Shift in US Strategic Assets - U.S. military is working to develop very rapid strike capabilities against targets around the world
U.S. readies 'prompt global strike' capability against strategic targets
The commander of U.S. nuclear forces revealed that the U.S. military is working to develop very rapid strike capabilities against targets around the world.One set of questions... if you are the commander of Russian strategic forces, and you detect a launch of 10 Trident missiles from the notherrn Indian Ocean, how do you know they are conventional? How long until you can discern YOU are not the target? What alert level do you establish? Is your own deterrent so vulnerable you are at launch on warning?
Marine Corps Gen. James Cartwright, commander of the U.S. Strategic Command, told the House Armed Services Committee last week that Navy submarine-launched Trident nuclear missiles are being converted to conventional ballistic missiles.
“What we are seeking here is prompt global strike,” Cartwright said on March 21. “And with the technologies we have today, we can do that with conventional weapons. And we can draw down the number of nuclear weapons necessary to accomplish prompt global strike, number one. And number two, we can have a capability that is beyond nuclear.” Cartwright said the concept of a prompt global strike is that if a crisis or a target opportunity emerges quickly and the United States needs to respond quickly, the “only choice that we have in a global capability is a nuclear weapon.” “That is unacceptable for the range of threats that we're going to face in the future,” he said. “We need a conventional capability.”
The attack weapons can be used for counter-terrorism strikes as well for regional conflicts or conflict against China. Cartwright said quick-strike weapons could be used if China were to attack U.S. satellites.
“Let's take as an example the recent ASAT test,” he said. “If the target is deep, and you want to go in there and ensure there cannot be a second launch, then having a conventional capability against something that was launched that was conventional in nature, as the ASAT is, that seems to me to be an appropriate target to defend our interests in space.”
Other targets that require short timelines to strike include short- or medium-range missiles or a terrorist camp. Prompt global strike weapons include a hypersonic cruise vehicle that can deliver bombs rapidly by flying close to space, conventional ballistic missiles, air launched missiles, space operations vehicles and a space based-launch platform.
The Air Force is spending $503 million to add four conventional warheads on each of 24 Trident missiles by 2013. Cartwright also said the United States faces major computer attacks. “This country is under attack on a daily basis, whether it be in the commerce and industry sectors, in the academic sectors or in the defense sectors,” he said. “We have to start to understand how we're going to contest this environment, provide defenses for the country, rather than as we do today, just defend the terminals, wait for a patch and lose money the whole time or lose intellectual capital the whole time that we're waiting for somebody to fix a vulnerability.
We have got to start to extend our defensive perimeters out beyond the terminals, beyond the computers and the firewalls,” he said.
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