challenging counterforce problem per ship. Today's Ohios with Trident D5s can hit their targets from just outside their homeports in Georgia and Washington State. That's a lot of ocean in which to potentially hide.
That is, a lot in which the remaining Ohios can. Ohio herself, and sister ships Michigan, Florida, and Georgia were converted between 2002 and 2008 to carry, in place of those 24 Trident ballistic missiles, 154 BGM-109 conventional Tomahawk cruise missiles and a company of SEALs to boot. Ratification of the the START II accord had mandated the reduction, but the conversion added a full battlegroup's arsenal of cruise missiles with every ship, and overall, another four attack submarines to the fleet. This is not the first time that former ballistic missile submarines have been pressed into service as attack boats: George Washington herself served that role for a few years in the 1980s.
This sort of option could retain some Stratofortresses in the nuclear cruise missile role, and retain the current MIRV configuration on the Tridents. It would just keep rather fewer of each:
20 B-52H Stratofortress bombers, each capable of carrying 20 nuclear cruise missiles
20 B-2A Spirit bombers, each capable of carrying 16 nuclear gravity bombs
420 LGM-30G Minuteman III ballistic missiles, each with a single nuclear warhead
100 UGM-133A Trident II ballistic missiles, each with four nuclear warheads, on 5 deployed (and perhaps 6 total) Ohio-class submarines
for a total of 540 deployed launchers and 1540 deployed warheads
Call this the British or French option: those two countries are quite content with the security of missile submarine flotillas of just four or five ships, if in the French case, with highly MIRVed M45 or M51 ballistic launchers. It's not inconceivable that the United States should not be similarly content--at least with a tad fewer submarines than today. In this speculative scenario, the eight excess Ohios could be converted to the conventional cruise missile role, and even sent on conventional deterrent patrols off the Chinese coast. Invading Taiwan would be even less appealing if the fleet crossing the straits could expect a volley of several hundred multi-mode Tomahawks coming its way, whether in port or at sea. As stressed out as some people seem to be about the long-term size of the submarine fleet, shifting even a few boats from nuclear to conventional weapons duty could make a big difference.
Once more, what would this mean for industry? Interestingly, again, a relatively secure future for submarine builders. Every Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine converted away from its global, nuclear role will be coveted by the joint combatant commanders as a potential regional, conventional warhorse. They're never quite satisfied with the number of submarines at their disposal, and they're always happy for another stealthy source of massive precision firepower. Thus, the total size of the submarine fleet should not, in this admittedly unlikely scenario, be expected to drop. Rather, making more assets available for more likely wartime scenarios could actually whet military appetites for retaining more submarines over the long haul.
This scenario is not just generally good for submarine builders, but particularly good for General Dynamics Electric Boat and Todd Pacific Shipyards. GDEB was the yard chosen by the Navy to lead and manage the conversion of the first four Ohios from their ballistic to cruise missile role. Todd Pacific was GDEB's West Coast partner for the work, since the Navy wasn't going to send its two Pacific Fleet ships through the Panama Canal just for refit work, even as extensive as this was. The Navy Department could theoretically solicit bids again in an open tender, but this is unlikely. It's inexpedient, and would be very uncommon in commercial practice--this is what we call 'picking a long-term strategic partner'. It's hard to argue that GDEB somehow does not qualify.
I have thus argued above that almost any approach to nuclear arms reductions under New START is likely to be at least decent for submarine building. However, there is one final and critical point to make. What's good for submarine building in general is not necessarily good for every submarine builder. The effects here say nothing about the need for smaller or larger submarines, with any of nuclear, diesel-electric, or air-independent propulsion. Whatever follows the Virginia class in the arena of undersea warfare, however satisfied the Navy is with the Virginia class, may not quite be the Virginia class. It's just that New START should not complicate that problem for quite a long time.