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The Northrop Grumman B-21 is one of multiple nuclear modernization programs that the incoming Trump administration could expand.
Even before President-elect Donald Trump returns to the White House, one of his first-term defense priorities is gaining momentum: expanding the inventory of U.S. nuclear weapons programs.
The Pentagon is undertaking a “study of sufficiency” to determine what capabilities might be needed to give the president additional nuclear options, U.S. Navy Rear Adm. Thomas Buchanan, director of plans and policy at U.S. Strategic Command (Stratcom), said at a Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) event Nov. 20. He noted that the study will last well into the Trump administration.
Trump’s first administration pushed for expanded nuclear capacity. In 2018, it released a new Nuclear Posture Review, recommending the low-yield Submarine-Launched Cruise Missile-Nuclear (SLCM-N) program, among other things. It also continued efforts on the Northrop Grumman Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) and B-21 bomber, General Dynamics Columbia-class submarines and the RTX Long-Range Standoff (LRSO) Weapon.
- Pentagon ponders strategic weapons plans’ sufficiency
- “We can’t think that we can be stagnant,” Stratcom commander says
President Joe Biden has kept the SLCM-N going under congressional pressure. However, recent statements from top officials and a new nuclear employment guidance document to Capitol Hill show a growing appetite for expanded nuclear programs in the outgoing Biden administration.
“We’ve been taking a fresh look at the assumptions that are underlying our modernization program. . . . The program of record is necessary but may not be sufficient,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told lawmakers in an April Senate hearing.
“The current program of record was established over a decade ago under a much different security environment,” Buchanan said at the CSIS event. “This begs the question: Is it sufficient?”
Gen. Anthony Cotton, commander of Stratcom, said Nov. 19 at a separate CSIS event that the programs need to continue at pace, at least. The biggest question is how Sentinel will proceed after its price skyrocketed 81%, largely from projected infrastructure costs.
“The program of record has to happen,” Cotton said. “We must do everything in our power to make sure that we can modernize the current forces that we have.”
Cotton also urged flexibility to reflect threat changes: “We can’t think that we can be stagnant in holding to just that, and not having on-ramps and off-ramps to be able to see what the world is bringing us in the next 16 years and figure out how to do things much quicker or have some alternatives to be able to add.”
The Biden administration alluded to this flexibility in its Nov. 15 unclassified report to Congress on nuclear employment guidance, reflecting in part China’s growing nuclear weapons arsenal and Russia’s efforts to develop new nuclear weapons. According to the six-page report, the guidance needs to be modified in order to deter Russia, China and North Korea simultaneously. It also has been updated to require that nuclear plans account for challenges from the “growth, modernization and increasing diversity of potential adversaries’ nuclear arsenals.”
Lawmakers already have signaled support for a larger strategic arsenal. In the fiscal 2022 National Defense Authorization Act, Congress mandated the creation of the U.S. Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture.
In November 2023, the Strategic Posture Commission deemed the current U.S. posture insufficient against the rapidly advancing threat and called for accelerating the B-21, Columbia-class submarine, Sentinel and LRSO programs. The commission also recommended expanding the bomber fleet enough to be on continuous alert and fielding Sentinels in a road-mobile configuration instead of fixed silos. In addition, it said the Air Force should modernize the Boeing B-52 bomber and the Navy the Trident II submarine-launched ballistic missiles.
Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), who is expected to become chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee in the 119th Congress in January, unveiled a wide-ranging plan in May to increase defense spending, with a focus on strengthening the military and defense industrial base.
Wicker called for increasing the Pentagon budget to $950 billion for fiscal 2025—well above the current $820 billion. He urged at least doubling the B-21 program, extending production of Columbia-class submarines to a minimum of 14 and examining the feasibility of a guided-missile variant as well. Wicker also recommended restoring nuclear capability to the B-52s that were made conventional, putting additional warheads on existing Minuteman III ICBMs and beginning concept studies to equip fighter aircraft with nuclear air-launched cruise missiles instead of bombs.
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