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Representative Jim Cooper (D-Tenn) recently added an amendment to the House version of the Fiscal 2023 National Defense Authorization Act. His amendment would provide forty-five million dollars for the Nuclear-Armed Sea-Launched Cruise Missile (NASLCM). President Biden’s administration has indicated that it wants to cancel the NASLCM program.
The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) has not publicly stated just how powerful the NASLCM is but Pentagon spokesman Oscar Seára described it as a “low-yield” weapon. The new missile would give the U.S. military a relatively small nuclear weapon. The purpose of the missile would be to deter Russia and/or China from using their own low-yield nuclear weapons. They would assume that the U.S. would not respond with far more powerful strategic nuclear weapons.
The 2018 U.S. Nuclear Posture Review states “Expanding flexible U.S. nuclear options now, to include low-yield options, is important for the preservation of credible deterrence against regional aggression. It will raise the nuclear threshold and help ensure that potential adversaries perceive no possible advantage in limited nuclear escalation, making nuclear employment less likely.”
The Biden administration continues to pursue its decision to cancel the NASLCM program in the proposed DoD budget for fiscal 2023 according to a spokesman for the National Security Council. Their decision was based on the findings of the 2022 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) as well as an interagency process led by the DoD. The Pentagon completed the 2022 NPR earlier this year but has not yet released an unclassified version of the review.
It is too early to determine whether the funding for the NASLCM will be included in the final version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). The NDAA will probably be negotiated by members of Congress at a conference committee later this year. Even if the forty-five million dollars is included in the final version of the bill, the House Appropriations Committee did not include any money for the NASLCM in its version of the defense appropriations bill which funds the military.
The fact that the money for the NASLCM was included in the House version of the latest defense policy bill indicated that at least several members of Congress believe that the U.S. needs to be prepared to fight a limited nuclear war. If a “limited nuclear war” is considered possible, then it should be possible for the U.S. to escape mutually assured destruction by a limiting exchange with Russia and/or China to low-yield weapons.
However, the purpose of having the NASLCM in the Pentagon’s nuclear arsenal is to deter enemies from launching nuclear attacks rather than making it easier to wage limited nuclear conflicts according to retired Navy Rear Adm. Vic G. Mercado. He served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for Strategy, Plans, and Capabilities from July of 2019 to January 2021.
Mercado said, “To me, it is all about deterrence. We need some capacity to be able to fill a deterrence gap. If we leave the gap, then we are at risk.”
Please read Part 2 next