美国空军杂志网站3月2日报道

美军参联会副主席约翰·海顿在空军协会视频会议上称，21世纪的战略攻击概念完全不同于20世纪，已经不仅仅定义为核打击，而是对关键目标的网络、化学、生物、太空攻击或高超声速常规攻击，这也会给美国带来战略问题。美国国防战略明确，对这种给国家造成影响的非核攻击，美国一定会选择合适的时机、地点和作战域进行报复。他认为，“三位一体”核力量是不可或缺的，但在强国时代的今天，这样的核力量架构只是最小的基本威慑能力，新的战略威慑应扩展包括新型海上发射巡航导弹，应该继续推进战术核弹头发展计划，并少量部署潜射低当量核弹头，同时导弹防御系统也是威慑的重要组成部分。美空军全球打击司令部司令蒂莫西·雷提出，应该把指挥、控制、通信系统纳入战略威慑体系框架，并加以现代化发展，建设新的“三位一体+”战略威慑体系。

New Threats Demand Nuclear Modernization

March 2, 2021 | By John A. Tirpak  AIR FORCE MAGAZINE

The B-21 is progressing to roll out and first flight, as the Air Force wrestles with how many to buy. Photo illustration by Mike Tuskamoto/staff, using an image by Airman 1st Class Parker McCauley.

Nuclear modernization is an imperative, because the strategic environment has evolved dramatically since the last century, with more and different kinds of existential threats, senior U.S. military  leaders said at AFA’s virtual Aerospace Warfare Symposium.

“Deterrence in the 21st century is wholly different than it was in the 20th century,” Gen. John E. Hyten, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, explained in a panel discussion on strategic modernization. The primary reason, he said, is that “strategic attack can no longer just be defined as nuclear attack,” but could be a cyber, chemical, biological, space, or conventional attack—think hypersonic—used against a crucial target that could “cause strategic problems for the United States,” Hyten said. The National Defense Strategy states that such non-nuclear but nation-debilitating attacks may be answered “at a time, place, and [in] a domain of our choosing,” he added.

Strategic deterrence must now be viewed in the context of that posture, taking missile defenses into account as well, he added.

“It’s going to be a difficult problem,” Hyten observed, because “we’ve not fully thought it through.” The academic community which came up with the old theory of deterrence “really has not embraced this new construct,” nor has it worked through its ramifications, Hyten said.

He predicted the Biden administration’s nuclear posture review will examine the new strategic landscape in the context he laid out. But “without the backstop of the nuclear triad, it basically is all impossible” to deter an adversary with strategic capabilities, “because it starts falling apart right from the beginning.”

Modernizing the U.S. strategic deterrent is going to be expensive, Hyten allowed, but “you have to start from the threat, and the threat is significant, … and modernizing.”

“Our nuclear modernization program … is late to need,” Hyten asserted. The nucle triad of bombers, ICBMs, and submarine-launched ballistic missiles “is the minimum essential capability for deterrence in the great power world we live in today,” he said. Without “even one,” it “becomes very, very difficult for [U.S. Strategic Command] and the nation to deter our adversaries.”

The new U.S. strategic capabilities in development are the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent, the ICBM succeeding the 50-year-old Minuteman III; the Columbia missile submarine, replacing the Trident; the B-21 bomber, replacing both the B-1 and B-2; and the Long-Range Stand Off missile, replacing the 40-year-old Air Launched cruise Missile.

However, the portfolio needs to be expanded to broaden deterrence beyond that, Hyten argued, with a new sea-launched cruise missile and “a low-yield nuclear weapon that will deploy in small numbers on our submarines,” to counter the “thousands low-yield … and tactical nuclear weapons that Russia is building and deploying,” which are not covered under New START.

“We can’t have interruptions in the program,” Hyten insisted, “because we’re starting late and … they have to be delivered on time.”

The old deterrence theories also don’t cover the possibility of nuclear-armed adversaries “cooperating with each other,” said Lt. Gen. Thomas A. Bussiere, deputy commander of U.S. Strategic Command at vAWS.

Adversaries are relying more on their nuclear arsenals for influence and coercion, and “a variety of options for … limited use.” This “requires us to rethink our approach,” Bussiere said.

The “continuum of conflict” potentially leading to the use of nuclear weapons—“from competition to crisis, to armed conflict, to limited nuclear use to full nuclear exchange” is becoming “coupled and non-linear,” he said.

Eliminating part of the traid, he believes, “would embolden our adversaries to believe they could actually employ nuclear weapons against us.”

Bussiere also noted that while the idea is to keep Minuteman ready until GBSD replaces it, that may not work. The system might suddenly become unsustainable, and “it’s really a choice of replacing them or losing them,” he said.

In addition to the delivery vehicles, the U.S. also needs to modernize its structure to command and control the deterrent, Air Force Global Strike Command chief Gen. Timothy M. Ray said.

Command and control is “the foundational piece’ of a deterrent that can be wielded effectively, and communications is “more contested” than ever before, so it must be “much more relevant and resilient,” he said. Ray called the overarching scheme “Triad Plus” to incorporate the C3 element.

声明：本平台发布部分内容来自公开资料或者网络，版权归原作者所有，转载的目的在于传递信息及用于网络分享，不代表本平台赞同其观点，如涉版权问题，请与我们联系，我们第一时间处理。