Reviewing Nuclear Guidance: Putting Obama's Words Into Action
Hans M. Kristensen and
Robert S. Norris
The success of President Barack Obama's goal of reducing the role of
nuclear weapons and setting out on a path toward their elimination is
at a critical juncture. Two and a half years after his Prague speech
reinvigorated the international community with a promise to "put an end
to Cold War thinking" by "reduc[ing] the role of nuclear weapons in
our national security strategy,"[
1] Obama has ordered a review of the requirements for how the military should plan for the potential use of nuclear weapons.
The review is probably Obama's most important and perhaps last
chance to change the role that nuclear weapons have traditionally played
in U.S. national security strategy. The result of the review will be a
broad rewriting of directives and analyses that are used to guide
military planners in preparing the country's forces and strategic
nuclear war plan. How different the new guidance will be depends in no
small measure on how efficiently the president is able to steer the
review through a morass of interservice competition, institutional
inertia, Cold War mind-sets, defense contractor lobbying, and personal
preferences.
Like all policy reviews, this one will trigger fierce battles among
departments, agencies, and individuals who support or disagree with the
president's vision. Some will argue that the United States can and
should reduce its nuclear forces and that the nuclear mission and war
plan, more than two decades after the end of the Cold War, still are
dominated by Cold War thinking. Others will argue that the current
force structure has served the United States and its allies well and
that the world is too dangerous and uncertain to scale back forces and
mission further until Russia and China become less adversarial.
Obama will need to maintain keen and persistent oversight to ensure
that the review is being implemented according to his wishes. If he is
not attentive or loses focus, the review will almost certainly be
co-opted and diffused by various bureaucracies.
This is not a public process. Reviewing the basis for the strategic
nuclear war plan is as secret as it gets. Traditionally, the war plan
has had its own level of classification. When it was known as the SIOP
(Single Integrated Operational Plan), it was SIOP-ESI, for Extremely
Sensitive Information. The more recent versions are likely the same.
Despite its importance, few in the White House or Congress have ever
seen the plan, much less understand how it is created. Unlike the
process the administration used in drafting its "Nuclear Posture Review
[NPR] Report," there will be no unclassified document to inform the
public debate or the international community. If the past is any
indication, the only information the world will hear about the result
of this review is a carefully leaked story to a major newspaper and a
few general remarks by officials, if that.
Preparing for Further Reductions
According to national security adviser Tom Donilon, the Obama
administration is "making preparations for the next round of nuclear
reductions." As a consequence, the strategic requirements for the U.S.
nuclear posture will need to be reassessed, including "potential
changes in targeting requirements and alert postures."[
2]
General Robert Kehler, the head of U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM),
acknowledged the administration's intention to "review and revise the
nation's nuclear strategy and guidance on the roles and missions of
nuclear weapons."[
3]
Outdated presidential nuclear guidance can be a hindrance to reducing
nuclear arms and lead to wasteful spending on excessive force levels.
During the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) III talks in
1996-1997, for example, it became clear that the presidential guidance
dated back to October 1981 (President Ronald Reaganฮรรs National
Security Decision Directive-13), a decade before the end of the Cold
War. In November 1997, the Clinton administration issued an updated
nuclear weapons employment policy (Presidential Decision Directive-60,
or PDD-60) that reduced strike planning against Russia, but increased
strike planning against China and so-called rogue states (or "states of
concern," as they later were known) with weapons of mass destruction
(WMD). However, the military's interpretation of PDD-60 still
translated into a stockpile of 10,000 nuclear warheads. When the
administration of George W. Bush sought to reduce the stockpile, it
issued an updated nuclear employment policy (National Security
Presidential Directive-14, or NSPD-14) in June 2002. That directive
lowered the planning requirement against Russia, allowing for a
stockpile decrease of nearly 50 percent while increasing planning
against regional proliferators.
The force levels set by New START, which entered into force earlier
this year, also are based on the Bush administration's guidance. "The
force level that was agreed to and the assessments that were made...
were based upon a series of deterrence objectives that have been in
place for quite some time," according to Kehler.[
4]
In other words, the U.S. nuclear force level had been in excess of
national security needs for some time, making it possible to trim the
force level for New START without changing the guidance. Under the
terms of the treaty, the new force level does not have to be reached
until 2018. Thus, there is not an urgent need to update the guidance if
no further cuts are made.
