nuclear-news

The national missile defense fantasy—again

Bulletin, By Joe Cirincione | February 4, 2025

National missile defense advocates live in a world of magic and make-believe. Fantasy replaces science, assertions replace facts, and cartoon weapons replace real capabilities.

This enduring fantasy, however, has real-world consequences.

President Donald Trump’s pledge last week to build “a next-generation missile defense shield” that would “defeat any foreign aerial attack on the Homeland [with] space-based interceptors” has provoked a predictable reaction. Russia blasted Trump’s plan, detailed in his new executive order, “The Iron Dome for America.”

But no magic shield is going to protect the United States against nuclear attack.

An idea that never dies. Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said on Friday of Trump’s plan that “it directly envisages a significant strengthening of the American nuclear arsenal and means for conducting combat operations in space, including the development and deployment of space-based interception systems.”

“We consider this as another confirmation of the US focus on turning space into an arena of armed confrontation… and the deployment of weapons there,” Zakharova added.

The Russian reaction could scuttle Trump’s stated desire to negotiate limits on nuclear weapons. If so, it would repeat the role strategic defenses have played in the Cold War’s nuclear arms race. Efforts to build national defenses always trigger efforts to overcome them with more missiles and other counter-measures—the well-known security dilemma.

Despite all the formidable technical and geopolitical evidence against such schemes, however, “faith in national missile defense never dies,” Washington Post columnist Max Boot observes.

It is no coincidence that Trump’s new order is lifted almost entirely from the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 wish list. In the 1980s, the group championed President Ronald Reagan’s original dream to “put in space a shield that missiles could not penetrate—a shield that could protect us from nuclear missiles just as a roof protects a family from rain,” as he told a 1986 high school graduating class.

“Like Israel’s highly effective system of the same name, President Trump’s Iron Dome will provide an impenetrable defense for the American people that will bring peace through strength,” Heritage Foundation fellow Victoria Coates said. It “will fulfill President Reagan’s vision for the Strategic Defense Initiative laid out some four decades ago,” she added.

Doomed to fail. Trump’s executive order is a jumble of false claims and imaginary solutions. It begins by declaring that the risk of a missile attack “remains the most catastrophic threat facing the United States.” That would surprise most experts on existential risks. The climate crisis, the threat of new pandemics, artificial intelligence, and crippling cyber attacks are all at least as likely catastrophic events as nuclear weapons delivered by other means. But threat inflation has always been a key part of efforts to justify urgent action and massive investment.

Trump claims that “over the past 40 years, rather than lessening, the threat from next-generation strategic weapons has become more intense and complex.” Despite being utter nonsense, this claim has gone largely unchallenged.

While it is true that new technologies have increased the lethality of missiles, the missile threat to the United States has decreased dramatically. Arms control treaties and the collapse of the Soviet Union slashed the number of nuclear weapons and nuclear-armed missiles threatening the United States.

In 1985, the Soviet Union deployed 2,345 land-based and submarine-based missiles carrying over 9,300 nuclear warheads. That was the threat Reagan hoped to render “impotent and obsolete” with his missile shield.

Thanks to negotiated agreements, today’s Russia fields only 521 missiles, carrying 2,236 warheads. China’s land-based nuclear-armed missiles capable of reaching the United States have increased from around 20 in 1985 to some 135 today (carrying 238 warheads) and perhaps 72 single-warhead submarine-based missiles. In sum, the United States today faces roughly one-fifth the number of enemy missiles compared to 40 years ago and one-quarter of the nuclear warheads (728 vs. 2,365 missiles and 2,546 vs. 9,320 warheads). That is still a very dangerous threat but by no means a greater one.

Where arms control succeeded, missile defense technology failed.

None of the scores of systems developed by Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) and its successor organizations have ever come close to providing the imaginary shield that Reagan promised. National missile defenses did not work then. They do not work now. They will likely never work………………………………………

As it became clear that the space-based laser weapons Edward Teller told Reagan he could build were a fantasy, Reagan and subsequent presidents scaled down the program to try to get some kind of workable defense. But after spending over $415 billion over decades, all the United States has to show for the effort is 44 ground-based interceptors in Alaska and California that can hit a cooperative target in carefully scripted demonstrations—about half of the time. Congress currently allocates $30 billion a year on missile defense and defeat programs, most run by the SDI successor, the Missile Defense Agency.

