New York Times
Washington Times: Obama already set to spend $20B a year to update U.S. nukes
Trump tweets that nation must ‘expand its nuclear capability’
President-elect Donald Trump has stirred up fears of a new arms race in a Twitter message on improving “nuclear capability,” but President Obama already has committed to spending as much as $20 billion a year to update the nation’s ability to conduct a nuclear war.
During his two terms, Mr. Obama has blessed the go-ahead for their new major weapon systems: a strategic bomber, a ground-based intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), and an air-launched, atomic-cruise missile. He also funded a new more accurate atomic bomb.
At a congressional hearing this summer, a top Pentagon policymaker and two four-star generals laid out long-term modernization plans of up to $450 billion over 20 years to stay ahead of China and Russia.
Read more ....
Update: Donald Trump is merely echoing Barack Obama's nuclear weapons policy (First Post)
WNU Editor: Anti-nuclear activists and the media are too late to this party. They should have started protesting (and the media should have started doing more reporting) when President Obama made his announcement on modernizing America's nuclear forces earlier this year .... Obama’s Russian Rationale for $1 Trillion Nuke Plan Signals New Arms Race (The Intercept)
3 comments:
Nobody cared much about Obama's Plan, because it merely consisted of "refurbishing" old warheads, modernizing the B61 bomb to fit in the F-35, etc.
The numbers of deployed weapons would not change, no new delivery systems were going to be created, the overall numbers and balance of power, SALT III, would not change.
Depending on how you read Trumps Tweets, he either blathering about nothing, or he's talking about going back to the days of the Old Cold War, with the US going back to deploying all 6,800 nukes and a continual arms race of adding new delivery systems and warheads.
Given that Russia has been busily upgrading its arsenal for quite some time, even the Obama is plan is "late to the party." As such, the "arms race" has been going on for quite awhile now. America simply chose not to run while adversaries and potential adversaries opened up big leads in numbers and advancement of their arsenals.
Regardless what team Trump does we are going to be playing catch up with the Russians while trailing big. While upgrades probably would not close this gap, it would probably give us a reasonable chance at national defense and ensuring we are able to respond should we be attacked. To not upgrade the arsenal risks leaving us completely defenseless.
If certain activists are so interested in curbing proliferation of these weapons, perhaps more energy and time should be spent lobbying the governments of Russia, China, India, Pakistan, and North Korea. The difference between these governments and the Americans is these governments will either say "thanks for sharing" while ignoring them thereafter or just plain ignoring them.
The US is simply not that important that others are just going to follow suit if the US disarms its nukes or doesn't expand and upgrade the arsenal. All such an action would accomplish is to leave the US defenseless and unable to represent its interests.
Under the SALT III and START II Treaties, the US and Russia agreed to "partity" on throw weights, inventories and deployed weapons.
Russia reduced it's functional arsenal by roughly 8,000 warheads, the US by roughly 6,000, both retained enough warheads each to destroy the whole world 10x over.
While Russia has "modernized" it's nuclear delivery systems, ( allowed under SALT III), it has yet to achieve parity with the US Nuclear arsenal in range, accuracy, surviveabity, reliability or time to launch. It will be playing "catch up" to the US for another two decades.
Trump has put Rick Perry incharge of the DOE, which is responsible for managing both the Civillian and Military Nuclear programs.
This is the guy who as an Aggie, got a D in his course on Meat, graduated with a C- average in a Ranch Management Program, and during the Republican Primary Debates, forgot that the DOE existed, and that it was one of the 4 US Government Agencies, he wanted to eliminate.
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2016/12/28/13643/196
LMAO.
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2016/12/28/11730/888
Still LMAO.
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