If there are negotiations on a new round of reductions, however, the
administration needs to develop a series of force structure options,
and that will require new guidance. "Reductions below the level that we
have now are going to require some more fundamental questions about
force structure," according to Gary Samore, the White House coordinator
for arms control and WMD terrorism. Samore said the United States has
"reached a level in our forces where further reductions will raise
questions about whether we retain the triad or whether we go to a
system that only is a dyad."[
5]
The triad currently includes intercontinental ballistic missiles
(ICBMs), sea-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs), and long-range
(heavy) bombers.
Shortly before stepping down from his position as chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen offered a similar assessment.
"At some point in time, that triad becomes very, very expensive... [A]t
some point in time, in the future, certainly I think a decision will
have to be made in terms of whether we keep the triad or drop it down
to a dyad," he said. [
6]
The Bureaucratic Labyrinth
The targeting review began this summer with Obama ordering the
Department of Defense to develop options for reducing the number and
role of nuclear weapons. It will end with publication of an updated or a
new strategic nuclear war plan. Between those two points lie 12 to 18
months of working groups, studies, simulations, and the creation of
guidance documents that culminate in the war plan itself.[
7]
Along the way, scores of officials from the military services,
federal agencies, and defense contractors will pore over existing
guidance, planning documents, and war plans to determine Obama's
intentions and how they might affect the posture. Emerging from this
initial review process will be a series of options that that will be
provided to Obama. He will either choose one or ask for modifications
and revisions. Eventually, there will be a presidential policy
directive (PPD) that describes his priorities on what the new nuclear
weapons employment policy is.
That is only the beginning of the process. From the time the new PPD
leaves Obamaฮรรs desk, scores of civilian and military officials will
begin to "translate" the guidance by adding their own interpretation of
the president's words that may alter or even undermine his intentions.
This is the fate of almost any policy generated from top levels of
the executive branch. Former STRATCOM Commander Admiral James Ellis
recalls that "[the] president's direction to me was less than two
pages; the Joint Staff's explanation of what the president really meant
to say was twenty-six pages."[
8]
In the words of Admiral James Miller, who was deputy director of the
Joint Strategic Target Planning Staff under President Richard Nixon,
"It is in the implementation that the true strategy evolves, regardless
of what is generated in the political and policy-meeting rooms of any
Administration."[
9]
Guidance for the Employment of the Force. The first step in
implementing the PPD will be preparation of the Guidance for the
Employment of the Force (GEF), a document created by the Office of the
Secretary of Defense. The current GEF dates from 2008 and is a
combination of the previous Nuclear Weapons Employment Policy and
several other guidance documents. The GEF contains a list of specific
strike options and targeting objectives against specific adversaries
based on the presidential guidance. The options include Emergency
Response Options, Selective Attack Options, Basic Attack Options, and
Directed/Adaptive Planning Capability options. They range in size from
employment of hundreds of nuclear warheads in a single strike against a
broad section of an adversary's targets to the use of a few warheads
against a few targets in a limited strike.
Joint Strategic Capabilities Plan. The second step is
formulation of the Joint Strategic Capabilities Plan (Nuclear
Supplement), or JSCP-N, which is produced by the Joint Staff and is
based on the GEF and presidential guidance. The JSCP-N directs and
initiates the deliberate joint operations planning process for
development of operational plans by assigning planning tasks and
nuclear strike forces to the combatant commanders tasked with nuclear
operations.[
10]
Command Guidance. The third step is the Command Guidance
issued by the commander of STRATCOM. Based on the PPD, GEF, and JSCP-N,
the Command Guidance instructs the Joint Functional Component Command
for Global Strike (JFCC-GS) at STRATCOM how to modify the strategic
nuclear war plan so it meets the new guidance. The JFCC-GS, formerly
known as the Joint Strategic Target Planning Staff, is the Component
Command at STRATCOM that designs, maintains, and, if so ordered by the
president and the STRATCOM commander, executes the strategic war plan.
