US ‘ill-prepared’ for nuclear challenge from China and Russia, says report

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A new report from a congressional authorization committee says the United States must expand or reorganize its nuclear arsenal to deal with the “existential challenge” posed by China’s growing nuclear threat and existing risks from Russia.

The bipartisan Congressional Commission on the U.S. Strategic Posture, which reviews U.S. strategic policy, warned that Washington is “ill-prepared” to deal with the challenges posed by having two equal nuclear rivals for the first time.

“Even during the darkest days of the Cold War, the new global environment was fundamentally different from anything experienced in the past,” the panel warned in its report.

The report stated: “The United States is about to face not one, but two nuclear opponents. Each opponent has the ambition to change the international status quo and can use force if necessary.”

The 10-member committee said in a 160-page report after more than 100 briefings by security and intelligence officials that the United States must quickly reorganize its nuclear forces to deal with the growing threat.

“A U.S. defense strategy to counter dual-nuclear threats requires the United States to have a larger, differently composed, or both nuclear force,” the panel said, adding that the U.S. “lacks a comprehensive strategy to counter imminent threats.” “Two cores are equal threat environments.”

The growing sense of vigilance is largely triggered by the rapid expansion of China’s nuclear arsenal, which the report says is “unseen in scale and speed since the U.S.-Soviet nuclear arms race in the late 1980s.”

The Pentagon said last year that China has 400 nuclear warheads and expects to expand its stockpile to 1,500 by the middle of the next decade. If the prediction comes true, Beijing will have as many warheads as the United States and Russia have deployed under the terms of the New Start arms control treaty.

The committee is led by former top nuclear official Madeleine Creedon and retired Sen. Jon Kyl. The commission was created by Congress in 2022 to reexamine U.S. nuclear policy and force structure, with former Defense Secretary William Perry leading the first such commission in more than a decade.

The panel said existing plans to modernize the U.S. nuclear arsenal were “necessary but not sufficient” to deal with the growing threat and that Washington needed to “take additional steps and plans.”

Among dozens of recommendations, the report states that the United States must address the growing number of nuclear-related targets in China. Washington must also consider the fact that Beijing may deploy large-scale long-range missiles that threaten U.S. domestic nuclear weapons.

The panel said the United States should increase the number of B-21 strategic bombers it plans to produce and do the same with nuclear-armed air-launched cruise missiles. It also calls for an increase in planned production of Columbia-class nuclear-armed ballistic missile submarines.

In a recommendation that could stoke debate in Asia, the committee said the United States must address the need to deploy theater nuclear forces in the Asia-Pacific region – forces that would be used in regional conflicts.

Commissioners called on the United States to invest more in missile defense, including systems that can “deter and defeat coercive attacks by Russia and China.”

They also urged the U.S. government to study the feasibility of developing systems to counter hypersonic missile attacks, underscoring growing concerns about China since it tested a highly advanced hypersonic missile orbiting the Earth in 2021.

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