New US ‘Nuclear Sea-Launched Cruise Missile’
Dr Robert Soofer, US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defence for Nuclear and Missile Defense Policy announced a new generation of “nuclear sea-launched cruise missiles” during a meeting at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies in early September. Soofer characterised the announcement as a “response to Russia’s tactical nuclear weapons.”
In fact, such a development is entirely in line with strategy embedded in the US’s last Nuclear Posture Review and fits with the overall posture of aggression adopted against Russia and China.
Such developments will not have escaped the attention of those states characterised as “strategic rivals” or “competitors” in various US policy documents and will surely lead to reciprocal technology developments and deployment.
END Info was alerted to the prospect of a new generation of sea-launched missiles earlier this year by Dr Joachim Wernicke, a Berlin-based analyst and translator of the German edition of Cmdr Rob Greeen’s Security without Nuclear Deterrence. In his analysis of such a development, Dr Wernicke raised the prospect that such systems could be deployed in the seas close to Europe as an alternative to a new generation of land-based nuclear -capable intermediate-range missiles. This prospect now looks all the more likely.
Combined with announcements of the W76-2 tactical nuclear warhead, the overall effect is to lower the ‘nuclear threshold’ once more. What the nuclear-armed states refer to as ‘strategic flexibility’ actually amounts to risk multiplication.
We will remain alert to the prospect of these weapons being deployed outside of US territorial waters.