Nuclear security

Trump, do we really need more nuclear weapons capabilities?

On Dec. 22, 2016, President-elect Trump tweeted:

“The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes.”

Why would the U.S. need to strengthen its nuclear capabilities? Our current capacity is approximately 4,500 nuclear weapons, which includes 900 nuclear warheads on high alert, ready to launch within 30 minutes of warning. More than half of these are on 14 invulnerable submarines.

... We are not alone in our overkill capacity. Russia has a comparable nuclear arsenal. This includes about 900 nuclear weapons on high alert (similar to our alert status).

Of particular concern is that Russia's early warning system has been allowed to atrophy. It is rarely discussed how vulnerable we are to the state of this system.

A mistaken signal of a U.S. attack could precipitate a massive “preventive strike” from Russia. (Erroneous attack signals have actually happened before and in one case a potential disaster was averted only by the prudence of the Russian officer on duty.)