Russia has “suspended” participation in the New START weapons treaty, which limits the number of strategic warheads both Moscow and Washington can keep ready to use. Once it expires in 2026, the pact seems unlikely to be renewed.
China refuses to negotiate at all, and is increasing its nuclear arsenal rapidly. It now has more than 400 warheads, more than the UK or France. If Beijing continues investing at its current rate, it would have 1,500 by the middle of the next decade.
In time, then, there will be three nuclear superpowers, not just two. That will make the geopolitics of these missiles even more complicated and may embolden the smaller powers.
Postures are shifting, as we are reminded in Britain by the possible return of US nuclear weapons to our shores. America keeps warheads in various allied nations including Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy and Turkey: it withdrew its nukes from the UK after the Cold War, but publicly available documents suggest that they may soon be returning.
Air Force chiefs have told Congress they want to invest in RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk for a “potential surety mission” – a term usually used in relation to nuclear weapons.
It’s possible to argue that the war in Ukraine has brought tension between Russia and the West to unprecedented levels – certainly the highest they have been since the end of the Cold War.
There are certainly those who say things are worse than ever before. As of January, the famous “Doomsday Clock” operated by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists reads “90 seconds to midnight”, the closest to nuclear armageddon it has ever been. In the judgment of the Atomic Scientists, the end of civilisation has never been closer than it is now.
How can Britain and the West protect themselves?
Who’s stocking up?
Proliferation is certainly a concern. The five original nuclear weapon states – the US, Russia, UK, France and China – have been joined by four more over the decades: India, Pakistan, North Korea and, it is widely thought, Israel.
However, it’s important to point out that weapons proliferation is not, in fact, necessarily or inevitably linked to nuclear power. It is true that most of the world’s weapons are made of plutonium produced in reactors. Nonetheless, the great majority of the 30-plus nations that have civil nuclear power programmes have no weapons. Two of the nine nuclear-weapon nations – Israel and North Korea – have weapons but no power plants.
Fear of nuclear weapons isn’t a valid reason for not having nuclear energy and the mere fact that a nation may seek to establish a nuclear power programme does not mean that it will also acquire weapons. In fact, the odds are against it. The Non Proliferation Treaty and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) are effective in most cases.
As for sheer numbers of weapons, the situation is not as bad as it might be. Peak Nuke was way back in 1986, when there were a little over 70,000 warheads in the world’s arsenals. Today there are thought to be approximately 12,000. The US has 1,744 warheads actually ready to use and Russia has 1,588.
When nuclear weapons were first invented, there was only one way to use them: simply drop the nuke out of a heavy bomber above the target. Both the US and Russia continue to maintain heavy bombers intended to deliver nuclear weapons.
However, this method of attack is relatively simple to defend against: the bomber can be shot down by fighters or anti-aircraft missiles before it arrives.
The reason people think nuclear war would trigger the inevitable end of the world is the inter-continental ballistic missile (ICBM). ICBMs are widely regarded as unstoppable: hence the idea that once they are flying, armageddon cannot be prevented.
Inter-continental ballistic missiles such as the US's Minuteman III are widely regarded as unstoppable - U.S. Air Force
Classic ICBMs are kept in buried, heavily hardened silos. Even a powerful enemy nuke needs to strike close to a hardened silo to put it out of action. An alternative ploy is to put the ICBM on a mobile vehicle or rail car, meaning that it is harder for an enemy to know where it is and target it with his own nukes.
Both hardened silos and mobile launchers were attempts to deal with the terrible dilemma of the early Cold War: the fear that a US president or Soviet premier might have only minutes of warning that enemy ICBMs had been launched before they struck.
If the inbound pre-emptive strike was targeted against his own nuclear weapons, in “counter force” style, he would have to order a counter strike within minutes or lose his ability to do so.
Worryingly, there would always be the possibility that the warning of an attack was a mistake. Such false alarms were a real problem on more than one occasion and “launch on warning” remains a deeply frightening idea.
Hardened silos, which would only be knocked out if hit by several nukes, were an attempt to preserve an ability to hit back even after being attacked.
The grim logic of counter-force pre-emptive strike was one reason why the opposing superpowers built such huge arsenals of weapons. One way of remaining able to hit back even after an enemy attack would be simply to have more nukes than the enemy could destroy in one go.
However, the US found a way around this dynamic: satellite navigation. The ubiquitous “satnav” – found in every modern phone, every modern car and in many other things besides – was originally developed as a way of making nuclear missiles more accurate.
The US began launching the Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites from 1978. With GPS, a US warhead would hit almost on top of its target and knock out even a hardened silo reliably. In “counter force” warfare, one US warhead was now worth several Soviet ones.
The Soviet Union surpassed the USA in warhead numbers the year GPS was launched. However, the US didn’t bother to increase its arsenal: indeed, US warhead numbers declined slightly in the 1980s even as the Soviet stockpile grew massively. America was fighting smart, not hard.
