Do not go away. [indiscernible chatter] [indiscernible chatter] hi, thank you very much for joining us of the second part of our interesting discussion on the commissions findings on strategic posture. Our first Panel Focused on what was at the heart of the report. Our second panel will focus on what they think about that in the discussion with some of the leading scholars on posture and nonproliferation. Directly to my left, a senior fellow at the center for strattera strategy and security at the event to counsel and former deputy secretary for Missile Defense policy. We have the Board Director at the Atlantic Council and the former under secretary of defense policy at the department of defense, then we have the Vice President or Global Nuclear policy program at the Nuclear Threat initiative. Thank you all for being here today to share your own thoughts, and i would like to kick it up with a very broad question. We just heard about the findings, recommendations, the buildup, but i want to ask you when you read through it did you think that the commission met its mark and come up with a solid red ford, and what recommendations did you not see that you would have liked to have seen in there . I guess i will go first. I think they did meet. You have to understand why the commission was created. When congress created a commission it means there is an issue that congress cannot resolve it, so Nuclear Weapons is one of those. There was a Previous Commission chaired by two former secretaries of defense in the 2000 nine time frame, and at that Point Congress was arguing over whether to build a reliable replacement warhead, nuclear systems. Our really divisive debate they could not resolve, so they appointed a commission, and the commission did not necessarily resolve those two issues but many got work into the obama view and had a difference. Likewise, i think what is going on here is that while there is a consensus, there has been a consensus between republicans and democrats to continue to modernize u. S. Nuclear forces, and remember the system we are looking to modernize now was begun under the Obama Administration and reaffirmed under trump and now reaffirmed under biden, but the big question is it a dump is it enough . This Commission Found that Replacement Program is sufficient but it is not enough. We need to know more, and the question is how much more . Now we will argue over how much more, and the has done a great job, the Biden Administration of identifying the problem. The need to deter limited Nuclear Attacks as well as largescale new your tax, but they have not taken the next step to determine what changes need to be done, and whether this is because they run out of time but there are no more pressing issues, the thing is this commission is going to spread them into action. They have to react. If they do not, they risk not only National Security assurance, but also political concerns, because if they did not take action against the chinese threat, we have an election coming up in 2024, right . I can guarantee that the republicans will have an opportunity to try to engage with the Biden Administration over whether or not to go doing enough to meet the deterrence challenges. First of all, i respect the commission i have some serious criticism. I think the first is cost. I know the argument is it is all out in the future, but we also have to anticipate expenses that come out in the future, and it is a formidable list of things, which includes whether quietly conventional defense that is adequate or both the gators, and the report was published. If someone had been doing a report like this on help to deal with the conventional threat in the future, the 14 days ago they would have said we will be cutting way back on the middle east. We will save a lot of money that way. So i think in order to make meaningful judgments, you have to have some kind of a sense of what the Resource Requirements are going to be, and for those people who will not be in favor of doing it or doing very much, there will be people who are in favor of doing it and would do it by raising taxes, and there are people who were in favor of doing it by cutting other parts of the federal budget, and there are probably at least in theory of people doing it by increasing the total amount of the gdp that goes to the government. I am not saying it is unaffordable. Senator kyle is right. We can afford what we need to do. It is a question of what are the other things that we need to do that might be affected by this decision. Second, i think that the problem about what we do in terms of the chinese buildup, i think we are focusing on the wrong part of the chinese buildup if we focus primarily on the additional icbms. I think the chinese capability and that the gator, which some mentioned, is so much more serious problem. The argument that there are a lot more systems, so there are a lot more targets get you into the fallacy, which says you define the size of the Nuclear Force by the number of things you can hit if you wanted to. For a long time, that drove our planning. It was not supposed to. We did not admit it, but in fact it drove the planning for nuclear deterrence. Personally, i would think it is more important for the three Party Problem to emphasize survivability. A survivable force that cannot be preempted and has the capacity for all practical purposes destroy the other side. That is mutually assured destruction. It is not how we planned the force, shape the force, but it is hard to get away from the preposition that the biggest deterrent to nuclear war is uncertainty in everybodys mind about what would happen. Well, it will be a limited attack, and people would understand that the fact that we went over, rather than is very significant, but that depends on a calm judgment being made, and i think the serious question is how do you develop a strategy and a doctrine which deals not with the ultimate attack against everything or with the essentially demonstrative attack. The demonstrative attack is hard, but it is not as hard as what the Commission Refers to as courses, so that i think is a problem. And also, michael, who in my opinion was probably the wisest man to have right on these issues said the problem with deterring nuclear war is the problem of conventional war. It is impossible to imagine a scenario in which any country would use new your weapons except a rising out of a conventional war or fear of an enema and imminent conventional war, and that goes to the cost question. It is easy to say we should have a conventional defense, to have a credible deterrent you need a reasonably credible conventional defense. I am not saying the commission did not address it, but it is a somewhat harder problem, and it addresses the cause problem. I have some other comments too, but that is going on too long anyway. First, i want to express my deep respect for the commissioners, all of whom i know and have worked with, and have tremendous experience in National Security, and obviously a deep commitment to our country. The things that i agreed with, and a lot of things i have questions and concerns about. I think they really got the threat assessment right, and that is very important. I really want to take a minute to say it was really impressive and important to have this Bipartisan Commission focused on how important it is to have u. S. Global leadership and to work closely with our allies and partners. Those are really important principles at a time when there are seminar leadership who are questioning and are on a more isolationist event, so that is important, and they emphasize that in the rollout