Does the United States Have Any Real Capability to Forward Deploy Nuclear Weapons Rapidly Outside o

[rangerrebew]

Does the United States Have Any Real Capability to Forward Deploy Nuclear Weapons Rapidly Outside of NATO Europe?
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By Mark B. Schneider
August 27, 2021
 
At the end of the Cold War, in an extraordinarily bad example of making national security policy, the United States, as part of what is called the Presidential Nuclear Initiatives (PNIs), eliminated almost its entire arsenal of nonstrategic or tactical nuclear weapons. Dick Cheney, then Secretary of Defense, rejected this proposal. Cheney rejected it because of the near-unanimous opposition from senior Defense Department officials before it came to the Pentagon as a dictate from the George H.W. Bush White House.[1] Then-Secretary of Defense Cheney and General Colin Powell, then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, announced that the U.S. would eliminate 1,300 nuclear artillery shells and 850 Lance short-range ballistic missile nuclear warheads. Bush asked the Soviet Union (and later Yeltsin’s Russia) to eliminate its nuclear artillery, nuclear air defense missiles, and nuclear landmines. Both announced their own PNIs. Reportedly, the announced U.S. reductions involved about 5,000 nuclear weapons. President Bush also said that under “normal circumstances, our ships will not carry tactical nuclear weapons” and asked the Soviet Union to do the same. It agreed. Cheney and Powell said that 500 U.S. tactical nuclear weapons would be removed from submarines and surface ships and that 50% of them would be destroyed. General Powell also stated that all U.S. land-based naval nuclear depth bombs would be destroyed. In fact, actual U.S. reductions went well beyond those announced. In 2011, senior Obama administration NSC official Gary Samore stated that “The U.S. has a very small number -- only a few hundred tactical nuclear weapons….In contrast, the Russians have a much larger number -- probably a few thousand [tactical] nuclear weapons…”

https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2021/08/27/does_the_united_states_have_any_real_capability_to_forward_deploy_nuclear_weapons_rapidly_outside_of_nato_europe_791788.html

[rangerrebew]

Forward deploy?  FORWARD DEPLOY??????  They can't even protect what they have let alone something on forward deployment.  But they are good at PC and Critical Race Theory.

[sneakypete]

Say WHAT?????

WTH would they even WANT to committ such a collossal brain fart?

Does someone in DC think that maybe the Taliban needs a few nukes?

[The_Reader_David]

We have some reliable allies in Asia who might make sense to host forward deployments of our nuclear capabilities in the event of a war with China:  Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Australia.  If, that is, things got so fraught that they welcomed the deployment.  If things got bad enough even India might welcome our topping up their nuclear arsenal with some pointed north instead of at Pakistan.

Though if things got that bad, I don't think Japan would host our nukes.  They'd finish assembling their own.  (Remember a recent Japanese Defense Minister said, "If Japan decides we need nuclear weapons on Monday, by Friday we will have them."  Not an idle boast considering that most of the world's 20 most powerful supercomputer belong to the Japanese atomic energy agency -- you don't need supercomputers to run nuclear power plants; you need them to design nuclear weapons you are sure will work without pre-hostilities testing.  Personally I suspect they already have them, and just need to put two halves together, tighten the bolts, and power up the electronics that would trigger the detonation, and they're probably small enough to carry in the weapons bay of a fighter-bomber.)

[GtHawk]

Maybe I'm being obtuse but isn't that one of the purposes of our Ohio and Columbia class submarines?

[sneakypete]

Maybe I'm being obtuse but isn't that one of the purposes of our Ohio and Columbia class submarines?

@GtHawk

Well,I ain't no squid,but I do seem to recall something about them being nicknamed "Boomers",and doubt that was a reference to crew gas while submerged.

I could be wrong about the last part,though.

[rangerrebew]

"If Japan decides we need nuclear weapons on Monday, by Friday we will have them."   

If they need nukes on Monday, by Friday Japan would be a pile of nuclear waste.

[The_Reader_David]

If they need nukes on Monday, by Friday Japan would be a pile of nuclear waste.

You assume the decision that they need them would be taken too late in the midst of a crisis, rather than in view of a crisis looming on the horizon.