The Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA) today released its report on the Defense Department’s Nuclear Posture Review (NPR). The report, The Nuclear Posture Review: How Is the “New Triad” New?, was written by Kurt Guthe, Senior Analyst at CSBA.

The NPR was a congressionally mandated, wide-ranging review of the policy, strategy, plans, stockpile, and infrastructure pertaining to the US nuclear forces. The report focuses on a central finding of the NPR that has received relatively little attention: the need for a “New Triad” of nuclear and nonnuclear offensive capabilities, active and passive defenses, and defense-industrial infrastructure to supplant the Cold War nuclear triad of land- and submarine-based ballistic missiles and bombers.

The New Triad outlined by the NPR has major implications for US defense planning and programs. In examining these implications the report finds that the New Triad could:

• provide nonnuclear strategic options with respect to preventive attack operations, strategic campaigns, retaliation to nuclear attack, and limited defense against nuclear attack;

• support further reductions in nuclear arms; and

• increase the importance of strategic warning and force reconstitution in the planning for strategic nuclear forces.

The report notes that, in the wake of the geopolitical and military-technical revolutions, much of the conventional wisdom about strategic warfare that developed during the Cold War—such as that pertaining to nuclear superiority, arms race dynamics, strategic warfighting concepts, disarming attacks, and strategic defenses—merits careful reconsideration. Given the very different circumstances that exist today, the proposed New Triad could, if realized, significantly enhance the security of the United States, its allies, and friends.

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For a copy of the report, contact Luciana Turner at (202) 331-7990 or at turner@csbaonline.org

CSBA is an independent policy research institute established to promote innovative thinking about defense planning and investment strategies for the 21^st century. See our web site at www.csbaonline.org