Author Topic: The Broken Leg of America’s Nuclear Triad  (Read 229 times)

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The Broken Leg of America’s Nuclear Triad
« on: September 11, 2019, 10:42:23 am »
The Broken Leg of America’s Nuclear Triad

A new ICBM could be built without competition

By Mark Thompson | Filed under analysis | September 09, 2019


The Pentagon insists it needs its Cold War-era nuclear triad of bombers, submarines, and land-based missiles to ensure at least one of those legs will survive following a surprise enemy attack. That’s so the U.S. can respond to such a bolt-out-of-the-blue strike with an atomic rejoinder of its own. It’s a long-standing, although dubious, refrain.

“We found that the Soviet threat to the weapon systems of the land and sea legs had … been overstated,” a top Government Accounting Office official at the time told Congress 26 years ago. “For the sea leg, this was reflected in unsubstantiated allegations about likely future breakthroughs in Soviet submarine detection technologies.”

The Pentagon’s logic undergirding the triad, such as it is, is in danger of falling apart: The U.S. military is on the cusp of putting all of those nuclear eggs into a single basket.

https://www.pogo.org/analysis/2019/09/the-broken-leg-of-americas-nuclear-triad/