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(Now with a handful of minor corrections and an update.)

With the President overriding his advisers to deliver insulting remarks and empty threats at the UN and Kim Jong Un responding personally and at some length, one really wonders where all this ends.

John Kelly, left, reacts as he listens to President Trump’s U.N. speech. (Photo: Mary Altaffer/AP) https://t.co/mPR68T7rJ4 pic.twitter.com/MGNQ2jVWVc — Colin Campbell (@colincampbell) September 19, 2017

Short of war, neither side can compel the other to stop doing what it doesn’t like. Indeed, we are liable to keep goading each other to action for some time to come, a perfectly counterproductive result for both sides. But everything must end. One way or another, the cycle of threats and counter-threats will conclude.

Shall we assume, in the interests of sanity, that everyone comes out of this mess more or less unscathed? Yes, let’s. It’s less likely than ever that North Korea will abandon its nuclear arsenal. (Can we skip the obligatory “pursuit of,” seeing as they have nuclear weapons already?) So, in the best case, we’ll look back at the first year or so of the Trump Administration as a temper tantrum, a transient refusal to accept the emergence of a new mutual deterrence relationship (and one with a lesser power). It’s now America’s third such relationship, alongside those with Russia and China.

Last week, I had the opportunity to speak briefly on this subject at the Air Force Association’s massive Air, Space & Cyber Conference. The first speaker, Deputy Chief of the Air Staff Lt. Gen. Jack Weinstein, remarked on the unusual size of the audience for a panel on nuclear deterrence. It seems they don’t typically run out of chairs. This year has been… special.

In hope of sparking a wider conversation, I’m posting my slides here, along with a few comments and explanatory asides. Obviously, what follows represents only my own thoughts, not those of the Air Force Association, the U.S. Air Force, or anyone else. Think of it as my own little unsolicited contribution to the Nuclear Posture Review.

Perhaps needless to say, this presentation doesn’t represent Middlebury, either!

Slide 1

Here are my opening questions.

You may notice that I don’t address arms control or disarmament anywhere in this briefing. It’s meant only to prompt some thinking about how to design strategic forces under the present circumstances. The verge of a multi-decade force modernization campaign, whether we like being there or not, seems like an opportune moment to examine some basic considerations for the future force. Of course, if any problems that arise from this analysis appear intractable, answers must be found beyond making unilateral decisions about force posture.

Slide 2

My point of entry into these issues isn’t leadership perceptions, nuclear doctrine, counterforce requirements, or anything of that sort. It’s just the most elementary, tangible aspect of the problem: geography. So here, below, is the mainstay of this presentation: colored dots and arrows overlaid on an orthographic polar projection map.

The arrows represent the surface tracks of missile flights, so yes, they really ought to be slightly curved. Such is life. For want of anything better, this presentation was developed in PowerPoint, augmented with an advanced modeling tool designated “Mk. I human eyeball.”

What we see here is an ICBM launch from Malmstrom Air Force Base (approximately) to arbitrary points in North Korea and China. The blue arrows turn red as they cross over Russian airspace. Russia has a large, alert nuclear arsenal, supported with an early-warning network and a launch-on-warning doctrine. I assume Santa Claus has neither of the latter things, although if he did, that would be pretty awesome.

Is Russia’s position between the United States and any other U.S. adversary on the Asian landmass a serious problem? Let’s turn to that question at the end. If it is a problem, there are potential answers within the realm of nuclear posture. Here’s one:

Slide 3

To avoid Russia, just launch south! Going the long way around the planet, a nuclear-armed ballistic missile would probably be employed as a fractional orbital bombardment system, or FOBS. These systems were banned under SALT II, but the treaty never entered into force and has since expired. It would take somewhat longer to get where it’s going than under the current arrangement, and it would also mean (other things being equal) that payloads would have to stay light. These missiles probably could not be “uploaded” with additional warheads as long as they need to be able to fly the southern route.

(To make this slide, I resorted to spinning the globe around in Google Earth a bit to find a route. I’m not sure I got it exactly right, but hopefully the idea comes across.)

Slide 4

Another approach, arguably more elegant, is to say, “The hell with that,” and reserve ICBM targeting for Russia alone. Under this approach, we could leave south-of-Russia missions to the submarine-based force.

But there’s a rub. If avoiding overflight of Russia will constrain ICBMs, then it will constrain SLBMs, too. The subs must sail quite some distance south and east from their base in Washington State—at least 2,500 nautical miles, by my eyeball—before they enter a region of the Pacific where overflight would not be involved. See that dashed gray curve on the map above?

Note, too, that I happened to choose an arbitrary point in southern China. To cover nearly all of China without passing over Russia—excluding only the very northeastern tip of Chinese territory, which nestles into the curve of the Russian Far East—would require sailing almost 4,500 nm from port, at a minimum. (I’m assuming it’s OK to get to points in China via North Korea.)

Are patrols at these distances unduly stressful for the submarine forces of the present and future? I truly don’t know. But if they are, there’s a fix!

Slide 5

Moving the subs from their docks at Naval Base Kitsap to Pearl Harbor almost eliminates the minimum sailing requirement for targeting North Korea and southern China without overflight of Russia. It also slices about 1,500 nm off the minimum sailing distance to the targeting-almost-all-of-China region. Plus, it’s pretty nice to be in Hawaii.

Here, too, there are tradeoffs. Any subs at dockside in Pearl would be further from Russia than if they were at Kitsap. Perhaps that matters. Perhaps not. (Yes! I am aware that SSBNs patrol in the Atlantic as well.) And there’s a third option, too.