Not an iron dome; more like an iron colander. The major technical problems that remain unresolved—and eventually forced the cancellation of all SDI’s ambitious plans—are the same obstacles that have ruled out an effective ballistic missile defense for more than 60 years:

• the ability of the enemy to overwhelm a system with offensive missiles;
• the questionable survivability of space-based weapons;
• the inability to discriminate among real warheads and hundreds or thousands of decoys;
• the problem of designing battle management, command, control, and communications that could function in a nuclear war; and,
• the low confidence in the ability of the system to work perfectly the first—and, perhaps, only—time it is ever used.

……………………………………………………………………“There is zero possibility of a comprehensive missile defense of the United States in the foreseeable future,” James N. Miller, who served as undersecretary of defense in the Obama administration, told Max Boot. “We are not going to escape mutual assured destruction vis-à-vis Russia or China.”

As shown repeatedly over the past 60 years, the only way to eliminate the threat of nuclear-armed missiles is to negotiate their elimination. Pretending that there is a magic shield that can be willed into existence will only make the problem of national missile defense worse.  https://thebulletin.org/2025/02/the-national-missile-defense-fantasy-again/

February 6, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Local opinion: Raytheon pushes The Doomsday Clock closer to midnight

because of their work on both the LRSO and Tomahawk cruise missiles, Raytheon is now seen as the leading contender to produce even more nuclear weapons in the form of new sea-launched nuclear cruise missiles. This further escalation would represent a huge setback to hard-won nuclear arms control progress, when nuclear-armed Tomahawks were removed from submarines over 30 years ago.

Jack Cohen-Joppa Special to the Arizona Daily Star, Jan 31, 2025,  31, 2025, https://tucson.com/opinion/column/local-opinion-raytheon-pushes-the-doomsday-clock-closer-to-midnight/article_46da901c-df20-11ef-8e77-235556fbeeb6.html

In Tom Lehrer’s classic Cold War ditty, “So Long Mom,” a nuclear bomber pilot sings, “I’ll look for you when the war is over, an hour and a half from now.”

It’s darkly funny, because even though we don’t talk much about it, we all know it’s true. Planned or imagined, nuclear war scenarios rarely last longer.

But how much time have we got before then? How near is that threat of omnicide today?

The Doomsday Clock is a visual metaphor created by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists back in 1947 to illustrate how close we are to global calamity from nuclear weapons and other looming threats to civilization as we know it. Originally set at seven minutes to midnight, in 2023 it advanced to 90 seconds to midnight, largely due to nuclear threats from war in Ukraine.

And Raytheon keeps pushing us closer.

In April 2020, Raytheon, with more than 12,000 local employees and the bulk of its research, development and production based here in Tucson, was awarded a sole-source contract to produce about 1,000 new nuclear-armed, air-launched cruise missiles. Known by the anodyne acronym LRSO (Long Range Stand Off), the missile is arguably both redundant and destabilizing in a time of disappearing nuclear diplomacy.

Not only that, but because of their work on both the LRSO and Tomahawk cruise missiles, Raytheon is now seen as the leading contender to produce even more nuclear weapons in the form of new sea-launched nuclear cruise missiles. This further escalation would represent a huge setback to hard-won nuclear arms control progress, when nuclear-armed Tomahawks were removed from submarines over 30 years ago.

Why aren’t we talking about it in Tucson? Senators Mark Kelly and Ruben Gallego and Rep. Juan Ciscomani all vote for U.S. nuclear domination. Only Rep. Raul Grijalva has spoken out for the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, now adopted by more than half the nations of the world. Despite near-universal condemnation of nuclear weapons by leaders of the world’s religions, we could use more local political and religious leaders speaking out against this blasphemous enterprise in our backyard.

It’s not as if it’s a military secret. The industry press has recently carried reports of LRSO flight tests, budget allocations, production schedules and more. Yet local media have not kept up.

Raytheon also has nothing to say. Usually, Southern Arizona’s largest employer and exporter is mighty proud of the panoply of products in their military portfolio. Their website is filled with fulsome boasts and lurid photos of deadly hardware. But the baddest boy of the bunch is missing in action. The nuclear-armed LRSO only pops up in a handful of financial reports. Raytheon’s original press release heralding the multibillion-dollar contract was posted on its website and quoted by the Tucson media in April 2020. But now it’s gone, simply deleted from its media archive.

Perhaps management has realized that there is nothing to be gained by crowing about their only product that, if used as intended, would be the instrument of multiple war crimes and crimes against humanity (incomprehensible death and devastation, disproportionate civilian casualties, lasting contamination of land and water, etc.). Raytheon’s “products” are certainly nothing I’m proud of as a Tucsonan.

