Deployment of new US nuclear warhead on submarine a dangerous step, critics say

[Eugene]

Source: The Guardian

Deployment of new US nuclear warhead on submarine a dangerous step, critics say

First submarine to go on patrol armed with the W76-2 warhead makes a nuclear launch more likely, arm control advocates warn

Julian Borger in Washington
Wed 29 Jan 2020 17.53 GMT
Last modified on Wed 29 Jan 2020 18.24 GMT

The US has deployed its first low-yield Trident nuclear warhead on a submarine that is currently patrolling the Atlantic Ocean, it has been reported, in what arms control advocates warn is a dangerous step towards making a nuclear launch more likely.

According to the Federation of American Scientists, the USS Tennessee – which left port in Georgia at the end of last year – is the first submarine to go on patrol armed with the W76-2 warhead, commissioned by Donald Trump two years ago.

It has an explosive yield of five kilotons, a third of the power of the “Little Boy” bomb dropped on Hiroshima and considerably lower than the 90- and 455-kiloton warheads on other US submarine-launched ballistic missiles.

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Advocates of W76-2 argued that the US had no effective deterrent against Russian tactical weapons because Moscow assumed Washington would not risk using the overwhelming power of its intercontinental ballistic missiles in response, for fear of escalating from a regional conflict to a civilian-destroying war.

Critics of the warhead say it accelerates a drift towards thinking of nuclear weapons as a means to fight and win wars, rather than as purely a deterrent of last resort. And the fielding of a tactical nuclear weapon, they warn, gives US political and military leaders a dangerous new option in confronting adversaries other than Russia.

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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/29/us-submarine-trident-nuclear-warhead-patrols-atlantic-ocean

[SWBTATTReg]

1. Perhaps the thinking of using nuclear weapons in regular wartime events is a little outdated? ...

These weapons have been around since the 1940s and yet none have ever been used (except in Japan twice) in wartime. None. Almost 80 years. I'd like to give the human race a little credit here in not going full blown out and using these weapons right and left...we didn't.

Thank god of course but I would like to think that better heads have prevailed over the many decades since these destructive weapons were created...

[soryang]

2. If one detects an SLBM headed toward home, how does one know the size of the warheads?

This article reveals how convoluted the rationalization for another "nuclear option," really is.

Let's give our FBM fleet a "tactical nuclear option." War planners against states like Iran and North Korea will love this.

I guess this isn't enough:

Link to tweet