OPLAN 8010-08 (formerly SIOP). The fourth step is the
production of the strategic war plan itself and its promulgation to the
military services that maintain the nuclear forces for use by
STRATCOM. The current plan is known as "Operations Plan (OPLAN) 8010-08
(Change 1) Strategic Deterrence and Global Strike." As noted above,
the war plan was known as the SIOP during the Cold War. OPLAN 8010-08
(Change 1) went into effect on February 1, 2009, and remains the
current plan.[
11]
Options for Change
Each U.S. administration reviews the four aspects of nuclear policy
(declaratory policy, acquisition, deployment, and employment). The Obama
administration's review has the potential to be significant because
it occurs at a point in the nuclear arms reduction process where changes
begin to go beyond simply trimming Cold War force levels to requiring
more-fundamental decisions about the nuclear force structure and
mission in order to carry out the president's ambitious agenda.
The Prague speech declaration that the administration intends to "put
an end to Cold War thinking" by "reduc[ing] the role of nuclear
weapons in our national security strategy" is a rather high bar for the
targeting review process to understand and implement. Although Obama
did not specify what he meant by "Cold War thinking," the use of the
term raises the question of exactly how the administration can reduce
the role of nuclear weapons in ways that put an end to such thinking.
If the administration is serious and receptive, numerous changes could
be adopted.
Reduce Target Categories. One possibility is to reduce the
number or categories of targets against which military planners are
required to plan nuclear strikes. OPLAN 8010-08 is understood to
include strike options against military forces, WMD infrastructure,
military and national leadership, and war-supporting infrastructure.
Not all categories are covered in all strike options; some may be
focused on one or a few.
One or more of these target categories could be dropped or trimmed
significantly. Nuclear planning in the 21st century will not be about
winning nuclear wars by using nuclear strikes to deplete war-fighting
assets but more about ensuring the right kind of retaliatory capability
to deter nuclear attack in the first place.
Reduce Damage Expectancy. The new guidance could lower the
requirement for how much damage must be accomplished to ensure that a
target is destroyed. As specified in weapons effects manuals and
guidance documents, "light damage" means "rubble, "moderate damage"
means "gravel," and "severe damage" means "dust."[
12]
If the guidance requires that target X be severely damaged rather
than moderately damaged, then either additional warheads will have to
be employed, or the characteristics of the weapon will have to be
changed to make it more accurate or give it a higher yield. Therefore,
how the damage criteria are set will determine a great deal about the
size and composition of the arsenal. If damage expectancy can be
lowered, then the number and capability of the weapons can be reduced.
Reduce the Mission. Another option is to reduce the missions
for nuclear weapons. Currently, nuclear weapons are used to hold at
risk all kinds of WMD facilities and systems, military forces,
leadership, and war-supporting capabilities of six adversaries. Surely,
this list can be narrowed.
The NPR Report created a new doctrine, according to Donilon, "that
reduces the role of nuclear weapons in our overall defense posture by
declaring that the fundamental role of U.S. nuclear forces is to deter
nuclear attacks" as opposed to deterring conventional, chemical, and
biological attacks.[
13]
Yet, the report also declares that "there remains a narrow range of
contingencies in which U.S. nuclear weapons may still play a role in
deterring" an attack against the United States or its allies and
partners involving conventional, chemical, or biological weapons. "The
United States is therefore not prepared at the present time to adopt a
universal policy that the 'sole purpose' of U.S. nuclear weapons is to
deter nuclear attack."[
14]
A sole-purpose mission would end nuclear planning against half of
the six adversaries in OPLAN 8010-08. The six are not identified, but
thought to be China, Iran, North Korea, Russia, Syria, and a September
11-type attacker with unconventional weapons. Ending the requirement to
plan nuclear strikes against conventional, chemical, or biological
attacks would have the additional benefit of removing the contradiction
with U.S negative security assurances, according to which the United
States has pledged not to attack or threaten with nuclear weapons
countries that are members of the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT)
and in compliance with the treaty.
To truly end Cold War thinking, the review would have to change the mission against the core adversaries, Russia and China.
Reduce the Number and Diversity of Strike Options. The
guidance review could reduce the number of strike options that planners
make available to the president. Post-Cold War nuclear war planning
has been characterized by a proliferation of strike options
precipitated by a renewed focus on proliferation of unconventional
weapons to states of concern and a fear that they may share this
technology with terrorist organizations.
