Franklin C. Miller
For several months Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro has been waging an overt and covert campaign against SLCM-N. His public testimony makes clear that he not only misunderstands the role of a nuclear sea-launched cruise missile in national policy but also the role of the submarine force.
In a clearly scripted colloquy with Senator Mark Kelly on May 16, Del Toro asserted that deploying SLCM-N on SSNs would adversely impact the submarine force: “I’m concerned about how it will operationally impact our submarine forces and their ability to actually conduct the tactics and operations that they actually need to do in the south, in the Indo-Pacific and elsewhere around the world”; said it would “fundamentally change the mission of the submarines themselves”; agreed with Senator Kelly that the system was unnecessary because the Trident II W-76-2 warhead was sufficient for deterrence purposes; and also agreed with Kelly that the removal of conventional torpedoes to accommodate SLCM-N would reduce SSNs’ wartime utility. There’s a great deal of misinformation in all that. Let’s unpack it piece by piece.
First, the primary mission of the submarine force (indeed of all of our armed forces) is to deter major war. If deterrence fails, our forces are to fight and win – but deterrence is the first mission. In an increasingly dangerous world in which our two peer adversaries deploy large numbers of theater nuclear systems, a U.S. nuclear sea-launched cruise missile would enhance deterrence and reassure allies in peacetime and crisis, and, in wartime, provide a President with additional options to prevent enemy nuclear escalation.
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