SLCM-N? Hard Pass

nuclear autists need to take a powder

As outlined in the CRS report of July, 2024, here is the core argument:

A key issue in the SLCM-N debate is whether adding the missile to U.S. nuclear forces is necessary to credibly deter limited nuclear use by adversaries and assure allies in Europe and the Asia-Pacific that the United States would protect them from nuclear coercion.

If you’re in a hurry, here’s my summary answer:

• It does nothing to deter limited use. Limited responses do not deter limited actions; overwhelming retaliation does.

• If B-2, B-21, B-52, F-__, SSBN do not assure allies - a limited and vulnerable SLCM-N won’t.

As in many things in the national security area, there is a lot of bad theory ungrounded in any reference to historical experience or understanding of human nature, prancing around disguised as sophisticated thought.

In a practical stance, defense budgets are about choices, risks, and tradeoffs. You only have so much money, so be careful what you spend it on.

There are two ways to decide what you need to spend money on. What to give more money to, what to take money away from.

1. Look at recent experience about what worked and what didn’t. What was high-demand/low-density, and what no one really wanted to have? What made your job easier and the enemy vexed, what never worked at war that was sold at peace?

2. How well resourced is your preferred theory addressing future challenges with no recent experience to reference, but the challenge is still there needing a solution? Where the decisions about nuclear weapons come into play, this area is an open field with lots of options. Lots of expensive options. Thankfully, all we have is theory when it comes to nuclear war, but unfortunately this is an area almost custom made for bad theory to grow roots.

One day, I will frame my qualification letter I received as a JO for nuclear weapons (me and about everyone else during the Cold War) and put it on my office wall for sh1ts and grins, but my memory of that time when almost everything that flew or floated or went sinker had a nuke capability, informs part of my objection to the ongoing call to bring back a Sea Launched Cruise Missile—Nuclear (SLCM-N) into our strategic deterrence tool-bag. That is the argument I’ll flesh out below.

I don’t care who you are, or what credentials you wave around. Want to invest already short money on a new SLCM-N a generation after we got rid of the last one? Want to distract thin attention on an ongoing struggle to modernize our existing nuclear deterrent?

Non-concur.

Here’s a Few Reasons Why

Bad Understanding of Nuclear War: There is no such thing as a “tactical nuke” nor a “limited nuclear war.” Don’t tell me my theory is less valid than yours. No one really knows…but I’ll take the argument every day of the week. As there is no way to “contain” a nuclear war any more than you can contain a laboratory-generated respiratory virus, in a general nuclear war there is no use for slow, bespoke, niche nuclear weapons for a small subset of imagined vignettes that only exist behind a mantle of the bad theory that begat them.

Make no mistake, once the nukes—no matter how small or how limited in use—start clicking off, general war will follow. The war can start from either a bolt-out-of-the-blue attack, or as a result of some poorly briefed politician’s approval of the use of a “tactical nuke” causing shortly thereafter a globe’s worth of PRIMARY and SECONDARY UNLOCK switches being thrown, MASTER ARM to ARM, keys being turned, and the resulting skies full of ICBM, followed by SLBM making a general hash out of the Northern Hemisphere. Bombers, should any be left, will wander around trying to pick off the remaining bits, and if we have SLCM-N to use, they’d show up after the party was already over.

If there is anything that needs to be nuked in detail at low-yeild, it can be nuked by existing systems, I don’t care what your exquisitely designed vignette, wargame, or theory says—small, low-yield, “only the tip” is not your solution. Yes, I have some vague idea of “we need a low-yield option for…” is as the basis of an argument some people are making. Well, if such a thing might transpire after monkeys fly out of my stern-exhaust, isn’t that why we have the B-2 and soon to come along B-21 for with their bellies full of B61?

Not Practical: Cruise missiles are incredibly slow relative to other nuclear delivery platforms. They have all the time distance problems of aircraft without the speed of ballistic missiles. They lack the recallability of manned platforms, while maintaining the lack of recall of ballistic missiles. They have none of the pros and all of the cons. Especially those coming out of submarines, they have a non-insignificant failure rate at launch, transition from boost, and just plain wandering off or down en route to target. They are more easily shot down. Will we carry enough to properly run a PRIMARY-BACKUP-READY SPARE construct for the missions? Do we have enough assets to go around saying, “Hey, my bad. We need to scoop up this nuke we left on your seabed or shot down over your swamp.”