The Clinton administration's PDD-60 and the Bush administration's
NSPD-14 each expanded planning against regional proliferators. "STRATCOM
is changing the nation's nuclear war plan from a single, large,
integrated plan to a family of plans applicable in a wider range of
scenarios," Ellis said in 2003.[
15]
The new plan "provides more flexible options to assure allies, and
dissuade, deter, and if necessary, defeat adversaries in a wider range
of contingencies," Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General
Richard Myers later explained.[
16]
The philosophy seems to be that more diverse threats require more
diverse options and all are offered to the president. A frequently heard
claim is that "you cannot take options away from the president," but
of course, one can. U.S. legislation and policy have done so frequently
in the past, for example by prohibiting indiscriminate attacks on
civilians and removing options to use chemical or biological weapons.
Reduce Alert Levels. During the 2008 presidential election
campaign, Obama's agenda included a pledge to work with Russia to take
ballistic missiles off "hair-trigger" alert. For the first couple of
months of 2009, the pledge was listed on the White House Web site. Once
New START negotiations with Russia got under way, however, the pledge
disappeared; the administration, as it indicated in the NPR Report,
instead decided to maintain the current readiness level of nuclear
forces. That was a complete policy reversal, although perhaps not a
final one. As Samore explained earlier this year, as part of the target
review, the White House is "expecting that options will be presented
to the president that will look at the implications of changing the
alert status and postures and what impact that would have on force size
and structure."[
17]
Predictably, some influential military and former officials have
warned against de-alerting weapons, arguing that re-alerting them in a
crisis would risk triggering escalation by causing an adversary to
conclude that a first strike was imminent. Others have argued that
nuclear forces on alert continuously pose a first-strike threat and
that U.S. nuclear strategy already includes scenarios for increasing
alert levels in a crisis and uploading thousands of reserve warheads.
The United States currently maintains an estimated 800 warheads on
high alert, mainly on ICBMs and a handful of ballistic missile
submarines, an important motivation for Russia to maintain a portion of
its strategic nuclear forces on high alert as well. It is difficult to
think of a feature of the current U.S. nuclear posture that symbolizes
Cold War thinking more dramatically than the maintenance of strategic
forces at high levels of alert. The ICBMs can be fired within minutes,
and the submarines patrol at an "operational tempo" similar to that
during the Cold War.
Short of fully de-alerting, a half step might be to remove the
requirement for the military to plan for prompt launch of nuclear
weapons, for example in a preventive attack or to limit the damage an
adversarial attack could inflict. This change would significantly
reduce the high requirement for the operational readiness of nuclear
forces. The NPR Report described efforts to lengthen the decision time
for nuclear use, a related but limited measure.
Reduce Damage Limitation Options. A classic Cold War mission
is to seek to limit the damage an adversary's WMD forces can inflict
on the United States and its allies by destroying the forces before
they can be used. Although much less emphasis is placed on this mission
today compared with the Cold War, the mission gained new life with the
Bush administration's Global Strike mission in 2003, which planned for
pre-emptive conventional and nuclear attacks against WMD targets in
states of concern.[
18]
Removing the requirement to plan for damage-limitation options would
essentially create a no-first-use policy without publicly committing to
one.
Reduce From Triad to Dyad. The statements by senior White
House and Defense Department officials that deeper cuts may require
cutting one of the legs of the triad would, if implemented, require a
major rewriting of the guidance and the strategic nuclear war plan that
is derived from it. Targets previously covered by warheads on the
amputated leg would have to be covered by warheads on the remaining two
legs, or a decision would have to be made to stop holding those
targets at risk. Moving to a dyad would require significant changes to
the strike options within the war plan and the way forces are deployed.
Most analysts agree that the bombers are the most likely leg to be
cut. The land-based and sea-based ballistic missile legs already carry
most of the day-to-day deterrence mission, with bombers serving as a
backup. Yet, a missile-only posture would retain the most offensive and
potentially destabilizing characteristics of the arsenal and give up
the bomber's capability to signal in a crisis or be recalled after a
strike has been launched. If the goal is to move to deep cuts and
reduce the role of nuclear weapons, then one of the ballistic missile
legs will have to be cut.
Reduce Counterforce Planning. Another option is to reduce or
end the counterforce mission of nuclear weapons. Counterforce is
associated with the ability to attack military and leadership targets,
with forces kept capable of launching on warning or pre-empting through
high levels of alert.[
19]
Historically, a half-dozen or so factors formed a counterforce
targeting strategy, beginning in the early 1960s and continuing in the
decades that followed. The most important factor was the geopolitical
context of the Cold War with sophisticated intelligence capabilities
and ever more accurate ballistic missiles. The identification of
countless new targets in the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact generated
requirements for new warheads to cover them. Soviet efforts to harden
facilities to withstand nuclear blasts further intensified the race for
additional capabilities to sharpen U.S. nuclear counterforce
capabilities.
