Nice way to fool the world with these type of analyses.
Fact is that USA have the best military force in the world, period. Also, US generals are not incompetent; politics actually determine "rules of engagement" for a war and politics are more about
pursuit of interests then actual gains on the ground. Give US military the freedom to make its own decisions and watch the results.
What a load of crap.
USA currently have the most advanced and well-prepared nuclear force in the world. While USA have significantly reduced the quantity of its nuclear assets after COLD WAR along with Russia, USA continues to maintain a large nuclear force and is improving it with passage of time with relatively superior delivery systems and nuclear weapon designs.
I suggest people to read this comprehensive article:
The Rise of U.S. Nuclear Primacy | Foreign Affairs
Since the Cold War's end, the U.S. nuclear arsenal has significantly improved. The United States has replaced the ballistic missiles on its submarines with the substantially more accurate Trident II D-5 missiles, many of which carry new, larger-yield warheads. The U.S. Navy has shifted a greater proportion of its SSBNs to the Pacific so that they can patrol near the Chinese coast or in the blind spot of Russia's early warning radar network. The U.S. Air Force has finished equipping its B-52 bombers with nuclear-armed cruise missiles, which are probably invisible to Russian and Chinese air-defense radar. And the air force has also enhanced the avionics on its B-2 stealth bombers to permit them to fly at extremely low altitudes in order to avoid even the most sophisticated radar. Finally, although the air force finished dismantling its highly lethal MX missiles in 2005 to comply with arms control agreements, it is significantly improving its remaining ICBMs by installing the MX's high-yield warheads and advanced reentry vehicles on Minuteman ICBMs, and it has upgraded the Minuteman's guidance systems to match the MX's accuracy.
IMBALANCE OF TERROR
Even as the United States' nuclear forces have grown stronger since the end of the Cold War, Russia's strategic nuclear arsenal has sharply deteriorated. Russia has 39 percent fewer long-range bombers, 58 percent fewer ICBMs, and 80 percent fewer SSBNs than the Soviet Union fielded during its last days. The true extent of the Russian arsenal's decay, however, is much greater than these cuts suggest. What nuclear forces Russia retains are hardly ready for use. Russia's strategic bombers, now located at only two bases and thus vulnerable to a surprise attack, rarely conduct training exercises, and their warheads are stored off-base. Over 80 percent of Russia's silo-based ICBMs have exceeded their original service lives, and plans to replace them with new missiles have been stymied by failed tests and low rates of production. Russia's mobile ICBMs rarely patrol, and although they could fire their missiles from inside their bases if given sufficient warning of an attack, it appears unlikely that they would have the time to do so.
The third leg of Russia's nuclear triad has weakened the most. Since 2000, Russia's SSBNs have conducted approximately two patrols per year, down from 60 in 1990. (By contrast, the U.S. SSBN patrol rate today is about 40 per year.) Most of the time, all nine of Russia's ballistic missile submarines are sitting in port, where they make easy targets. Moreover, submarines require well-trained crews to be effective. Operating a ballistic missile submarine -- and silently coordinating its operations with surface ships and attack submarines to evade an enemy's forces -- is not simple. Without frequent patrols, the skills of Russian submariners, like the submarines themselves, are decaying. Revealingly, a 2004 test (attended by President Vladimir Putin) of several submarine-launched ballistic missiles was a total fiasco: all either failed to launch or veered off course. The fact that there were similar failures in the summer and fall of 2005 completes this unflattering picture of Russia's nuclear forces.
Compounding these problems, Russia's early warning system is a mess. Neither Soviet nor Russian satellites have ever been capable of reliably detecting missiles launched from U.S. submarines. (In a recent public statement, a top Russian general described his country's early warning satellite constellation as "hopelessly outdated.") Russian commanders instead rely on ground-based radar systems to detect incoming warheads from submarine-launched missiles. But the radar network has a gaping hole in its coverage that lies to the east of the country, toward the Pacific Ocean. If U.S. submarines were to fire missiles from areas in the Pacific, Russian leaders probably would not know of the attack until the warheads detonated. Russia's radar coverage of some areas in the North Atlantic is also spotty, providing only a few minutes of warning before the impact of submarine-launched warheads.
