9/7/2023 0 Comments Nuclear silo pizza deliveryOur old warheads are undergoing extensive LEPs at this time as well. That language IS STILL in the FY16 DOD budget documents.įast forward to today and we find the need to modernize our ICBMs when SSBN(X) is starting (with a lot of support from Congress, you rarely hear anyone utter the acronym ICBM) as well as LSR-B about to be a full program of record with initial contract award. GWB wanted something like $20M for ACI (Advanced Concept Initiative) that not only was defunded but Congress added language to DENY the nuclear labs from doing ANY work on next generation warhead designs. GW Bush had several modest proposals (RRW, ACI, RNEP, the Land Based Strategic Deterrent to replace MMIII in 2018) voted down with help from members of his own party. Many Congressional proponents simple faded away (retired) while those remaining were voices in the wilderness at best or declared outright 'kooks' at worst for supporting such 'antiquated' ideas as 'robust deterrent' when Russia and the US were skipping down history's road singing Kumbaya.Īt a time of massive disarmament - the US went from 13,000 deployed strategic warheads to around 1600 today - asking for additional funds for new systems was an impossible sell to Congress or the American people. And while any newspaper that enhances the visibility of the issue is welcomed it also shows that times are indeed desperate in the 'nuclear enterprise'.Īs for modernization, nukes and their delivery vehicles obviously became the easiest programs to kick down the road at the end of the Cold war. When LA Times writes a few months ago saying we need new warheads I think 'right wing' has left the building. I hope this makes me a defense pragmatist and not a "right wing freak" as so eloquently put. Naturally, I would think that these would/should be either road or railway mobile for their own survivability and detente value.Īs someone who supports a full Triad modernization and has decried the cancellation of modernization programs since around 1992 (many programs were cancelled in 1989-91) the US's inability to support a new state of the art ICBM program after MMIII is troubling. Surly both missiles could have modern state-of-the-art technologies incorporated to bring them up to speed and proficiency far quicker than developing an all new missile(s) design! Even a reduction in the amount of MIRV’s carried (say six instead of the original ten) by the LGM-118A Peacekeeper to make it lighter and cheaper Whilst the MGM-134A Midgetman had much of its R&D paid and completed, with a prototype being readied in 1991 (I think ?) After all in the case of the LGM-118A Peacekeeper, it had been operationally deployed in relative small numbers, alas for all but a few years, before it was crazily withdrawn from service (America has a habit of this). Now that’s a long time, when one considers that the Minuteman III program started in 1966! Much has changed in the way of strategic missiles, as well as their vulnerability to modern state-of-the-art Russian ICBM’s.Ĭould someone please explain why the United States/Pentagon/USAF could simply not reintroduce/ revamped ICBM programs like the LGM-118A Peacekeeper and MGM-134A Midgetman (Small Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (SICBM)) ICBM’s. is seriously contemplating…studying and deliberating into extending the lives of their LGM-30G Minuteman III ICBM into the region of 2030 (I read somewhere ?). I’m both amazed and shocked that the U.S. has been running around the world as the ‘supposed’ only unchallengeable super power, and fighting its ideological ‘War on Terror’, the rest of the world seems to have proliferated in the way of MRBM and ICBM development and operational deployment. In fact I’m one of those people who’d be happy to see such weapons eliminated full stop. Excuse my ignorance, but I can’t help being concerned about what can only be classed as the United States neglect of its land-based ICBM force.ĭon’t get me wrong, I’m not an American patriot or a right-wing freak or anything.
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