Inviting Mistakes: As it stands right now, any nation that finds itself on the receiving end of US Navy cruise missiles—a not small club of nations the last four decades--knows that they are conventional weapons. If we reanimate SLCM-N, then we have have unnecessarily injected ambiguity into the mind of what are in many cases, unstable nations. Just look at what North Korea has been up to this week. They are not rational—and the world is full of such nations. SLCM-N greatly increases risk of accidental nuclear war.

High Overhead: going back to my JO memories above, the first time I saw a Field Grade Officer cry was when his command failed their NWTI. Storage, training, inspection, maintenance, Personal Reliability Programs, security, etc, etc, etc… they just are not worth it. That leads to the next issue…

Top-5 Tradeoffs for Going Nuclear

• Money: This bears repeating, again. There is only so much money in the defense budget. For every dollar we spend on something that there is a 99.99924% chance we will never need, and if we do it will be redundant, that is a dollar we will not spend on something that we have a better than average chance of needing and are already short of. Unless SLCM-N is clearly a critical tool for an existential requirement nothing else is filling, which it isn’t, it is a fool’s argument to make the investment required to get them in the fleet in numbers that make them useful.

• What are we Not Buying: Yes, I am repeating for emphasis. If you have not already, read Monday’s Substack. We are not buying enough conventional weapons for the hot-peace we “enjoy” now, much less have the magazine depth for the Great Pacific War expected in the next decade. I’m sorry, but experienced reality trumps your exquisite vignette.

• Only so Many VLS Cells: If you want to “service” one target with a SLCM-N, then you better have three. The “PRIMARY-BACKUP-READY SPARE rule applies. Talk to any of us old TLAM hands, and we can tell you the real world requirements for weaponeering and strike missions…though we might have to go in the SCIF. Of course, you want to be able to “service” more than one target. Once your SLCM-N take their appropriate number of VLS cells on a surface or submarine platform, how many VLS cells does that leave you to do honest work?

• Kiwi Syndrome: Harkening back to my exceptional yet under-appreciated by my professor term paper in my POLYSCI class in 1987 titled, “The Kiwi That Roared” we all remember back at the height of the Cold War in the mid-1980s our Five-Eyes ally New Zealand decided that even the thought of a nuclear weapons was icky so we could visit to entertain their womenfolk anymore? Well, once we start tucking SLCM-N in various nooks and crannies in the fleet, we will see that come back, and not just in New Zealand.

• Damage Control: Samuel B. Roberts, Cole, Stark, Fitzgerald and McCain—how would those events played out if they had nuclear weapons on board as well? What about press? What about Kiwi Syndrome?

There are more reasons than just the Top-5 above that popped out of my head. I have yet to hear convincing arguments in favor of SLCM-N except, “If you could see the brief in the SCIF” non-arguments and appeals to credentialism. SLCM-N is something that, when the big picture is taken in to account, just isn’t worth it.

I’m not alone here. Sen. Kelly (D-AZ), agrees with me.

In fiscal year 2024, Congress appropriated $90 million for the missile and $70 million for work on its warhead. It also instructed the Defense Department to establish a development program for the missile. The House bill for 2025 would raise the missile’s annual budget to $190 million and maintain warhead funding at $70 million.

Last year’s statement of administration policy said the president “strongly opposes” the missile and that it “has marginal utility.” The statement also said “deploying [the missile] on Navy attack submarines or surface combatants would reduce capacity for conventional strike munitions [and] create additional burdens on naval training, maintenance, and operations.”

Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) raised these issues during a May 24 hearing of the Senate Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee. “One of my biggest concerns is that we would be giving up something we really need for something we are unlikely to use,” Kelly said, referring to the possibility that the missile would displace conventional munitions aboard Navy attack submarines.

In response, Vice Adm. Johnny R. Wolfe Jr., the Navy’s director for strategic systems programs, acknowledged that “yes, there will be some impact”…

Sadly, we’re not at the point that we’re the majority opinion. Other people see things differently.