Slide 6

With bombers, the geography of overflight just isn’t that big a concern. They can fly and refuel over friendly countries and oceans, going almost any which way. But it takes them hours to get where they’re going… hours that might not be available, depending on the mission. They can also expect to face advanced air defenses.

Slide 7

On the bright side, there’s a way to eliminate most of those long hours crossing the globe: move the bomber bases closer to the anticipated targets. I’ve picked Guam and Diego Garcia to illustrate the idea:

The drawback of this concept is that it makes the bombers themselves more attractive targets. If you take seriously the concerns of the late 1950s about the vulnerability of Strategic Air Command bomber bases to Soviet missiles, why recreate the same sort of problem by relocating nuclear delivery systems within range of the DF-26 and the HS-12?

In the late 1950s, of course, we didn’t have missile subs or ICBMs. Wouldn’t they deter any such strikes? Perhaps they would. Or perhaps new forward-deployed nuclear bomber bases would simply invite adversaries to consider the logic of limited nuclear or conventional counterforce.

Unhappily, we already seem to find ourselves in a version of this predicament by rotating conventionally armed bombers through Guam over the last dozen-plus years. I’m less and less convinced that the increasingly routine Guam-based shows of force in places like Korea and the East China Sea are having the desired effect, while they have offered Kim Jong Un a justification for some pretty aggressive threats. Is this mission already past its sell-by date? Perhaps the best value of these flights is trade bait.

Slide 8

Now here’s the “fun” part, where geography really starts to bite. The Ground-based Midcourse Defense, or GMD, is mostly located in Alaska, with a handful of bonus interceptors in California. Here, I’ve picked three targets from the March 2013 Map of Death and sent North Korean ICBMs whisking toward them (the solid green arrows). [UPDATE: I’ve produced a new post on this issue, but have withdrawn it for the time being in the interests of trying to get it right. Stay tuned.]

The blue, dashed arrows are interceptors flying out from Ft. Greely, AK in response. Each would be a group of four or so Ground-Based Interceptors, or GBIs, one of which would hopefully connect with the inbound reentry vehicle, or RV, at the points indicated with brackets (as determined with the Mk. I eyeball). The rest of the GBIs will continue merrily on their way and burn up during reentry someplace further south.

You should notice a few things here. Intercepting the shot taken at Pearl Harbor will send GBIs off into the Pacific. That looks pretty harmless. But intercepting the shots aimed at mainland targets means flying out toward Russia. Defending a West Coast target even means engaging the attacking RV above the Russian Far East. Yikes.

Now, maybe that’s not a real problem, since the Russians should be able to see clearly that the radar tracks lead back to Ft. Greely, and not to an ICBM base or to the ocean. On the other hand, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates once disclosed that one of Russia’s concerns about a plan to put GBI silos in Europe was a fear that the interceptors could be quietly refitted with nuclear warheads and turned into weapons of surprise attack. Russia’s steadfast refusal to acknowledge the existence of North Korean ICBMs also stands to complicate how they may interpret such an event.

So, short of getting rid of a program that I frankly despair of, what can be done? One possibility is to enhance real-time data exchange with the Russians, to enable the U.S. to engage small-scale attacks from North Korea without fear that doing so will trigger Armageddon. You may have heard this one before. A second idea is to restrict the interceptors to late shots that would attempt “tail chase” engagements of attacks on the mainland USA, mostly over Canada. (Update: George Lewis suggests this approach could have advantages.) A third idea is…

Slide 9

The second interceptor base, located at Vandenberg Air Force Base, doesn’t seem to do too much, other than serve as a flight-testing venue every now and then. Why not confine it to that role, and dig some new silos at Thule Air Base in northwestern Greenland? If the Greenlanders and Danes don’t object, this site could become the main interceptor base, with Ft. Greely primarily defending Hawaii, and the two bases protecting each other if necessary. If the tail-chase-only approach mentioned above is unattractive, this new site would accommodate crossing shots at any North Korean attacks on the U.S. mainland, with GBIs splashing down somewhere in the Pacific. Nothing would need to pass over Russia.

Moving GBIs to Thule would also force Missile Defense Agency spokespeople to learn how to pronounce Pituffik. That alone seems like justification enough.

Slide 10 (finale!)

Now, how to choose between these various options? I don’t know! Fortunately, that’s not my job. In place of recommendations, all I have are more questions. Finding the answers to these questions—not to mention estimating how much various basing options might add to already notoriously expensive modernization plans—could help determine how to redesign the U.S. nuclear posture, if at all.

For now, I’ll venture just this much more. There’s an important distinction between the requirements of deterrence and the requirements of damage limitation “if deterrence fails.” China and North Korea, for example, appear not to believe that they need to care about overflying Russia; but then, all they are trying to do is deter a U.S. nuclear strike. They’re not preparing to render one physically impossible by means of a massive strike over the North Pole. A leader in either of those countries is unlikely to place much faith in the idea of Russia as an impermeable shield that wards off attack by U.S. nuclear missiles. But American planners contemplating how to implement a prompt and effective counterforce strike, if ever called upon to do so, conceivably might see the problem differently.

By that reasoning, we might take a little quiet assurance from the status quo. If the various points made here about ICBMs, SSBNs, and bombers leave no impression on the Powers That Be—or, if you prefer, the Forces in Being—it may imply that they just don’t take the prospect of a counterforce mission too seriously. All in all, that’s probably a good thing.