'Yes' on the Low-Yield Warhead for Trident
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By John R. Harvey & Franklin C. Miller
September 16, 2019
Just last month, in light of the upcoming House-Senate debate on U.S. nuclear modernization, Sen. Elizabeth Warren along with seventeen Democratic Senators wrote to the Senate Armed Services Committee urging support for three nuclear initiatives that were adopted in the House defense bill. Specifically, the initiatives (1) express the sense of Congress that the United States seeks to extend the New START Treaty with Russia, (2) deny funding for new INF-type missiles "until diplomatic and strategic planning steps are taken", and (3) prohibit deployment of a lower-yield warhead for the Trident D-5 submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM).
We two disagree on the first initiative, and we find the second vague. Neither of us, however, can support the third. A lower-yield warhead for Trident is one of two modest changes to longstanding U.S. nuclear posture reflected in the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review. By lower-yield is meant explosive force in the range of a few kilotons, not insignificant by any means but a factor of twenty and more below that of today’s SLBM warheads. This warhead could be fielded relatively quickly, with a small, very low-cost modification to an existing warhead (i.e., the current W76 SLBM warhead) and do so without requiring underground nuclear tests or adding to the size of our stockpile.
https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2019/09/16/yes_on_the_low-yield_warhead_for_trident_114744.html