SLCM-N proponents have argued that SLCM-N’s attributes are different from low-yield capabilities delivered by other means. They say that aircraft that deliver weapons would need to either be “generated” (fueled, weapons-loaded, and flown) from the United States, which takes time, or else placed in regional bases, where they could be vulnerable to adversary strikes. SLCM-N proponents also argue that deploying the missile on surface vessels or attack submarines provides advantages, such as greater availability and regional presence, over deploying the W762 SLBM on ballistic missile submarines. STRATCOM Commander General Anthony Cotton reportedly wrote in 2023 that “a low-yield, non-ballistic nuclear capability to deter, assure and respond without visible generation” could provide the President with additional signaling and response options in a crisis. In April 2022 testimony, General Mark Milley, then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, also expressed support for the SLCM-N, arguing that the President “deserves to have multiple options.” The 2023 final consensus report of the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States did not explicitly endorse the SLCM-N, but called for a prompt system that is “forward deployed or deployable”; “survivable against preemptive attack without force generation day-to-day”; possesses “a range of explosive yield options, including low yield”; and is able to penetrate adversary integrated air and missile defenses.

As a general rule, if Milley thinks something is a good idea, it is actually a bad idea.

Just look at the holes in the thinking above:

The “tactical nuke” logical fallacy I sneered at the very start of this post. The last thing we need is someone who is sold that we can pop off “just a wee one” without risk of having the genie out of the bottle and beyond control. “Just the tip…” of nuclear holocaust…just bad theory made flesh.

Really? Then why do we have everything from ICBM, to SLBM, to bombers and nuclear capable tactical aircraft?

I’m sorry, but this doesn’t sell me. If anything, it tells me how dangerous and redundant a capability SLCM-N is.

Observers have debated whether a nuclear posture that includes low-yield capabilities like the SLCM-N and the W76-2 and demonstrates a willingness to use nuclear weapons improves deterrence or increases the risk of nuclear war.

No. Any study of war and human nature tells you it would increase the risk of general nuclear war. Real nuclear war, not the well manicured vignettes some people think they can will into being.

It appears that I am generally in the Biden camp on this issue, so at least this topic gives me a “Ref. A” to let them know I am not a mindless partisan drone. Sometimes, (D) are right. Go ahead, bookmark that, I don’t care.

The Biden Administration argued in a July 2023 policy statement that “deploying SLCM-N on Navy attack submarines or surface combatants would reduce capacity for conventional strike munitions, create additional burdens on naval training, maintenance, and operations, and could create additional risks to the Navy’s ability to operate in key regions.” In May 2024 testimony, Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro expressed concerns about the tactical and operational tradeoffs and costs of SLCM-N for the Navy. The 2022 NPR also cited the SLCM-N’s “estimated cost” as a tradeoff. The Navy stated in 2022 that SLCM-N cancellation would save $199.2 million in FY2023 and $2.1 billion over the next five years. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin III testified in April 2022 that “the marginal capability that [the SLCM-N] provides is far outweighed by the cost.” A July 2023 Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report estimated the costs of the SLCM-N and its warhead at $10 billion from 2023-2032 “if the program began in 2024.” This amount, the CBO noted, does not include production costs beyond 2032, or costs for system integration, storage, or operations. SLCM-N supporters argue that the deterrence and assurance benefits of SLCM-N outweigh these operational tradeoffs and costs.

We have a good concept of redundancy to deter and to ensure a solid second strike capability with our present nuclear triad, a triad that needs modernization. It does not need a new toy that will take away from an already thin industrial base barely able to meet present modernization needs.

The sea-launched cruise missile, nuclear, or SLCM-N, can be launched from surface ships and also attack subs, rather than from traditional ballistic missile submarines. Wolfe told senators that the industrial base that would be most responsible for building the SLCM-N has atrophied and that it'll be a challenge to build it back. 

"Significant investments are required to build back capacity to handle multiple concurrent nuclear modernization programs," he told senators. 

The admiral also stressed to lawmakers that despite challenges such as an atrophied industrial base and supply chain challenges, the Navy must advance modernization of its part of the nuclear triad. 

"First and foremost, we must maintain the current [Trident II D5LE] missile inventory and provide the necessary operational support to sustain Ohio-class submarines through the end of their life in the early 2040s," he said. "Secondly ... we must continue to ensure a seamless transition between Ohio-class and Columbia-class submarines." 

That is the only naval related nuclear weapons talk I am interested in hearing about.

Eric Gomez at Cato put is well, and I’ll end this rant with his quote:

Improvements in nuclear flexibility must be weighed against the opportunity costs and tradeoffs of adding a new capability. Pursuing SLCM-N might create some marginal deterrent benefit, but U.S. money and time is better spent elsewhere, and deterrence will not be meaningfully degraded by cancelling the SLCM-N. Moreover, stopping the program now, when it is still in its very early stages, involves lower sunk costs.   

---

Notebook: if you’d like to hear audio commentary on the above post, click here. If you’d like to review briefing docs, click here.