Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), whose name has been run through the rumor mill this week as a possible candidate for Secretary of Defense under President-elect Donald Trump, on Thursday emphasized the importance of nuclear modernization and the NATO alliance.
Since his election, only Trump surrogates have reversed his campaign rhetoric that NATO is obsolete and that European member states do not send their fair share on collective defense. Trump also has questioned the U.S. military’s opposition to Russian aggression in Europe.
Cotton, leading off the Defense One Summit in Washington, D.C., on Thursday, underscored the importance of NATO and the need to upgrade the U.S. nuclear arsenal.
“The best way to deter [Russia] is to be ironclad in our support of our allies,” Cotton said. “It would be a good thing if our European allies were spending more than 2 percent because many have let their military capabilities wither over the past two decades.”
Trump said little of note about nuclear weapons or modernizing them and the triad of delivery systems the U.S. relies upon. He expressed support during the campaign for non-nuclear states such as Saudi Arabia and Japan to obtain nuclear weapons, but has denied those comments since being elected.
The U.S. needs to retain all three legs of the nuclear triad – submarines, bombers and ICBMs, Cotton said. Nuclear weapons “have been a critical component of world peace,” he said.
“We need all three legs of the nuclear triad,” Cotton said. ICBMs, he said, are a “huge advantage because airplanes can be shot down and subs can be sunk.”
Programs to modernize all three legs of the triad are underway. ICBMs will eventually be replaced by the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD). The Navy is building the Ohio-class submarines and the Air Force recently awarded a contract to Northrop Grumman [NOC] for the B-21 bomber, which Cotton suggested should entirely replace the B-52 fleet.