Safety in submarines
Another development had occurred at the time that made nuclear warfare much less likely: the appearance of the nuclear powered, nuclear armed ballistic missile submarine, known as SSBN.
Submarine-launched missiles form the nuclear triad - the main systems of nuclear weapons delivery - REUTERS
Unlike conventionally powered submarines, nuclear vessels can stay fully submerged for months on end. A nuclear sub makes its own fresh water and its own air: the only real limits on its endurance are food for the crew and the need for maintenance. A properly designed and carefully operated nuclear submarine that never seeks contact with the enemy is well-nigh impossible to locate.
Nobody could know where the other side’s missile submarines were. No matter how devastating a first strike might be, the SSBNs would remain. No premier would ever need to make a “launch on warning”. Even if a warning was correct and a strike was indeed inbound, his subs could deliver a devastating response even days or weeks later.
There was no way to eliminate an enemy’s subs, so nobody would be crazy enough to try a first strike. It’s very possible that nuclear-powered, nuclear-armed submarines saved the world.
These three main systems of strategic nuclear weapons delivery – bombers, land-based ICBMs and submarine-launched missiles (SLBMs) – are often called the “nuclear triad”. The idea that all three are necessary justifies big budgets and lots of personnel for the US Air Force.
Other countries, less well-funded, can see the fairly obvious reality that once you have operational submarines, you don’t need the other two parts of the triad.
The UK never got around to acquiring any land-based ICBMs and dispensed with its “V-force” nuclear heavy bombers as soon as it had subs. France, for its part, also has a force of SSBNs allowing it to keep one at sea at all times. It has sensibly disposed of its land-based ICBMs and similarly has no heavy bombers.
The idea of getting rid of ICBMs (or never having any, like Britain) has other things to recommend it other than simply saving large amounts of money.
It is land-based ICBMs that lead to the idea of counter-force targeting with its implied need for huge numbers of weapons. Worse still, it’s land-based ICBMs that create the terrifying “launch on warning” scenario. Land-based ICBMs are not just a bit pointless once you have SSBNs, but actively and unnecessarily dangerous things to have around.
A former US defense secretary, William H Perry, has pointed this out. In 2016 he wrote a New York Times op-ed suggesting that the US should not replace the current Minuteman III ICBM. Sadly, Perry’s idea didn’t gain any traction.
Next generation weapons
As is common in nuclear strategy, the ideas tend to be old but the actions are sometimes new.
Consider ballistic defence. The idea of stopping ballistic missiles in flight has been around forever but did not initially gain much traction as there was a Cold War deal, the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, that put hard limits on ballistic missile defence efforts.
However, the US withdrew from the treaty in 2002 and since then it has built some small-scale ballistic missile defences. These include the Ground-based Midcourse Defence (GMD) interceptor and the SM-3 naval missile, both intended to intercept warheads in space, and terminal defence weapons like the THAAD, the SM-6 and the famous Patriot missile, which are for stopping warheads as they plunge down through the atmosphere.
A THAAD interceptor is designed to stop missiles in flight - REUTERS
Now, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping are now developing weapons that can outwit ballistic defences. In particular, both China and Russia are working on “hypersonic” warheads. These are confusingly named: the word hypersonic normally just means something which goes faster than Mach 5. Existing ICBM warheads already travel at Mach 20 as they descend at the end of their flight.
But a normal ballistic warhead soars very high above the Earth before it descends, perhaps as high as 2,000km – much higher than satellites in low orbit. This means it can be seen coming from a very long range and gives time for an interception to be made.
The new hypersonic “Avangard” warhead, which Putin claims is already in Russia’s armoury, is launched on a normal ICBM stack but it doesn’t go up high into space. Instead it takes a lower, faster trajectory, and drops into the atmosphere much sooner, completing a good part of its journey in a hypersonic glide. It’s not a new idea: this was called “boost-glide” back in the 1960s, but it never caught on then.
Hypersonic missiles don’t let you deliver as big a payload on a given rocket, which is why normal ballistics became standard. However, the lower flight path means the warhead only appears on radar right at the end of its travel, rather than early on. Straight away this makes it much harder to intercept.
GMDs and SM-3s don’t work in the atmosphere, meaning that the only possible defence is terminal interceptors like Patriot, THAAD and SM-6. The fact that the hypersonic warhead is in atmosphere for much of its flight means that it can potentially manoeuvre and alter course significantly, making it hard to predict where it will go and get an interceptor in the way.
China has also tested hypersonics and has combined them with another old but mostly unused idea: fractional orbital bombardment.
Here the rocket acts like a space launch system instead of lobbing its payload on a high ballistic arc. As soon as it gets out of the atmosphere it tips over and boosts sideways to massive speed, putting the warhead into a low orbit like a satellite.
