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Since the late 1950s, the United States has fielded a Triad consisting of air-, sea-, and land-based nuclear delivery systems. After decades of service, major components of all three legs are now nearing the end of their scheduled service lives. Several modernization programs are well underway, but the decision to replace the aging Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) with a new system, called the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD), has catalyzed a debate over the role of nuclear weapons in U.S. national security policy and the composition and costs of the U.S. nuclear arsenal. This Perspective presents an overview of the principal arguments publicly advanced for and against continuing the GBSD program of record. Intended to assist Air Force officials' decisionmaking, it describes the role of the Triad in U.S. nuclear weapons policy, surveys the current strategic landscape, and outlines the major nuclear modernization programs of record, as well as describing and assessing the major objections related to fielding a new ICBM.
The current Western strategy of Flexible Response represents a delicate balancing of the various interests and concerns held by the Allies on both sides of the Atlantic. The West's ability to launch small nuclear attacks--including attacks by U.S. central strategic systems--against a full range of militarily relevant targets currently is a keystone of the Flexible Response concept. To erode that strategy by undermining even in part our limited strategic attack capability could lead to a number of potentially severe political and military problems. For this reason, great caution is warranted as we consider certain strategic policy issues, most notably, whether to include active defense as a component of some follow-on U.S. ICBM system configuration. The author concludes that, as we make critical strategic choices over the next few months and years, it is vital to recall that U.S. and Soviet strategic aims and contexts are by no means symmetric ones. Certain key asymmetries--relating to the conventional theater balance, our need to achieve a political consensus for important weapons and strategy choices, and the like-should inform our ICBM modernization decisions in the near-term. Based on the discussion presented in this report it would seem that the net effect of such considerations would be to support every effort possible to devise an MX basing concept that does not rely on active defense.