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OPINION:
A version of this story appeared in the daily Threat Status newsletter from The Washington Times. Click here to receive Threat Status delivered directly to your inbox each weekday.
Russian submarines armed with long-range, low-yield nuclear cruise missiles are currently sitting in Cuba, targeting U.S. military and civilian infrastructure in multiple states.
In a complete rebuke of the Monroe Doctrine, Russia’s recent “gunboat diplomacy” along the East Coast of the United States was intended to send a clear message to the U.S.: “We too have global reach and by the way, lots of nukes.’
Given the arrival of the Russian combat squadron in the Caribbean, it is crucial to reevaluate the Russian nuclear threat to the United States. Unlike in 1962, the Russian arsenal today is not designed for an all-out nuclear exchange. President Vladimir Putin and his generals are unlikely to risk such an event. Instead, Russia’s current nuclear war doctrine and weapons are dramatically different from those of the Cold War or even a decade ago as Moscow plans to leverage its capabilities to dissuade and deter the United States or to potentially fight and win a limited nuclear war.
In response, the United States must quickly adopt a robust homeland preparedness approach that is calibrated to the range of new threats from Russia and China. This includes low-yield nuclear weapons and other rapid, agile delivery methods, against which the U.S. now has limited defenses and no comprehensive response planning contingencies.
The new threat
The United States and Russia maintain rough parity in their strategic nuclear arsenals as defined by the New START Treaty. Strategic parity, however, does not equate to overall nuclear parity. For years, Russia’s military has been planning for a modern nuclear war, known in Pentagon jargon as a “limited nuclear conflict,” or LNC, which would have far less serious consequences than the apocalyptic scenarios often discussed by policymakers and analysts.
The immediate danger is not a massive exchange of high-yield intercontinental ballistic missiles or submarine-launched “city killers” known as SLBMs. Instead, Russia has amassed thousands of nonstrategic nuclear weapons, or NSNWs — lower-yield warheads deployable across various platforms, from artillery to theater-range systems and continental-range missiles.
These low- and ultra-low-yield weapons can be measured in tens of tons of TNT equivalent. The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s most recent nuclear detonation plan is based on a post-9/11 scenario involving a 5-kiloton explosion — a scenario now 20 years old. In short, while our adversaries have evolved, we have not.
Russia’s low-yield weapons present a game-changing, selective, less-destructive nuclear capability designed to quickly shift the balance of a conflict in Russia’s favor. For instance, the August 2020 ammonium nitrate warehouse explosion in Beirut, estimated at 300 tons of TNT equivalent, was 30 times as great as a Russian ultra-low-yield nuke, which can be as low as 10 tons of TNT equivalent. By comparison, the Hiroshima bomb was 15 kilotons.
Russian doctrine and strategy — specifically the concept of the “Strategic Operation for the Destruction of Critically Important Targets” — involves limited, distributed, very low- and ultra-low-yield nuclear strikes against adversaries, including the U.S. and NATO. These strikes, combined with precision-guided conventional attacks, aim to break the adversaries’ will to fight, degrade the U.S.’s ability to project conventional military power and shape decision-making at the onset of a conflict.
In contrast, the U.S. no longer possesses ultra-low-yield nuclear weapons, has only a small inventory of very low-yield gravity bombs, and does not rely on them heavily in its employment policy. Russian nuclear war planning has not been a sudden development; about 20% of Russia’s military budget is dedicated to its now largely modernized and operational nuclear weapons infrastructure.
The U.S. urgently needs to increase its ICBM and SLBM inventories, fund and upgrade several systems and programs, and develop additional delivery platforms and low-yield warhead variants. Washington must also update defenses against ICBMs, cruise missiles and hypersonic missiles.
To be sure, the Russian limited nuclear conflict doctrine presents extremely difficult challenges, and U.S. decision-makers and war planners have struggled to create effective response options in wargaming exercises. A critical step is establishing an updated and effective “old school” civil defense-style national preparedness program for the homeland.
Congressional attention required
As Russian submarines brazenly traverse the East Coast with target packages aimed at crippling U.S. critical infrastructure, economy, governance and resolve, the Department of Homeland Security must share this threat information with FEMA, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and their regional and local partners. National response planning must fully incorporate new nuclear threat contingencies, including low-yield nuclear detonations.
Since 2003, DHS and FEMA have obligated over $56 billion in national preparedness grants, with recent years seeing around $2 billion annually. The government must actively review, update and integrate these funds to account for new enemy threat doctrines, capabilities and contingencies.
State and local emergency planners in high-threat areas should use these funds to identify gaps in response planning, including nuclear response, attribution and weapons effects designed to respond to an outdated 5-kiloton nuclear scenario.
Mr. Putin has made it clear that the United States needs to prepare for nuclear contingencies promptly and intelligently. With Russian missile crews operating close to our shores and escalating nuclear threats in response to the conflict in Ukraine, it is imperative to prioritize American nuclear preparedness and societal resilience. There can be no excuses for failing to be ready for “the surprise next time.”
• Thomas DiNanno served on the White House Homeland Security Council in the aftermath of 9/11, and as the Department of Homeland Security’s deputy assistant secretary for critical infrastructure, the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s assistant administrator for grant programs, and from 2018 to 2021 as acting assistant secretary of state for arms control. Brian Cavanaugh served on the National Security Council from 2018 to 2021 as senior director for resilience policy and national continuity coordinator. He is a senior vice president at American Global Strategies and a visiting fellow at The Heritage Foundation. Christopher Yeaw is associate executive director for strategic deterrence and nuclear programs at the National Strategic Research Institute at the University of Nebraska, the U.S. Strategic Command’s University Affiliated Research Center. His views are his own and do not represent the views of the institute, the U.S. Strategic Command or the University of Nebraska.
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