Moscow could try to reduce its vulnerability by finding the money to keep its submarines and mobile missiles dispersed. But that would be only a short-term fix. Russia has already extended the service life of its aging mobile ICBMs, something that it cannot do indefinitely, and its efforts to deploy new strategic weapons continue to flounder. The Russian navy's plan to launch a new class of ballistic missile submarines has fallen far behind schedule. It is now highly likely that not a single new submarine will be operational before 2008, and it is likely that none will be deployed until later.
Even as Russia's nuclear forces deteriorate, the United States is improving its ability to track submarines and mobile missiles, further eroding Russian military leaders' confidence in Russia's nuclear deterrent. (As early as 1998, these leaders publicly expressed doubts about the ability of Russia's ballistic missile submarines to evade U.S. detection.) Moreover, Moscow has announced plans to reduce its land-based ICBM force by another 35 percent by 2010; outside experts predict that the actual cuts will slice 50 to 75 percent off the current force, possibly leaving Russia with as few as 150 ICBMs by the end of the decade, down from its 1990 level of almost 1,300 missiles. The more Russia's nuclear arsenal shrinks, the easier it will become for the United States to carry out a first strike.
To determine how much the nuclear balance has changed since the Cold War, we ran a computer model of a hypothetical U.S. attack on Russia's nuclear arsenal using the standard unclassified formulas that defense analysts have used for decades. We assigned U.S. nuclear warheads to Russian targets on the basis of two criteria: the most accurate weapons were aimed at the hardest targets, and the fastest-arriving weapons at the Russian forces that can react most quickly. Because Russia is essentially blind to a submarine attack from the Pacific and would have great difficulty detecting the approach of low-flying stealthy nuclear-armed cruise missiles, we targeted each Russian weapon system with at least one submarine-based warhead or cruise missile. An attack organized in this manner would give Russian leaders virtually no warning.
This simple plan is presumably less effective than Washington's actual strategy, which the U.S. government has spent decades perfecting. The real U.S. war plan may call for first targeting Russia's command and control, sabotaging Russia's radar stations, or taking other preemptive measures -- all of which would make the actual U.S. force far more lethal than our model assumes.
According to our model, such a simplified surprise attack would have a good chance of destroying every Russian bomber base, submarine, and ICBM. [See Footnote #1] This finding is not based on best-case assumptions or an unrealistic scenario in which U.S. missiles perform perfectly and the warheads hit their targets without fail. Rather, we used standard assumptions to estimate the likely inaccuracy and unreliability of U.S. weapons systems. Moreover, our model indicates that all of Russia's strategic nuclear arsenal would still be destroyed even if U.S. weapons were 20 percent less accurate than we assumed, or if U.S. weapons were only 70 percent reliable, or if Russian ICBM silos were 50 percent "harder" (more reinforced, and hence more resistant to attack) than we expected. (Of course, the unclassified estimates we used may understate the capabilities of U.S. forces, making an attack even more likely to succeed.)
To be clear, this does not mean that a first strike by the United States would be guaranteed to work in reality; such an attack would entail many uncertainties. Nor, of course, does it mean that such a first strike is likely. But what our analysis suggests is profound: Russia's leaders can no longer count on a survivable nuclear deterrent. And unless they reverse course rapidly, Russia's vulnerability will only increase over time.
China's nuclear arsenal is even more vulnerable to a U.S. attack. A U.S. first strike could succeed whether it was launched as a surprise or in the midst of a crisis during a Chinese alert. China has a limited strategic nuclear arsenal. The People's Liberation Army currently possesses no modern SSBNs or long-range bombers. Its naval arm used to have two ballistic missile submarines, but one sank, and the other, which had such poor capabilities that it never left Chinese waters, is no longer operational. China's medium-range bomber force is similarly unimpressive: the bombers are obsolete and vulnerable to attack. According to unclassified U.S. government assessments, China's entire intercontinental nuclear arsenal consists of 18 stationary single-warhead ICBMs. These are not ready to launch on warning: their warheads are kept in storage and the missiles themselves are unfueled. (China's ICBMs use liquid fuel, which corrodes the missiles after 24 hours. Fueling them is estimated to take two hours.) The lack of an advanced early warning system adds to the vulnerability of the ICBMs. It appears that China would have no warning at all of a U.S. submarine-launched missile attack or a strike using hundreds of stealthy nuclear-armed cruise missiles.