This is the same Raytheon/RTX that last November was fined nearly $1 billion for defrauding the government (i.e., the taxpayer) and paying multiple bribes to promote business with the government of Qatar.

Experts debate whether the LRSO is intended for a nuclear surprise attack, or just another layer of “deterrence.” But if it isn’t meant to be used first, that just makes it fit into plans for a full-scale nuclear war. All ninety minutes of it.

Shouldn’t we all pay more attention, and demand that our elected leaders resist this insanity?

February 6, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Sole control -No US president should be allowed to unilaterally authorize a first strike of nuclear weapons

Clearly, a first-use nuclear strike carried out by the United States would constitute the ultimate act of war and a first-use nuclear strike conducted absent a declaration of war by Congress would violate the Constitution. And yet, as the law currently stands, a US president can launch a first strike of nuclear weapons in, as it were, a sacred vacuum where only he — and unfortunately it is still a he — is making that choice.

 Linda Pentz Gunter, 2 Feb 25,  https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2025/02/02/sole-control/

President Trump once again has sole authority to make a decision to launch the U.S. nuclear arsenal. He can do so unilaterally, without consulting, getting permission from or even informing his defense secretary or Congress. 

We are back on very thin atomic ice.

Not that anyone should ever launch nuclear weapons, whether they are allowed to or not, and no matter who approves it. Under what circumstances would there by any point in doing so? If it’s in retaliation, it’s already too late. If it’s a first strike, our own extinction is 15 minutes away.

But a trigger happy US president, whether literal or metaphorical, does not instill confidence that in a moment of who knows what kind of impulsive petulance, the nuclear button won’t get pushed. Despite Trump’s pronouncements in Davos last month that he wants to work with the leaders of Russia and China to “see if we can denuclearize,” something Trump says he thinks is “very possible,” there is no reason to be confident that a man who lied more than 30,000 times last time he was US president, really means what he says.

Anticipating that chaos is more likely to be Trump’s preferred modus operandi, Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts and his fellow Democrat in the House, Ted Lieu of California, wrote to then president Joe Biden last December 12, to urge him to make the change himself and mandate that a president must obtain authorization from Congress before initiating a nuclear first strike. No one individual, including the US president, should be able to start a nuclear war without congressional approval they said. They described current U.S. nuclear launch policy as “terrifying, dangerous, and unconstitutional”.

”As Donald Trump prepares to return to the Oval Office, it is more important than ever to take the power to start a nuclear war out of the hands of a single individual and ensure that Congress’s constitutional role is respected and fulfilled,” wrote Markey and Lieu in their letter to Biden. But Biden did not act.

Accordingly, two days after Trump’s inauguration, the pair put out a similar warning. “As Trump returns to the White House, we cannot let the power to start a nuclear war rest in the hands of a single individual,” they wrote, at the same time announcing the reintroduction of their The Restricting First Use of Nuclear Weapons Act.

The bill, if enacted, would restrict the first-use strike of nuclear weapons. The Constitution already gives Congress the sole power to declare war. Why then does the US president have the sole power to start what would be the most deadly and final war of all?

As the Markey-Lieu bill states, “The framers of the Constitution understood that the monumental decision to go to war, which can result in massive death and the destruction of civilized society, must be made by the representatives of the people and not by a single person.”

Given the hateful rhetoric and destructive decision-making already coming out of the Trump White House, passing this legislation has never been more imperative. As the statement from Markey and Lieu reads: “We must put guardrails on presidential authority to start nuclear war. We must never again entrust the fate of the world to just one fallible human.” 

Clearly, a first-use nuclear strike carried out by the United States would constitute the ultimate act of war and a first-use nuclear strike conducted absent a declaration of war by Congress would violate the Constitution. And yet, as the law currently stands, a US president can launch a first strike of nuclear weapons in, as it were, a sacred vacuum where only he — and unfortunately it is still a he — is making that choice. (This last comment is not meant as an endorsement of Kamala Harris’s candidacy for US president but rather a mournful observation that it is high time the US felt able to elect a woman to that highest of offices.)

U.S. nuclear launch policy may indeed be “terrifying, dangerous, and unconstitutional”, but ANY nuclear launch policy is  “terrifying and dangerous”, even if it is constitutional. 

Despite the good intentions of this bill, to make us just a tiny bit safer and reduce the likelihood of a nuclear launch, it keeps us within a mindset that we COULD launch nuclear weapons and that under certain circumstances this might actually be a good idea.

