The Secretaries of Defense, State, and Energy this week submitted to Congress the Bush Administration’s strategy for maintaining deterrence in the 21st century. The three Secretaries released a summary paper, saying a “detailed report” would follow with the data and methodology used to “determine our nuclear weapons force structure.” The goal, they said, is to maintain deterrence with a minimal number of nuclear weapons. The Bush Administration continues with its drive to reduce the number of operationally deployed strategic nuclear weapons from 6,000 in 2001 to around 2,000 by 2012 remains on track, but the Administration believes the US must retain nuclear weapons “for the foreseeable future” because of an “uncertain” security environment displaying “some trends [that] are not favorable.” To ensure the smaller nuclear force is credible—sustainable, safe, and reliable—without resorting to nuclear testing, the Administration asks Congress to support the Reliable Replacement Warhead program.
The Space Force is playing midwife to a new ecosystem of commercial satellite constellations providing alternatives to the service’s own Global Positioning Service from much closer to the Earth, making their signals more accurate and harder to jam.
