Disarmament Scenarios

Steps toward Abolition: De-alerting

De-alerting Strategic Forces

by Bruce G. Blair

Bruce G. Blair, president of the World Security Institute, is the world’s foremost authority on de-alerting nuclear weapons. One of his most recent writings on this subject is ““De-alerting Strategic Forces”, a chapter in Reykjavik Revisited: Steps Toward a World Free of Nuclear Weapons (Stanford, California: Hoover Institution Press, 2008).

ABSTRACT

The following extracts are from “Key Findings and Recommendations” (available online). Dr. Blair’s words are in “quotation marks”. The rest is paraphrase without quotes. Italics from the original text are omitted.

Thousands of Launch-ready Nuclear Warheads

“The end of the Cold War did not lead the United States and Russia to significantly change their nuclear strategies or the way they operate their nuclear forces. Both sides maintain about one-third of their total strategic arsenals on launch-ready alert. Hundreds of missiles armed with thousands of nuclear warheads – the equivalent of about 100,000 Hiroshima bombs – can be launched within a very few minutes.”

Risks

One risk is the degradation of the Russian early warning system which “is more prone today to cause false alarms than it was during the Cold War.”

“Although both sides impose strict safeguards on their strategic nuclear forces to prevent unauthorized launch,…serious deficiencies are routinely discovered. There is reason to believe that state and non-state actors including terrorists may be able to exploit weaknesses in these systems of control by physical or informational means, heightening the risks of unauthorized or accidental launch.”

“The traditional war-fighting postures keep nuclear weapons in constant motion and thereby create opportunities for terrorists to capture or steal them, particularly in Russia where the number of weapons in transit or temporary storage is especially large.”

“The U.S. and Russian force postures lend legitimacy to the nuclear ambitions of other nations, and to those nations’ adoption of launch-ready nuclear postures.”

Benefits of De-alerting

“Major benefits would accrue from standing down (“de-alerting”) the legacy postures.”

“De-alerting would increase warning and decision time far beyond the short fuse inherent in current command systems, thereby reducing the risk of mistaken launch to negligible proportions.”
“De-alerting would greatly strengthen safeguards against unauthorized launch and terrorist exploitation.”
“De-alerting could also strengthen crisis stability.”
De-alerting would contribute to curbing proliferation by downgrading the role of nuclear weapons.

De-alerting is Feasible

“Wholesale de-alerting happened once before, in 1991. There are many practical ways to extend the time needed to fire U.S. and Russian nuclear forces – by hours, days, months, even years…. De-alerting options take the form of procedural or physical modification, or both.”

“Implementing such measures would nullify quick-launch options and create an unmistakably second-strike posture geared to riding out an attack before retaliating. The traditional nuclear strategies of both nations would be transformed by this change; the predominance of nuclear war-fighting would be ended.”

“Ideally, both U.S. and Russia would stand down in unison.”

“This beneficial de-alerting dynamic could begin with U.S. unilateral steps that would preserve the survivability of its nuclear force and give Russia confidence to follow suit.”

“The more deeply the postures are de-alerted – for instance, by separating warheads from delivery vehicles and consolidating the nuclear stockpiles in storage depots on land – the easier it becomes to verify their off-alert status, but the more critical this verification process becomes.”

Methods for De-alerting

Dr. Blair’s full article in Reykjavik Revisited evaluates several of the most promising de-alerting options and finds many of them worthy of support. They include:

“Procedural changes to extend the launch time by dropping prompt launch and massive attack options from the emergency war plans.”
Physical de-alerting measures that could be instituted immediately on the U.S. side by “safing” Minuteman missiles in their silo.
Physical measures that could be instituted in 1-3 years by creating a reserve strategic nuclear force that entails separating warheads from their delivery vehicles (missiles) but widely dispersing both warheads and missiles in protected positions.
Physical measures for the medium-term future (4-6 years) that transfer nuclear warheads from their field deployment into warhead storage depots on land.

Read more of Dr. Blair’s “Key Findings and Judgments” online.