Until we accept that using nuclear weapons under any circumstances would be an act of omnicide, gaining nothing for either side while resulting in a global catastrophe beyond imagining, we will always be one bad decision away from such an outcome, whether caused by a single mad despot or with the approval of a compliant cabinet and Congress.

Linda Pentz Gunter is the international specialist at Beyond Nuclear and writes for and edits Beyond Nuclear International. Views are her own. Her forthcoming book, Hot Stories. Reflections from a Radioactive World, will be published later this year.

February 3, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

An “American Iron Dome”: Perhaps the Most Ridiculous Trump Idea Yet

The Iron Dome’s functionality depends on Israel’s comparatively miniscule size and proximity to enemies. This makes it particularly hard to imagine a similar setup in the US, which is over 400 times the geographical size of Israel. Such an apparatus, national security analyst Joseph Cirincione estimated, would cost about 2.5 trillion dollars. That’s over three times the country’s entire projected military budget for 2025.

A central campaign promise, the proposed $2 trillion-plus missile shield is, to experts, silly.

Sophie Hurwitz, September 27, 2024

Donald Trump’s Republican Party platform, released in July, contains little in terms of tangible policy proposals.

But one of the few concrete ideas is a call to (apologies for the capitalization) “PREVENT WORLD WORLD III” by building “A GREAT IRON DOME MISSILE DEFENSE SHIELD OVER OUR ENTIRE COUNTRY”—a plan that experts say is nearly impossible to execute, unnecessary, and hard to even comprehend. 

Trump has vowed to build this Iron Dome in multiple speeches. It is among his campaign’s 20 core promises. The former president has said that the missile shield would be “MADE IN AMERICA,” creating jobs, as well as stopping foreign attacks. 

While it might sound nice to talk of building the “greatest dome of them all,” as Trump recently said, Jeffrey Lewis, a missile expert at the Middlebury’s James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, says such a plan is ridiculous.

“It’s dramatically unclear to me what any of this means,” Lewis said of the Iron Dome idea, “other than just treating it like the insane ramblings of a senile old person.”

It may be more useful to consider an American Iron Dome as a bombastic businessman’s branding exercise, rather than a viable policy position, said Lewis: “The Iron Dome here has just become a kind of brand name, like Xerox or Kleenex for missile defense.”

The Iron Dome, a short-range missile defense system created by Israeli state-owned company Rafael Advanced Defense Systems and American weapons manufacturer Raytheon, has been a prized part of the country’s military arsenal since it became operational in 2011. It is not, as the name suggests, an impenetrable shield. It’s more mobile: when a short-range missile reaches Israel’s airspace, “interceptor missiles” are launched to blow them up before they can touch the ground.

The Iron Dome’s functionality depends on Israel’s comparatively miniscule size and proximity to enemies. This makes it particularly hard to imagine a similar setup in the US, which is over 400 times the geographical size of Israel. Such an apparatus, national security analyst Joseph Cirincione estimated, would cost about 2.5 trillion dollars. That’s over three times the country’s entire projected military budget for 2025.

uch a system would also be unnecessary. As of now, there are no armed groups sending missiles toward the United States from within a theoretical Iron Dome’s 40-mile interception range. Such a system “couldn’t even protect Mar-a-Lago from missiles fired from the Bahamas, some 80 miles away,” Cirincione wrote in late July. 

America’s pre-existent missile defense network, which has been in place since the Bush administration, is currently made up of 44 interceptors based in California and Alaska, geared towards longer-range missiles, such as those that could be fired from North Korea. But the system has performed abysmally in tests, despite Republicans generally claiming “it works,” said Lewis. (Groups like the right-wing Heritage Foundation have been calling for increased missile defense funding since at least the 1990s.)

“This is why it’s so hard to make heads or tails of what Trump is saying,” Lewis continued. “Is Trump saying the system in Alaska doesn’t work? Is Trump saying that Canada is going to develop artillery rockets to use against North Dakota?” 

January 31, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Trump orders ‘Iron Dome for America’ in sweeping missile defense push

The order’s most contentious element directs the Department of Defense to pursue space-based interceptors — weapons positioned in orbit to destroy incoming missiles. While proponents argue these could provide global coverage and early intercept capabilities, critics warn they could trigger an arms race and undermine existing treaties. 

