MILITARY: Just How Many Bombs Needed?

The United States ushered in the Atomic Age 54 years ago when we used nuclear weapons to destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The nuclear arms race that followed has cost the U.S. more than $5.5 trillion (in 1999 dollars). Although we continue to spend $35 billion a year to maintain an enormous nuclear arsenal, these weapons have not been used in any war by anybody since the end of World War II.

Let’s face it: These weapons have no tactical military value. Their only value is as a deterrent.

But how many nuclear weapons are necessary to be an effective deterrent? Our ability to answer this question is limited, but history supplies some clues.

There is evidence to indicate that the Soviets planned to use nuclear weapons against China in their border wars in the late 1960s. Why didn’t they? An apocryphal story has it that they were afraid that China--which was a rudimentary nuclear power at the time with only a handful of weapons and no significant delivery systems--might be able to deliver a single nuclear weapon to Moscow. The Soviets were unwilling to sacrifice Moscow for China. If this story is true, it took only one nuclear weapon to serve as a deterrent.

A rule of thumb of defense planners is that we should have enough weapons that can survive a nuclear attack that can inflict unacceptable damage on our attacker. But how many are necessary to do that?

Most people would probably agree that one nuclear weapon is enough. Even the most hawkish among us would admit that a few dozen warheads would be able to decimate any threatening nation. Yet the U.S. maintains about 7,500 of these impractical weapons.

The U.S. and Russia have already negotiated treaties that, when ratified by both sides, will reduce these weapons to 3,600 warheads. We have agreed to negotiate even further reductions, probably to 1,000 warheads.

The eventual goal should be no nuclear weapons for any nations. Many leaders have endorsed with this goal, including President Reagan, who was responsible for the first arms control agreement that actually eliminated an entire class of nuclear weapons.

In the meantime, reducing our nuclear warheads to 1,000 right now rather than waiting for the tedious arms control process to be completed could save about half the cost of maintaining these weapons. And placing most of these 1,000 warheads on our survivable, highly mobile missile submarines would ensure deterrence against any possible aggressor at a far lower cost.