Washington, D.C. – U.S. Representative Mike Rogers (R-AL), Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, released a statement thanking the hard work of the Bipartisan Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States.
“For the first time in history, the United States must deter two near-peer nuclear adversaries at the same time. The goal of the Strategic Posture Commission was to examine the long-term strategic posture of the United States. The results of their report detailed the gravity of the situation we face and emphasized that the current trajectory of the US nuclear deterrent is insufficient to deter the looming Chinese and Russian threat. I want to thank the commission for producing a clear-eyed, sobering, consensus report. The details of this report should serve as a wakeup call for our strategic posture – we need to rapidly make changes now if we want to deter tomorrow.”
Key takeaways from the report are as follows:
- “The nuclear force modernization program of record (POR) is absolutely essential, although not sufficient to meet the new threats posed by Russia and China.”
- “The current modernization program should be supplemented to ensure U.S. nuclear strategy remains effective in a two-nuclear-peer environment.”
- “A number of commissioners believe it is inevitable that the size of the U.S. nuclear stockpile and the number of delivery systems should increase.”
- “The size and composition of the nuclear force must account for the possibility of combined aggression from Russia and China. U.S. strategy should no longer treat China’s nuclear forces as a ‘lesser included’ threat. The United States needs a nuclear posture capable of simultaneously deterring both countries.”
- “The U.S. theater nuclear force posture should be urgently modified to: Provide the President a range of militarily effective nuclear response options to deter or counter Russian or Chinese limited nuclear use in theater. Address the need for U.S. theater nuclear forces deployed or based in the Asia-Pacific theater.”
- “The Commission recommends Congress fund an overhaul and expansion of the capacity of the U.S. nuclear weapons defense industrial base and the DOE/NNSA nuclear security enterprise, including weapons science, design, and production infrastructure. Specifically:` Congress should fund the full range of NNSA’s recapitalization efforts, such as pit production and all operations related to critical materials.”
- “The United States develop and field homeland IAMD that can deter and defeat coercive attacks by Russia and China, and determine the capabilities needed to stay ahead of the North Korean threat.”
- “The Commission’s assessment is that the United States must consider the possibility that Iran will become a nuclear state during the 2027-2035 timeframe.”
- Auctioning the 3.1-3.45GHz band (of spectrum) risks impacting “various types of shipborne, land-based, and aeronautical mobile radar systems [used] for national defense purposes…We have many radars [in the 3.1-3.45 GHz segment] that are critical for our service members to train on before they deploy into harm’s way overseas, and also to protect our homeland . . . it would take us two decades and hundreds of billions of dollars to be able to refactor and move those radars out of there.”
- The commission recommends “the United States urgently deploy a more resilient space architecture and adopt a strategy that includes both offensive and defensive elements to ensure U.S. access to and operations in space.”
The full report can be found HERE.