When would an adversary use a nuclear weapon on the battlefield? And in what circumstances, however difficult to imagine right now, might the United States use one? Getting these important questions wrong could be devastating. Getting them right has been given new urgency by several recent and concerning developments.
China is dramatically expanding its nuclear arsenal, and North Korea now boasts of the “accelerating development” of land-based tactical nuclear weapons. As a recent analysis by the Atlantic Council’s Markus Garlauskas warns, the rising risk of limited nuclear attacks makes up an important element of the future threat from China and North Korea. Meanwhile, Russia, with its stockpile of more than 4,300 nuclear warheads, continues its nuclear saber-rattling over Ukraine, while Iran stands on the cusp of building its own nuclear weapons.
The difference is stark. While the United States has sought to reduce its nuclear weapons stockpile, China, North Korea, and Russia are accelerating strategic weapons development and doctrine for employment at the operational level of war. For too long, nuclear issues have been considered a separate “stovepipe” by many US military and defense thinkers and practitioners. This lack of focus on nuclear battlefield operations is a serious shortfall in how the United States and its allies have approached deterrence and war preparation.
This shortfall will not be resolved by the modernization of US Air Force and Navy nuclear forces alone. The US Army, in particular, requires much greater focus in this area, though it has made some progress. As part of its broader pivot to large-scale combat operations, the Army has taken recent steps to increase conventional-nuclear integration, for example. But overall, the US Army is not adapting quickly enough to the real and growing threat of nuclear weapons use on a battlefield. The US Army’s ability to fight and win on a battlefield threatened by an adversary’s use of strategic and nuclear weapons must catch up to current and near-future threats.
It won’t be easy. The Army must overcome a generation of neglect toward its readiness to counter such weapons of mass destruction. This neglect began after the Presidential Nuclear Initiatives terminated ground-launched nuclear artillery in the 1990s, and it accelerated after the 9/11 attacks and the Army’s subsequent divorce from large-scale combat operations.
Most important, US military and defense thinkers must overcome two major misconceptions that for too long have shaped US actions, delaying both support for integrating conventional maneuver and US readiness to counter weapons of mass destruction. The first misconception is that the Army developing—and training based on—nuclear doctrine is itself provocative to the extent that it should be curtailed. The second misconception, related to the first, is that the likelihood of nuclear use on the battlefield by either the United States or its adversaries is so remote as to be unthinkable. In reality, both of these misconceptions imperil the Army’s readiness to wage all-domain, full-spectrum large-scale combat operations in the current environment.
Misconception one: Countering weapons of mass destruction readiness is provocative.
Proponents of this misconception argue that because the consequences of nuclear warfare are potentially catastrophic, the prudent course is to avoid actions that provoke nuclear-armed adversaries or encourage employment strategies sooner in warfare. This view reveals that US military thinkers tend to assess escalation dangers more pointedly than force benefits. In a 2020 evaluation, Center for Strategic and International Studies researchers noted, “Policymakers were highly attuned to the escalatory risk . . . often weighing their concerns about the potential provocational risks to be more important than the . . . benefit that capabilities may provide.” Some think tank recommendations for military planning argue for less provocative means of establishing joint readiness. In some instances, the provocation argument further leads to pacifist calls for unilateral disarmament.
This action-reaction dynamic—that if we only don’t provoke, we can reduce or contain risk—has not held true for adversary nuclear expansion and alliance building. The adversary does what it wants when it wants to provide advantage as it views strategic stability. The United States must be able to do the same. One’s provocation is another’s defensive readiness. For example, the Russian and Chinese nuclear bomber flight in July near Alaska was viewed as provocative by US officials. Russian experts claimed that they viewed their actions merely “as part of . . . military cooperation plan for 2024” and a response to a US B-52 flight in Finland.
If the provocation logic prevails, the ground force cedes maneuver advantage because it does not develop a counter to a weapon the adversary possesses, has employment doctrine for, and trains to have survivability and resiliency from. A ground force that cannot maneuver is one that can neither seize terrain nor force objectives. It is, in other words, one that cannot win battles. Ceding maneuver is a sure path to battlefield defeat.
Misconception two: Nuclear use is unthinkable
Another perspective, and a plank of US policy, states that nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought. As a broad statement of hope and as a diplomatic position, this is noble. Others posit that preparing for doomsday strategies is wasteful or that nuclear weapons are unlikely to be used in any near-future conflict. With this logic, the highest priority for the land component of the US armed forces is to assure conventional superiority.
Is this realistic? North Korea’s declared strategy and priority military investment is in nuclear weapons. Is there a credible scenario in which the regime doesn’t employ nuclear (and chemical) weapons if it feels existentially threatened? Or take China, which isn’t revealing its nuclear end game. Is it parity or something more? In a possible major war with China, how confident can the United States be, as the blood of many thousands is being spilled and national treasuries drained, that nuclear weapons won’t come to the forefront? Russia, too, threatens nuclear weapons use if adversaries cross red lines that impact its ability to achieve its objectives.
