WHAT'S BEHIND THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION'S NEW $100 BILLION NUCLEAR MISSILE
SYSTEM?
By Jeremy Kuzmarov, Covert Action Magazine.
March 19, 2021 | EDUCATE!
Above photo: The new Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD) nuclear missile
systems will cost tax payers $100 Billion. thebulletin.org.
Massive Popular Pressure-Like That Organized By The 1980s Nuclear Freeze
Movement-Is Needed To Stop More Waste, Fraud And Abuse.
One of the more important tasks that the Biden administration will undertake
this year will be to review the Pentagon's nuclear weapons budget and
modernization strategy.
According to a 2019 Congressional Budget Office report, the U.S. is
committed to spending $494 billion on its nuclear forces over the next
decade, or about $50 billion per year. Over the next three decades, nuclear
weapons modernization plans could cost as much as $1.5-$2 trillion.
This total includes investment in a $100 billion Ground Based Strategic
Deterrent (GBSD), a land-based nuclear missile, which is slated to replace
the aging Minuteman III Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM).
Manufactured by Northrop Grumman under a $13 billion contract-with
assistance from other major defense contractors like Bechtel, Honeywell,
General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, L3 Harris, and Textron-the GBSD is
supposed to be made operational by 2029.
The U.S. Air Force plans to order more than 600 of them.
Elizabeth Eaves characterized the GBSD in the Bulletin of the Atomic
Scientists as a "new weapon of mass destruction the length of a bowling
lane, which will be able to travel some 6,000 miles, carrying a warhead more
than 20 times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima."
The $100 billion, that the GBSD will cost, could alternatively "pay 1.24
million elementary school teachers' salaries for a year, provide 2.84
million four-year university scholarships, or cover 3.3 million hospital
stays for Covid-19 patients."
The human tragedy associated with the development of the GBSD is compounded
by the fact that military experts believe it will not actually enhance U.S.
national security.
Former Defense Secretary James Mattis told the Senate Armed Services
Committee in 2015 that getting rid of America's land-based nuclear missiles
would "reduce the false alarm danger."
Like its predecessor the Minuteman III, the GBSD is designed to be activated
in the face of a Russian nuclear attack.
The computer systems that warn of such incoming fire may be vulnerable to
hacking and false alarms.
During the Cold War, military computer glitches caused numerous close calls.
President Biden has in the past supported arms control and nuclear weapons
reduction treaties.
In 1988, he helped negotiate ratification of the Inter-Nuclear Forces (INF)
treaty signed between Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev and President Ronald
Reagan, which required the U.S. and USSR to eliminate and permanently
forswear all of their nuclear and conventional ground-launched ballistic and
cruise missiles with ranges of 500 to 5,500 kilometers.
More recently, though, Biden has taken a hard line against both Russia and
China, whose supposed existential threats to U.S. interests has provided a
basis for the massive government investment in nuclear weapons.
In an op-ed published during the presidential campaign, Biden supported a no
first-use policy for nuclear weapons, and wrote in Foreign Affairs that the
purpose of the U.S. nuclear arsenal should be deterrence-and if necessary
retaliating against attack.
The Democratic Party's platform, adopted at the July 2020 convention, called
Donald Trump's proposal for new nuclear weapons "unnecessary, wasteful, and
indefensible."
So far, however, Biden's top Pentagon nominees have publicly backed all
three legs of the nuclear triad-including the land-based missiles.
A major factor inhibiting the prospects for disarmament is the clout of
defense contractors like Northrop Grumman, which spent more than $12 million
in lobbying in 2020, and provided Biden with $403,072 during the 2020
election campaign.
Last July, when Ro Khanna (D-CA) proposed an amendment that would transfer
$1 billion or one percent of the GBSD's projected cost into a pandemic
preparedness fund, the amendment was voted down and Khanna was accused by
Liz Cheney (R-WY) of playing into the hands of China, which according to
Cheney, had caused the Covid-19 pandemic.
Cheney represents the district encompassing Cheyenne, Wyoming, which is home
to the F.E. Warren Air Force Base, where the GBSD will be based.
The city and surrounding region anticipate a major economic windfall from
the GBSD.
In 2018, Cheney received $12,000 from Northrop Grumman-affiliated Political
Action Committees (PACs) and $10,000 in 2020.[1]
Northrop donated money to congressional candidates in all the six
states-Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, Nebraska, Montana and North Dakota-which
would be beneficiaries of the new missile.
Polling data indicates that public support for developing nuclear weapons is
lukewarm at best.
However, it will take a large-scale social movement, equivalent to the
nuclear-freeze movement of the 1980s, to pressure the Biden administration
into doing the right thing.
The freeze movement was a large-scale grassroots movement that promoted a
reduction and ultimately elimination of nuclear weapons.
Placing a strong emphasis on grass-roots education, it helped lay the
groundwork for the INF Treaty, which the Trump administration repealed in
2019.
At a zoom conference on Wednesday, February 24, sponsored by the Bulletin of
the Atomic Scientists, Katrina Vanden Heuval, publisher of The Nation
Magazine, suggested that disarmament advocates should link up with the
climate change movement, which has generated a lot of enthusiasm.
The twin threats of nuclear war and climate change demand a "boldness among
grassroots political activists" that will be necessary to save ourselves and
our planet.
[1]Cheney also in the 2020 election cycle received $11,515 from Raytheon
Technologies while supporting an amendment in Congress to promote the
development of low-yield nuclear weapons which were to be placed on cruise
missiles developed by Raytheon.
March 10, 2021. Article updated to reflect the correct number of elementary
school teachers who's annual salary could be covered: 1.24 million, not 124
million.
