New Navy leader: Nukes ‘foundational to our survival’
WASHINGTON – In his blueprint for a stronger Navy, the sea service’s new top boss, Adm. John M. Richardson, is blunt about what he thinks matters most: nuclear punch.
Battling terrorists is today’s problem, but in looking toward a farther horizon, Richardson wants a Navy built to counter unpredictable future threats from other countries. No. 1 on his list is a new fleet of nuclear-armed submarines, known as “boomers,” that prowl the oceans as the quiet centerpiece of the nation’s nuclear force. The Navy plans to replace the current fleet of 14 Ohio-class boomers, which began service as early as 1981, with 12 next-generation subs.
“This is foundational to our survival as a nation,” Richardson writes in what he calls his design for the future, released Tuesday.
It also is a gigantic investment, estimated at $100 billion. Even one of the project’s biggest supporters, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., calls the cost “staggering.” And it happens to be just one of three efforts by the Pentagon to modernize the U.S. nuclear “triad” – new long-range bomber aircraft, new or upgraded land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles and new missile-toting submarines. The price tag for these, plus related upgrades and replacements, is likely to approach $348 billion by 2024, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Richardson acknowledges the expense but argues it is part of the cost of doing business on the world stage.
“From a security standpoint in this day and age, a world-class nuclear capability” is required to be considered a great power, he said Dec. 31 in an Associated Press interview. Without it, “we could be threatened or coerced by another nation who could hold this nuclear threat over our heads,” he added.
Russia and China are both modernizing their nuclear forces, although not every expert agrees that this alone justifies to do the same, at huge expense. William J. Perry, defense secretary from 1994 to 1997, says the U.S. can adequately deter a nuclear attack with a slimmed-down force of nuclear bombers and nuclear-armed submarines. He favors scrapping the Air Force’s land-based missiles, or ICBMs.
Others say a combination of ICBMs and subs would be the right mix. In almost any proposed arrangement, the submarines would be part of the mix. That is because they are easily the least vulnerable to targeting by an enemy force, since they are nearly undetectable while on undersea patrol.
Richardson took over as the Navy’s chief of naval operations, its top job, in September after three years as head of naval nuclear propulsion programs, meaning he was responsible for the nuclear reactors that propel submarines and aircraft carriers, but not for the Navy’s nuclear weapons. He is a career submariner.