It is hard to believe large-scale combat operations against a nuclear-armed adversary do not go nuclear if victory is being sought. The calculus that the United States employed in August 1945 to win the war with Imperial Japan will be the same that combatants use today. Admittedly, one other course is possible, and it is the outcome that the United States accepted in the Korean War. The decision then was not to employ nuclear weapons, and thereby not to win the war. Not winning may not be a viable option in the next major state-versus-state war.
The time for action is now
If these misconceptions persist, the United States is heading toward unilateral vulnerability. This outcome is the least viable, most dangerous way to mitigate the use of nuclear weapons at the operational level of war. If provocation is the United States’ concern, it is on the wrong side of the escalation curve. If the United States believes that nuclear weapons are tools too terrible to employ, then it must think more like its adversaries, who express that they don’t fear the use of nuclear weapons—and build arsenals to back up their claims.
Now is time for the US Army to shatter these misconceptions and develop forward-looking institutional strategies and operational plans. Army preparation to survive nuclear attack and remain on the offensive constitutes a necessary defensive reaction to adversary capabilities. It is certainly possible, and almost likely, that a land force will be required to operate in a nuclear environment against adversaries who possess nuclear weapons. Against the most formidable state adversaries outlined by US leaders, Russia and China each possess large and extensive landpower capabilities, including flexible and intermingled nuclear capabilities.
It will take dedicated commitment over time for the US Army to address this issue in full, but three steps should be taken as soon as possible.
- First, the US Army should implement and resource the headquarters of the department of the Army’s (HQDA) Conventional-Nuclear Integration (CNI) strategy and plan: A CNI strategy with an accompanying implementation plan is the essential first step to assure that senior Army leaders are able to provide guidance, align resources, and supervise implementation of methods and resources on this issue. This will start a process by which Army units and soldiers can be properly educated and trained on the essential equipment necessary to fight and win on a battlefield that features nuclear weapons use and nuclear contamination. The US Army must assign execution of the CNI Strategy and Plan to HQDA G3/5/7 including as a key feature in the Army Campaign Plan and Army Modernization priorities, two main drivers of Army readiness and lethality, which also assures regular visibility on progress by the Army secretary and chief of staff of the Army.
- A second step is to include adversary nuclear attacks within conventional large-scale combat operations scenarios. For the Army, this should be done in Army-wide wargames and Division/Corps/Theater exercises, as well as at the Army’s Combat Training Centers, to assure that proficiency in countering such weapons of mass destruction reaches into the tactical echelon of the force; that is, into brigades and battalions. Army Training and Doctrine Command and Army Forces Command should organize and lead this training.
- Third, Army leaders should mandate that acquisition waiver decisions that release contractors from meeting nuclear survivability requirements for equipment and vehicle development are owned by the secretary of the Army’s office and not delegated. Delegation risks waivers being granted for expediency or cost reduction without a complete understanding of the strategic and operational threat implications.
Nuclear use on the battlefield is the very real, urgent threat that the Army, as lead of the United States’ joint forces on land, must confront if it is to fulfill its purpose “to fight and win the nation’s wars.”
Major General Brad Gericke, US Army (ret.), PhD, is a nonresident senior fellow in the Indo-Pacific Security Initiative at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security.
Donna Wilt, PhD, previously served as the Army’s nuclear strategist and chief of the Army’s Nuclear and CWMD Operations Division.
Further reading
Mon, Oct 28, 2024
How the US can counter Russian and Chinese nuclear threats in space
New Atlanticist By
As China and Russia bolster their counterspace capabilities, the United States must modernize its space-based nuclear command.
Mon, Oct 7, 2024
Strategic stability in the third nuclear age
Issue Brief By Matthew Kroenig
The world is entering a third nuclear age. This brief explores global strategic stability in the 2020s and 2030s.
Tue, Sep 10, 2024
Russian and Chinese strategic missile defense: Doctrine, capabilities, and development
Issue Brief By Jacob Mezey
In a follow up to Matthew R. Costlow and Robert M. Soofer's paper, US Homeland Missile Defense: Room for Expanded Roles, former Forward Defense Program Assistant, Jacob Mezey, seeks to inform debates about missile defense policy by placing arguments that US ballistic missile defenses are uniquely destabilizing in the context of efforts by Russia and China to deploy similar systems.
Image: US Army Nuclear Disablement Team Soldiers and Army Rangers seized and exploited an underground nuclear facility during a training exercise. Nuclear Disablement Team 1 trained with Army Rangers from the 75th Ranger Regiment during operations under simulated fire at the decommissioned pulse radiation facility, June 6. U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Daniel R. Hernandez.