The current central nuclear posture of the United States is widely
understood to be primarily one of a counterforce attack with
force-on-force planning for nuclear weapons used to destroy an
adversary's nuclear weapons and other strategic assets. Because some of
the targets are near or within population centers, however,
countervalue targeting (sometime called "city-busting") is an
unintended consequence. In fact, even pure counterforce attacks are
likely to kill millions of civilians.
The degree to which the requirements that resulted in nuclear
counterforce are still operative will partially determine whether
counterforce can be reduced or abandoned and replaced with something
else. Maintaining a credible deterrent is frequently described as
threatening with highly reliable nuclear forces the targets an
adversary values most. However, things are never simple or static when
it comes to deterrence; and few terms in discussions of nuclear
weaponry are more misused, misunderstood, or distorted than
"deterrence." Indeed, as the Cold War vividly demonstrated, the concept
of deterrence has been used to justify excessive nuclear forces levels
and dangerous strategies.
Deterrence can be limited and simple or, as it turned out, expansive
and complex. Over the decades, the concept went through many
transmogrifications, ending up late in President Jimmy Carter's
administration and then Reagan's to mean that the Soviet Union could
only be deterred if it knew that the United States could fight and
prevail in a nuclear war. Central to that goal was that the Soviet
leadership and its instruments of political control and military power
be in the crosshairs and be declared vulnerable.
Today's nuclear capabilities and the thrust of OPLAN 8010-08 are the
direct descendants of this Cold War counterforce race. "Counterforce
is preemptive, or offensively reactive,"STRATCOM concluded in a
document prepared for the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 2002. "Every
[nuclear, biological, or chemical] weapon that is destroyed before it
is used... is one less we must intercept... or absorb... and mitigate."[
20]
To end Cold War thinking, the Obama administration's targeting review
must re-examine the need for nuclear counterforce to reduce the role
of nuclear weapons.
Conclusion
Obama has an important opportunity to update the nuclear policy
guidance for the U.S. nuclear force structure and employment policy in
ways that would break from obsolete past practices, make future
reductions possible, reduce the role of nuclear weapons, and improve
U.S. and global security.
The current U.S. nuclear arsenal and the force structure planned
under New START are far larger than required to deter a nuclear attack
from Russia or any other nuclear-armed adversary on the United States
and its allies. The oversized arsenal reflects the fact that U.S.
military planners base targeting calculations on Cold War assumptions,
including that U.S. forces must be able to destroy enemy nuclear forces
and a wide range of other "strategic" assets in order to be credible.
Consequently, previous nuclear policy reviews have only trimmed U.S.
nuclear forces.
The guidance review should result in a smaller set of new strike
options based on what is sufficient to deter the United States'
potential nuclear-armed adversaries from initiating a nuclear attack on
the United States, its allies, or its partners. The strike options
should be based on a new approach to nuclear planning that significantly
scales back the number and types of targets, the damage expectancy,
the counterforce focus and force-on-force planning, and the operational
readiness of the forces. This approach would significantly reduce the
number of targets and missions and facilitate further reductions in the
number of nuclear warheads and delivery platforms, while maintaining a
secure and sufficiently credible nuclear deterrent.
Such steps would make the U.S. nuclear posture more consistent with
the Obama administration's policy of significantly reducing the number
and role of nuclear weapons and strengthening nonproliferation. An
added benefit would be to facilitate significant budgetary savings in
the years ahead by reducing the costs associated with current,
multibillion-dollar plans to modernize not only each leg of the U.S.
nuclear triad, but also nonstrategic nuclear capabilities, nuclear
warheads, and the nuclear production complex. Such reductions will, in
turn, also help convince Russia that it is in its security and
financial interests to pursue further, parallel reductions in its
equally bloated nuclear forces.
ACT
Hans M. Kristensen is director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, where
Robert S. Norris is a senior fellow for nuclear policy.
ENDNOTES
1. Office of the Press Secretary, The White House, "Remarks by President Barack Obama," April 5, 2009,
www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Remarks-By-President-Barack-Obama-In-Prague-As-Delivered.
