Scientists to Biden: Cancel New Nuclear IBM System

More than 700 scientists, in an open letter to the U.S. president and Congress, call the new intercontinental-range ballistic missile system, known as Sentinel, expensive and dangerous.

Northrop Grumman and an industry partner successfully conducted Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile Shroud Fly-off Test at Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake verifying the shroud did not strike enclosed payload, critical to mission success. (Northrop Grumman)

By Edward Carver
Common Dreams

More than 700 scientists have called for an end to the United States’ land-based nuclear weapons program that’s set to be replaced after a Pentagon decision to approve the program despite soaring costs. 

In an open letter to President Joe Biden and Congress, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) argued againstthe new intercontinental-range ballistic missile system, known as Sentinel.

“As scientists and engineers, we are acutely aware of the grave risk of nuclear war,” the letter began. “We are particularly concerned about the needless dangers created by the deployment of expensive, dangerous, and unnecessary land-based, intercontinental-range ballistic missiles (ICBMs).” The scientists said the land-based nuclear weapons are unnecessary because:

“The United States deploys an assured ability to retaliate against a nuclear attack without land-based missiles. Roughly 1,000 nuclear warheads are deployed on U.S. submarines hidden at sea, essentially invulnerable to attack. Submarine-launched ballistic missiles are as accurate as silo-based missiles, quick to respond, and provide more destructive capability than could ever be employed effectively.

Specifically, one nuclear detonation can destroy an entire city; hundreds or thousands of detonations would cause millions of immediate deaths, the destruction of critical infrastructure, and potentially catastrophic climate impacts. The U.S. Navy deploys twelve submarines and is working to replace the entire fleet. Silo-based missiles do not provide any important additional capability.”

The Department of Defense on Monday certified the continuation of the Sentinel project, releasing the results of a review that was legally required when the cost estimate ballooned to “at least” $131 billion earlier this year, which drew the scrutiny of some Democrats in Congress, according to The Hill. 

The Defense review found that Sentinel was “essential to national security,” but 716 scientists, including ten Nobel laureates and 23 members of the National Academies,  disagreed with the assessment. 

“There is no sound technical or strategic rationale for spending tens of billions of dollars building new nuclear weapons,” Tara Drozdenko, director of UCS’ global security program, said in a statement. 

 Barish at Nobel Prize press conference in Stockholm in December 2017. (Bengt Nyman, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0)

Nobel Prize-winning physicist Barry Barish, a signatory to the letter, was also harshly critical of the Pentagon’s approach.

“It is unconscionable to continue to develop nuclear weapons, like the Sentinel program,” he said. 

The soaring costs of Sentinel, which is overseen by the defense contractor Northrup Grumman, have been the subject of media attention. The program will cost an estimated $214 million per missile, far more than originally expected, Bloomberg reported on Friday. 

However, the cost is hardly the only reason to cancel the program, UCS scientists argue. The silos that house the nuclear missiles, which are found in North Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado and Nebraska, are vulnerable to attack — in fact, they are designed to draw enemy weapons away from other U.S. targets, according to Scientific American.

Such an attack would expose huge swaths of the American population to radioactive fallout. 

Because they are a likely target, the siloed missiles are kept on “hair-trigger” alert so the U.S. president can launch them within minutes. This “increases the risk of nuclear war” that could start from false alarms, miscalculations, or misunderstandings, the UCS letter states. 

The scientists further argue that there’s no need for a land-based nuclear weapons system given the effectiveness of nuclear-armed submarines — one of the other parts of the nuclear triad, along with bomber jets. Such submarines are “hidden at sea” and “essentially invulnerable to attack,” according to the letter. Moreover, the submarine missiles are just as accurate as land-based missiles, and already have “destructive capability than could ever be employed effectively,” it states. 

The submarine system is also being overhauled, as is the “air” component of the nuclear triad. In total, the U.S. military plans to spend more than $1 trillion over 30 years on renewing the nuclear arsenal, according to the Arms Control Association. 

The U.S. leads the way in a surge of global spending on nuclear arms, according to two studies published last month, one of which found that nearly $3,000 per second was spent in 2023.

Edward Carver is a staff writer for Common Dreams.

This article is from  Common Dreams.

Views expressed in this article and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.