nuclear-news

Big money for new USA nuclear weapons

A New Nuclear Triad? TIME.com by Mark Thompson , February 13, 2011 Something profound is happening in the proposed 2012 $670 billion (including $117 billion for Afghanistan and Iraq) defense budget that will be released on Monday, but few are paying attention. You may want to, because it sets the nation on a path that, if history is any guide, will last for a half-century, and cost hundreds of billions of dollars. Both the Air Force and the Navy have gotten green lights to plan rebuilding all three legs of the nation’s so-called nuclear triad. The triad was a creation of the Cold War to ensure that some unforeseen super-weapon developed by the Soviet Union couldn’t destroy all of our nuclear weapons in first-strike, bolt-out-of-the-blue scenario (to use some Cold War lingo).

So the Navy got a fleet of ballistic-missile firing submarines. The Air Force got two legs of the triad — nuclear bombers and land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles. The logic of three legs was questionable during the Cold War — the Soviets could never detect and target all of the “boomer” submarines — and makes even less sense now.

Nonetheless, with the Pentagon currently spending more each year than it did during the Cold War, it’s got to find somewhere to put all that money. So the nuclear triad not only marches on, it is going to be rebuilt. On Feb. 4, the Navy announced it has begun planning for a new fleet of ballistic-missile submarines. Last month, Defense Secretary Robert Gates told the Air Force to get to work on a new bomber. And the Pentagon is studying follow-on designs for the land-based Minuteman III missile force……..

A New Nuclear Triad? – Swampland – TIME.com

February 17, 2011 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, weapons and war