Don't stop building nukes, Obama

Indeed, the nuclear weapon of the future is unlikely to be delivered by a ballistic missile or a slowpoke bomber. It will be delivered by an unmanned aerial vehicle, or UAV—what has become known as a drone. Someday all of war will be fought by remote control. There is no reason to imagine that nuclear weapons will be exempt from this evolution. Persistent rumor has it that Israel and Russia and perhaps China and India are interested in developing UAVs capable of launching nuclear weapons. Israel recently introduced its largest drone, the Heran TP, or Eitan (“steadfast”), capable of remaining aloft for more than 24 hours and delivering a payload weighing a ton. In theory, the Eitan could deliver a small (kiloton-range) nuclear warhead. As more nuclear powers tilt their research in this direction, it is not out of the question that a terrorist group will someday possess both a long-range drone and a nuclear weapon designed to fit.

Where does the United States stand in this arms race? At the moment, we lead the pack in developing UAVs, but (unless there is classified research going on) not in developing nuclear warheads to fit them. Instead, we would rely, even in a limited nuclear exchange, on submarine-launched ballistic missiles or, possibly, cruise missiles. These weapons are designed to seek fixed targets over long distances. Their disadvantage is that they cannot remain quietly aloft, searching for targets. That is what drones are for…

The president’s announcement that he will not use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear nations has been controversial, but is unlikely to do the nation any harm. Falling behind in the race to develop the next generation of nuclear weapons could be infinitely more dangerous. How dangerous? One need only wait for the moment when a drone drops a nuclear warhead somewhere on American soil, and we lack the necessary precision munitions with which to retaliate. Here one is reminded of the dictum of Thomas Schelling, in explaining how the strategy of deterrence works: “There is a difference,” he wrote in his classic work Arms and Influence, “between fending off assault and making someone afraid to assault you.”