Biden proposed canceling a nuclear cruise missile that arms control advocates say is redundant and potentially destabilizing. But following testimony from top military officials in support of the missile, Dems have joined Republicans to try to save it.
Progressives were already disappointed with President Joe Biden’s plans for the nation’s nuclear arsenal. Now they’re poised to lose one of the few things about the White House’s blueprint that they liked.
The Pentagon’s still-classified Nuclear Posture Review, which lays out a long-term roadmap for the nuclear arsenal, spurred the decision to zero out funding for the missile in Biden’s most recent budget. The public split between top civilians and military commanders amounted to a “green light” for Democrats to hedge on the program, according to Tom Collina, policy director at Ploughshares Fund.
The situation marks a retreat from the campaign pledges of then-candidate Biden, who long advocated for reducing reliance on nuclear weapons, only to turn around and dedicate tens of billions of dollars to the modernization of all three legs of the triad for two years in a row.
Biden’s fiscal 2023 defense budget proposes spending $50.9 billion on nuclear weapons programs across the Defense and Energy Departments, while also attempting to cancel the SLCM and retire the aging inventory of B83 gravity bombs. The latter system is also in play in defense talks.voted to place limits on the retirement of the B83 by requiring a study on striking hardened and deeply buried targets before any of the bombs could be scrapped.
Advocates for the program argue that the benefits the missile provides, and the need to match gains made by China and Russia, outweigh high costs that have alarmed progressives and arms control groups. “If you have the cruise missile from a submarine, that creates doubt in the minds of our potential adversaries and that doubt is good for deterrence,” Lamborn said at a Heritage event last month.
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