There was a powerful editorial in the weekend Wall Street Journal, giving us a peek inside the world of defense policy. The topic athand was retooling our nuclear arsenal to allow us to actually use them as a last resort. The article (click here) describes changing many of our nuke capacity into a low yield, low radiation force that can penetrate underground bunkers without huge civilians casualties.
Our current nuke force is set-up to annihilate a Soviet Union that no longer exists. We need to maintain our strategic nukes, but realistically we are unlikely to face that threat again until China gets to the stage of strategic nuclear power (which is probably not far off). Other suggestions included:
>>>The panel has a host of additional recommendations that don't include nukes. It wants a new cruise missile with a conventional warhead that could be launched from an offshore submarine and strike a target 1,500 miles away in 15 minutes. It recommends that the 50 Peacekeeper intercontinental ballistic missiles now scheduled for deactivation be refitted with conventional warheads and deployed to Cape Canaveral in Florida and Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. This would give the U.S. "a 30-minute response capability for strategic strike world-wide."<<<
It is never easy to change the military but it is high time we prepare to fight the next war, rather than waiting to fight an enemy that no longer exists. All across the high plains, thousands of strategic nukes sit with crews at the ready and those resources could be better used to upgrade our posture while still retaining a deterrant to China.
No comments:
Post a Comment