The Pentagon revealed this month that China now has more intercontinental ballistic missile launchers than the U.S. This is the latest evidence that China is well on its way to nuclear parity with—if not superiority over—the U.S.
In addition to the massive expansion of its ICBM force, China is cranking out nuclear warheads at record pace. With the recent addition of a strategic bomber to its arsenal, China now boasts a complete nuclear triad, which also includes submarine-launched ballistic missiles. And it is improving its arsenal of regional nuclear missiles that can reach Guam, a U.S. territory that hosts a critical military installation in the Indo-Pacific.
Beijing has also tested technologies that Moscow and Washington have never had, such as a fractional orbital bombardment system that can circle the globe before releasing a nuke that can glide through the atmosphere toward its target at five times the speed of sound.
The U.S. is unprepared to deter China’s growing nuclear threat. The current U.S. structure was designed more than a decade ago and is based primarily on the need to deter Russia. Back then, most believed that China would maintain only a couple of hundred nuclear weapons. The Pentagon now projects Beijing will have at least 1,000 weapons by the end of the decade.
The U.S. is modernizing its nuclear capabilities, but with only a modest goal: to replace what it already has on roughly a one-to-one basis. And the pace is slow.
As China builds up, the U.S. will need a nuclear force that can credibly convince China that the costs of using nuclear weapons would exceed the benefits. Right now, it isn’t clear the U.S. would be able to do that. America’s nuclear force isn’t large enough to take on Russia’s and China’s at the same time, which becomes more concerning when considering the potential for increased cooperation between the two countries.
To strengthen its nuclear forces, the U.S. must focus on three priorities.
First, the U.S. must increase the size of its nuclear arsenal. For deterrence to be credible, the U.S. must maintain enough nuclear weapons to hold at risk the assets its adversaries value most, including their nuclear forces. Given the hundreds of new Chinese missile launchers and other new weapons, the U.S. will need more nuclear weapons to hold these targets at risk. In nuclear deterrence, numbers matter.
To…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at RSSOpinion…