The order sets a bold agenda to address emerging threats, including hypersonic missiles, through advanced technological solutions, including space-based interceptors.

by Sandra Erwin, January 28, 2025,  https://spacenews.com/trump-orders-iron-dome-for-america-in-sweeping-missile-defense-push/?utm_source=ActiveCampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Iron%20Dome%20for%20America&utm_campaign=FIRST%20UP%202025-01-28

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump signed an executive order Jan. 27 that calls for the development of a sweeping new missile defense system for the United States, including controversial space-based interceptors.

The Pentagon must submit within 60 days a proposed architecture for the system, including plans to accelerate the Missile Defense Agency’s ongoing Hypersonic and Ballistic Tracking Space Sensor program and develop a “custody layer” within the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture — a planned constellation of military satellites currently being acquired by the U.S. Space Force’s Space Development Agency. 

The executive order also emphasizes securing the defense industrial base, requiring “next-generation security features” for the supply chain as the U.S. races to build advanced interceptors and tracking systems.

The “Iron Dome for America” order, which invokes Israel’s successful rocket defense system, directs the Pentagon to accelerate development of defenses against hypersonic weapons and other advanced aerial threats that Trump’s order describes as “the most catastrophic threat facing the United States.”

While drawing inspiration from Israel’s Iron Dome system, the U.S. initiative would need to be dramatically different in scale and capability to defend the continent-spanning American territory against sophisticated intercontinental ballistic missiles, rather than the short-range rockets that threaten Israel.

The U.S. has collaborated with Israel on missile defense technology since the 1980s, including support for the Iron Dome system, which has intercepted thousands of incoming rockets since its 2011 deployment. Unlike Israel’s system, which defends a territory roughly the size of New Jersey, a U.S. continental defense system would need to protect an area nearly 500 times larger against more sophisticated threats such as Chinese hypersonic glide vehicles.

Unlike traditional ground- or sea-based systems, the envisioned architecture leans on space-based solutions, which have long been controversial.

The order’s most contentious element directs the Department of Defense to pursue space-based interceptors — weapons positioned in orbit to destroy incoming missiles. While proponents argue these could provide global coverage and early intercept capabilities, critics warn they could trigger an arms race and undermine existing treaties. 

January 30, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

General in Charge of Nuclear Weapons Says Heck, Let’s Add Some AI

10.30.24, by Victor Tangermann  https://futurism.com/the-byte/general-nuclear-weapons-add-ai?fbclid=IwY2xjawICdxRleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHQVK6Dhf2RcZ8r9FlwBSZ7lEckVE5JvyMBu3NDqof8fQ2nUSnIuRRRNKCA_aem_sEXPy0BsSMOZ6wpMMcRzAQ

What could go wrong?

Air Force general Anthony Cotton, the man in charge of the United States stockpile of nuclear missiles, says the Pentagon is doubling down on artificial intelligence — an alarming sign that the hype surrounding the tech has infiltrated even the highest ranks of the US military.

As Air and Space Forces Magazine reports, Cotton made the comments during the 2024 Department of Defense Intelligence Information System Conference earlier this month.

Fortunately, Cotton stopped short of promising to hand over the nuclear codes to a potentially malicious AI.

“AI will enhance our decision-making capabilities,” he said. “But we must never allow artificial intelligence to make those decisions for us.”

Algorithmic Deterrence

The US military is planning to spend a whopping $1.7 trillion to bring its nuclear arsenal up to date. Cotton revealed that AI systems could be part of this upgrade.

However, the general remained pointedly vague about how exactly the tech would be integrated.

“Advanced AI and robust data analytics capabilities provide decision advantage and improve our deterrence poster,” he added. “IT and AI superiority allows for a more effective integration of conventional and nuclear capabilities, strengthening deterrence.”

Vagueness aside, nuclear secrecy expert and Stevens Institute of Technology expert Alex Wellerstein told 404 Media that “I think it’s safe to say that they aren’t talking about Skynet, here,” referring to the fictional AI featured in the sci-fi blockbuster “Terminator” franchise.

“He’s being very clear that he is talking about systems that will analyze and give information, not launch missiles,” he added. “If we take him at his word on that, then we can disregard the more common fears of an AI that is making nuclear targeting decisions.”

Nonetheless, there’s something disconcerting about Cotton’s suggestion that an AI could influence a decision of whether to launch a nuclear weapon.

Case in point, earlier this year, a team of Stanford researchers tasked an unmodified version of OpenAI’s GPT-4 large language model to make high-stakes, society-level decisions in a series of wargame simulations.

Terrifyingly, the AI model seemed mysteriously itchy to kick off a nuclear war.

January 29, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment