A new strategic review for a new age: 2025

Contemporary U.S. plans for the modernization of nuclear forces are an approximately 15-year-old legacy of the Obama Administration. They were not established in anticipation of the dramatic changes in the security environment since 2010—when it was assumed that a one-for-one replacement for the legacy nuclear delivery systems and the New START Treaty limit on nuclear weapon numbers would be more than adequate. Rather, the existing U.S. nuclear modernization program was established at a time when many U.S. officials continued to believe that U.S. relations with Russia and China were benign and would remain so, or improve further. How the contemporary nuclear program, largely inherited from the Obama Administration, fares over the next few years, and how the new presidential administration entering office in 2025 decides to adapt the U.S. nuclear posture for the much more dynamic and dangerous contemporary threat environment, will affect the US strategic and non-strategic nuclear posture for decades, and, correspondingly, U.S. deterrence strategies and options. Given the past four decades of deep U.S. strategic and non-strategic force reductions and the atrophying of the U.S. nuclear production infrastructure, the United States has a limited near-term capacity to strengthen its nuclear force posture in response to an unprecedentedly threatening security environment. Whatever may be the preferred future U.S. nuclear force posture and characteristics for deterrence and allied assurance purposes, the reality is that U.S. options for adjustment are largely limited through the early 2030s to uploading the existing Triad of nuclear forces. Doing so is the only near-term option to strengthen U.S. deterrence force numbers to meet looming threats.