When the warhead arrives in the vicinity of the target – or in the case of the Chinese tests of 2021, when it arrives at the start of its hypersonic glide – it uses rocket thrust to slow down and drop out of orbit.
Fractional orbital flight is extremely fast and can reach any point on Earth, potentially arriving from a totally unexpected direction such as via the south pole. Again, it doesn’t deliver as much payload for a given rocket but the low-flying warhead cannot be spotted until it has almost arrived, and the point at which it will de-orbit is unpredictable.
The US already has medicine for fractional orbital, however: the SM-3 naval missile can easily reach low orbital altitudes and indeed a US cruiser used an SM-3 to shoot down a malfunctioning spy satellite in 2008. The trick would be to know that the fractional-orbital weapon was coming and have a warship beneath its path.
Putin and Xi have claimed to be developing the next generation of hypersonic missiles - Alexei Druzhinin, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP
There are reasons to suspect that Putin’s and Xi’s super weapons are not as super as they might seem. And we should remember, too, that advanced Chinese and Russian hypersonics, fractional-orbitals and other weapons are designed to penetrate US defences that mostly don’t exist.
Russia, the US and now China are spending fortunes on land-based ICBMs, exotic superweapons and interceptor defences. A few of these could be genuinely useful, probably in conventional rather than nuclear warfare, as the US Patriot has already been in Ukraine.
But land-based ICBMs are a bad idea. The US should join its Western nuclear allies and focus on submarines. The US would save so much money by dropping its ICBMs that it could do almost anything.
Once that’s done, practical Western defences that can stop various kinds of missiles will make sense in mostly non-nuclear scenarios: the defence of aircraft carriers and other conventional forces in the Pacific, for instance.
Missile defences that could resist attacks by minor powers like North Korea are also practical and affordable. Another advantage of the current defence systems is that they have already caused Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping to panic and waste huge amounts of money.
North Korea is among nations that have threatened nuclear warfare - KCNA via KNS
However, the temptation to pour away vital resources on huge warhead stockpiles, vast missile fleets and impenetrable defences should be resisted. As it did with GPS satnav, the US and its allies should seek to fight smart, not hard, in the coming new era of 21st century nuclear competition.
Armageddon or amnesty?
How worried should we really be then about the Doomsday Clock ticking closer to midnight?
The Board of Sponsors for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which sets the clock, was established in December 1948 by no less than Albert Einstein and J Robert Oppenheimer.
But the hands of the Doomsday Clock are not set by the Board of Sponsors, they are set by a different board. This has 18 members, and it is not made up of atomic scientists. Three are qualified in political science, one is a lawyer and ex-Democratic Governor of California.
Three served in the Obama administration; none in any Republican administration. Only six of the 18 Clock setters have any qualifications in physics or engineering, and only one of those can be described as an “atomic scientist”: that is Alexander Glaser, whose career has been devoted entirely to nuclear disarmament. Several other Clock setters are past or present disarmament campaigners.
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists is an organisation working towards nuclear disarmament, then, though it prefers to say it is dedicated simply to providing information about nuclear weapons.
The same is true of similar organisations like the Federation of American Scientists, the Union of Concerned Scientists, and the British American Security Information Council.
None of these organisations have any influence in Russia, China, India, Pakistan or North Korea, and they are not attempting to build any. In effect they are Left-wing campaigners for nuclear disarmament by the West. (Sometimes almost incoherently Left-wing: the Union of Concerned Scientists, for instance, considers that nuclear weapons are “racist”.)
The “scientists” and their not-so-subtle campaigning have totally failed to convince the Western public that their governments should disarm unilaterally. It’s obvious that as long as others have nukes, we should have our own.
It’s also obvious, of course, that nobody wants mistakes to be made with nukes, for there to be too many of them, or for nuclear weapons to proliferate to more nations than already have them. To that extent, we can all agree with the anti-nuclear “scientists”.
But the idea that we are edging closer to armageddon must be scrutinised more closely.
Yes, the Ukraine war means tensions between the US and Russia are as high as they have been in decades.
However, it could also be said that the Vietnam war was a not dissimilar situation: one superpower heavily and unsuccessfully engaged on the ground, and the other supplying weapons and covert help to its opponents.
And while Russia and China are arming up rapidly with seemingly new technologies such as hypersonic missiles, all this does is maintain the balance of terror that has prevented nuclear war – or perhaps a horrifying conventional total war between the superpowers – for 60 years.
There are other ways that nuclear weapons can save us from armageddon.
In 2010 the US National Research Council warned that nuclear weapons are the only practical means of defending planet Earth against a major asteroid impact of the sort that could wipe out the human race, and one day inevitably will if we should ever disarm ourselves.
Today’s nuclear weapons picture does not necessarily mean we are moving closer to midnight – even if the landscape is shifting under our feet.