Many sources claim that China is attempting to reduce the vulnerability of its ICBMs by building decoy silos. But decoys cannot provide a firm basis for deterrence. It would take close to a thousand fake silos to make a U.S. first strike on China as difficult as an attack on Russia, and no available information on China's nuclear forces suggests the existence of massive fields of decoys. And even if China built them, its commanders would always wonder whether U.S. sensors could distinguish real silos from fake ones.
Despite much talk about China's military modernization, the odds that Beijing will acquire a survivable nuclear deterrent in the next decade are slim. China's modernization efforts have focused on conventional forces, and the country's progress on nuclear modernization has accordingly been slow. Since the mid-1980s, China has been trying to develop a new missile for its future ballistic missile submarine as well as mobile ICBMs (the DF-31 and longer-range DF-31A) to replace its current ICBM force. The U.S. Defense Department predicts that China may deploy DF-31s in a few years, although the forecast should be treated skeptically: U.S. intelligence has been announcing the missile's imminent deployment for decades.
Even when they are eventually fielded, the DF-31s are unlikely to significantly reduce China's vulnerability. The missiles' limited range, estimated to be only 8,000 kilometers (4,970 miles), greatly restricts the area in which they can be hidden, reducing the difficulty of searching for them. The DF-31s could hit the contiguous United States only if they were deployed in China's far northeastern corner, principally in Heilongjiang Province, near the Russian-North Korean border. But Heilongjiang is mountainous, and so the missiles might be deployable only along a few hundred kilometers of good road or in a small plain in the center of the province. Such restrictions increase the missiles' vulnerability and raise questions about whether they are even intended to target the U.S. homeland or whether they will be aimed at targets in Russia and Asia.
Given the history of China's slow-motion nuclear modernization, it is doubtful that a Chinese second-strike force will materialize anytime soon. The United States has a first-strike capability against China today and should be able to maintain it for a decade or more.
Similar revelation from another article:
The Real Danger in Nuclear Modernization | The Diplomat
Russia and China are modernizing their nuclear arsenals and the U.S. is not. The line is so dramatic and so alarming that commentators have found it useful in justifying all sorts of expansions of U.S. nuclear policy, including more extensive modernization plans, new nuclear weapons, and assertive revisions of nuclear strategy. If these steps are not taken, the most powerful country in the world could find itself subject to coercion, its allies bullied, falling behind its adversaries.
This thinking is mistaken on three counts. First, the United States is modernizing its nuclear forces. Second, the U.S. nuclear triad is markedly superior to the Chinese and Russian arsenals. Most importantly, the real danger to strategic stability may not be the U.S. falling behind the modernization of other countries but in racing aggressively ahead.
The United States has not taken an “acquisition holiday” in its nuclear arsenal, as Maj. Gen. Garret Harencak recently asserted. This thought relies on a misreading of the natural nuclear modernization cycles of the major nuclear powers: While many of Russia’s ageing systems are reaching the ends of their service lives in this decade, many of the systems that make up the U.S. arsenal are not due to retire until the 2020s.
Rather than “sit back and simply maintain our existing aging nuclear forces,” as Congressman Michael Turnercharged, the United States is gearing up a comprehensive modernization program that in many ways exceeds the requirements of time and deterrence. In some areas (including the nation’s strategic bombers and its tactical bombs) the plans would replace existing systems before the older ones need to be retired. In others (like intercontinental ballistic missiles) the services are considering significant upgrades to existing systems. Moreover, the U.S. arsenal has been undergoing continual modernization as necessary, including major upgrades to strategic bombers and recent life extensions of the warheads atop ballistic missiles launched from both land and sea.
The U.S. nuclear arsenal is a robust, redundant triad. It consists of highly capable platforms at each leg of the triad and relatively few nonstrategic systems. The upcoming modernization plans will build on extensive experience in designing, constructing, and operating sophisticated stealth platforms.
In contrast to the United States, Russian strategic forces are now in the middle of their modernization cycle. Though the Kremlin is modernizing aging systems in each leg of their triad, the Russian arsenal will remain markedly less capable than its American counterpart for the foreseeable future.