2. Tom Donilon, "The Prague Agenda: The Road
Ahead" (remarks at the Carnegie International Nuclear Policy
Conference, March 29, 2011,
http://geneva.usmission.gov/2011/03/31/donilon-future-nuclear-policy/).
3. House Committee on Armed Services, Subcommittee on Strategic Forces,
The Status of United States Strategic Forces, 112th Cong., 1st sess., 2011, p. 121,
www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CHRG-112hhrg65112/pdf/CHRG-112hhrg65112.pdf (answers of Gen. Robert Kehler, Commander, U.S. Strategic Command, to questions submitted by Rep. Michael Turner).
4. Gen. Robert Kehler, Testimony before the
Senate Armed Services Committee, Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, in
review of the defense authorization request for fiscal year 2012 and
the Future Years Defense Program, June 3, 2011, p. 14,
http://armed-services.senate.gov/Transcripts/2011/06%20June/11-46%20-%206-3-11.pdf.
5. "Pursuing the Prague Agenda: An Interview With White House Coordinator Gary Samore,"
Arms Control Today, May 2011.
6. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, "Address by Admiral Mike Mullen," September 20, 2011,
http://carnegieendowment.org/files/92011_transcript_Mullen.pdf.
7. For a chronology of documents and updates
of U.S. nuclear weapons guidance during the Bush administration, see
Hans M. Kristensen, "U.S. Nuclear Weapons Guidance,"Nuclear Information
Project, January 3, 2008,
www.nukestrat.com/us/guidance.htm.
8. U.S. Strategic Command, "Commander U.S.
Strategic Command End of Tour Interview for Admiral James O. Ellis,
Jr.," June 18, 2004 (last updated January 17, 2006), p. 5 (copy on file
with author).
9. Gerald E. Miller, "Beres and Others Have No Access to the 'True Strategy,'"
Center Magazine,
November/December 1982. Miller was deputy director of the Joint
Strategic Target Planning Staff from the summer of 1973 to September
1974.
10. For a description of the declassified
fiscal year 1996 JSCP-N, see Hans M. Kristensen, "The Joint Strategic
Capabilities Plan (JSCP) Nuclear Supplement," Nuclear Information
Project, June 16, 2005,
www.nukestrat.com/us/jcs/jscp.htm.
11. For a review of the post-Cold War
evolution of the strategic nuclear war plan, see Hans M. Kristensen,
"Obama and the Nuclear War Plan,"
Federation of American Scientists Issue Brief, February 2010,
www.fas.org/programs/ssp/nukes/publications1/WarPlanIssueBrief2010.pdf.
For a detailed description of U.S. nuclear targeting, see Matthew
McKinzie et al., "The U.S. Nuclear War Plan: A Time for Change,"
Natural Resources Defense Council, June 2001,
www.nrdc.org/nuclear/warplan/index.asp.
12. Jerry Miller,
Stockpile: The Story Behind 10,000 Strategic Nuclear Weapons
(Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2010), pp. 72-84. For a glossary of
nuclear planning terminology and definitions, see William M. Arkin and
Hans M. Kristensen, "The Post Cold War SIOP and Nuclear Warfare
Planning: A Glossary, Abbreviations, and Acronyms," January 1999,
www.nukestrat.com/pubs/SIOP%20Glossary%201999.pdf.
13. Donilon, "Prague Agenda."
14. U.S. Department of Defense, "Nuclear Posture Review Report," April 2010, p. 16.
15. J. O. Ellis, Memorandum to the
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, "USSTRATCOM Request to Change
the Name of the Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP) to Operations
Plan 8044," January 3, 2003,
http://www.fas.org/blog/ssp/united_states/revision03-ellis.pdf.
16. Gen. Richard B. Myers, "Written Posture Statement to SAC-D," Washington, DC, April 27, 2005.
17. "Pursuing the Prague Agenda."
18. For a chronology of the Prompt Global
Strike mission, see Hans M. Kristensen, "Global Strike: A Chronology of
the Pentagon'S New Offensive Strike Plan," Federation of American
Scientists, March 15, 2006,
www.nukestrat.com/pubs/GlobalStrikeReport.pdf.
19. For a perceptive analysis of the formation of counterforce and the growth of the strategic arsenal, see Miller,
Stockpile.
20. U.S. Department of Defense,
Counterproliferation Operational Architecture, prepared by USSTRATCOM and U.S. Special Operations Command, April 26, 2002, pp. 3, 6, 9 (copy on file with author).
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