Even given extensive modernization, a number of question marks remain. One is the trend toward placing more warheads on each launcher. Intended to counteract the U.S. national missile defense system, the result is a level of vulnerability the United States would never accept in its arsenal because each launcher now presents a more inviting target. Furthermore, Russia is retaining many tactical systems that are strategically useless, including torpedoes, depth charges, and short-range ground-launched missiles that could never reach the United States. Lastly, Russia’s ability to fund its modernization program is dubious, given that oil now stands at half the price required to balance the Russian budget. In this environment, and with other military priorities pressing, it will be a major sacrifice for Putin to push ahead with building the nation’s first stealth bomber.
At sea, Russia is building eight new Borei submarines to make up for weaknesses in the current fleet. For example, Hans Kristensen has found that in 2012 the U.S. submarine fleet conducted 28 lengthy deterrent patrols to points near to its adversaries’ coasts, while Russia sailed on only five patrols in areas near its own coastal regions, barely enough to keep one submarine at sea at any given time. Yet by the time Russia has rolled out its fleet of eight Boreis, the United States expects to be launching the first of its 12 next-generation submarines. While Russia has flirted with abandoning continuous-at-sea deterrence, the United States plans to replicate a very strict requirement for its own larger fleet of submarines.
China
Since becoming a nuclear power, China has consistently demonstrated restraint in its nuclear force structure and American intelligence estimates have consistently overestimated Chinese capabilities. It is only in the last ten years that China has gained a plausible second-strike capability against the continental United States and only in the last two years that it has developed a triad of nuclear delivery systems by commissioning its first functional missile submarines. Far from a threat to U.S. nuclear supremacy, China’s gradual modernization is only now approaching a modern nuclear arsenal.
Overall, the capabilities of Chinese nuclear forces are hardly alarming: the U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence says the new Jin-class ballistic missile submarines are easier to detect than 1970s-era Soviet submarines; the newest DF-31A ICBMs may not have the range to strike Washington; and China’s new air-launched cruise missile is to be carried by Xian H-6 bombers, which were derived from 1950s-era Soviet Badgers that Russia retired from service in 1993.
There is little evidence that Russia and China are looking to exceed the American advantage in these areas, or that they could if they wanted to. Instead, many of the modernization programs in these countries are the predictable result of previous American decisions. The new Russian Sarmat heavy ICBM, the shift toward multiple warheads, and the Chinese submarine programs are expected reactions to U.S. deployment of ballistic missile defense systems. Meanwhile, the trend in both countries toward mobile missiles is a response to American conventional superiority and military doctrines that seek to defeat sophisticated defenses and gain access to defended targets. U.S. strategists put these policies in place with full knowledge that they would provoke reactions of this sort. It would be foolish to now attribute sinister motives to expected responses.
Given the stability and sophistication of the U.S. arsenal and the vulnerabilities in Russian and Chinese systems, current plans for aggressive nuclear modernization may cause more problems than they solve.
It is vitally in the American interest that nuclear weapons are never again used in war. The likeliest path to nuclear use in the coming decades is not that an enemy suddenly launches a surprise attack on the continental United States with superior delivery systems. The greater concern is that a crisis could lead Russia or China to feel that they had been backed into a corner by U.S. conventional superiority and that utilizing a nuclear weapon could, in Moscow’s words, “de-escalate” the crisis. Nuclear forces that could provoke this scenario are destabilizing and could inadvertently lead to nuclear use. The most important steps the United States can take to ensure that nuclear weapons are never used again are those that support a condition of mutual nuclear deterrence and not those that seek to overcome it.
The United States is in the enviable position of moving second in this round of modernization. The U.S. should use its position of technological and diplomatic strength to ensure strategic stability at the nuclear level, rather than destabilizing the world in a vain search for a useless supremacy.
There has always been an element in American strategic circles that is unwilling to accept the mutual vulnerability that underwrites nuclear deterrence. There will be calls to refuse mutual deterrence with China and to attempt to transcend the condition with Russia as punishment for bad behavior. The United States should resist this urge and instead build nuclear forces that are modest, affordable, and stabilizing. The real danger in U.S. nuclear modernization may not be too little, but too much.
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As for Russia and China, both of the aforementioned articles are consistent in their revelations that USA have relatively much superior and effective nuclear force in comparison in current times and this disparity will continue to exist for years to come. Indeed this is true, people just pay attention to
quantity of nuclear weapons and get spooked, however,
quality factor is much more important and decisive.