event that i went to. It was a consensus report. I think it papered over some different significant perspectives. I think one of my most important points is this is not the answer to the difficult question of how do we respond over the longterm to the threat that has been described so well in the report. It is one input, and it is one input heavily weighted toward the military aspect of a toolkit. In some ways it is kind of a worstcase defense planning document. If the environment continues on a trajectory that it is now, these are the things that we need to think about. You can take issue with that even there, but what it does not do and partly because it was not met him congressional legislation as it does not take back from the wider lens and state what are the things we can do diplomatically, through arms, through lots of tools, and frankly our own actions including selfrestraint in some areas to discourage or ensure or incentivize russia and china do not go down the worstcase path that they are all in so i have lots of questions, and i will save them. Lets start with the numbers. We have four generations thought of each of the assured destruction and deterrence as a numbers game. If they have so many, we need to have so many, and what struck me is that shifting away from that thinking. How can we start to plan and await that is not china is going to a 1500, therefore we have to have that . I think with all due respect, you misstated the significance of assured destruction, and the term has become bloated loaded, but another of michaels point was Nuclear Weapons mean that the cost of the war came to be entirely independent of who won the war, and the significance of the incredible power of Nuclear Weapons is used in theory in a particular way, they would leave the initiator, the victor vastly worse off than if they had not proceeded, and as i said, that is a physical fact. People talk about will, we accepted assured destruction. We did not accepted. We recognized it is in fact, just like the law of gravity complicates airplane design. And that is the kind of ultimate foundation of deterrence, because the possibility that that is where you will end up is the biggest restraint on starting. As i said, i think the serious problem well, on the numbers, in my mind the chinese buildup is very unfortunate, although from the point of view of china, the chinese were promptly say this. Why are the americans and perhaps the russians, 1600 countable under the arms controllable agreement, but if you account for uploads it is a lot more, why are they pretending to be so nervous about our having of force that will be maybe 20 , 25 . They may have the capacity to build up iron, but i think more numbers are important, because it is important to show that we are doing, we are responding and doing it in useful ways, but i think the problem is much less what we do and how we think about deterrence strategy, not the kind of simple numbers that go up in a black board. Having said that, you asked numbers. That is the way people in washington think about this problem, but what if i were to suggest to get the actual numbers that need to increase are quite modest . And he could be accomplished within the context of an armscontrol framework. I will just throw this out. There is a strawman argument people are saying we need to add up the number of chinese targets, the number of present targets russian targets and we need to match stigma. No one in the government is suggesting that, ok . It is a smaller number. It could be, for instance, the treaty that existed prior was called the moscow treaty, and it was 2200. Lets say we go from 1550 up to 2200. Can we accomplish our deterrence objectives by going up to 22 hundred . That is something administration will have to calculate depending upon their strategy and the types of targets, but maybe that is possible, and if that is the case would if we agree with roger to go back to that level . So we have solved the china problem, both of us. You need at least 1500. Anything beneath that is an efficient, but you definitely need more. That was determined back in 2010 when the senate did its treaty. This is ground that has been plugged before, and the notion that we can get by with less is a nonstarter. Everybody agrees more, not everybody. It is not just this commission put the center for Global Security research, the center for international csis, they have done studies and all found some more is needed, but we are not talking about an arms race. We can solve this problem within an arms race, but we need is the administration to put together a package to expand to us how they would make meet the requirements the past commissioners are laid out in a way that would not start an arms race, and i think that cannot be done. I did not find the report compelling that we need more or different Nuclear Forces at this time. The report is very ambiguous. It is actually silent on what are the assumptions, because you are planning you have to make some assumptions about russia and about china, and the number one assumption that is not hardly discussed is what will russia be doing in the absence of armscontrol . And conversely, do we have any interest at a restraining russia, and at what level . And then this question of whether we need any additional capability to do with china, and when . China is said to have 500 Nuclear Weapons, not all deployed, compared to 4000 four russia and the United States, so this is something that is happening on the road and more quickly anticipated a couple of years before, but we are not there yet. And so it is not laid out in the report, and another really important question i have is the report and the commissioners have emphasized the urgency of some decisions that need to be made now so that we have options available in the future, which in theory and principle make sense to me, but the report was very unclear about specifically what are those decisions that have to be made now, because as Michael Gordon pointed out, it is definitely not about keeping production lines more in force, strategic delivery vehicles 15 and 20 years hence, so that is not the issue. I suspect there might be issues in the weapons complex, but it was not stated, so that sense of urgency was not matched by discussion. More numbers now does not seem urgent to me at all. Can i just say one other thing . This goes back to the issue of just we ought to be thinking more, and there is a chapter at the end of the report, then we head off and mitigate the risk we are worried about with russia and china through diplomacy and negotiations and arms control agreements broadly defined, even a commitment at the end of new start to not exceed those limits would be a place to start. And all of that could obviate the need for the kinds of observations in this report, many of which will be unachievable and too costly, not to mention destabilizing the not the path we should be going down for our security. Just to set a baseline, one of the report of the report to present this finding is that the program monetization records must be continued. Just to even get a baseline beyond that, we have not had a great power war for 80 years with the current arsenal. What is it about the current arsenal that is now insufficient that is the biggest import that you think needs to be addressed now . For me it is the regional aspect of the problem. Imagine that we are engaged in a war with say russia and nato. We are fighting a conventional war. We need forces there to determine limited nuclear used by the russians, and we have 361 bombs that can be delivered by Fighter Aircraft in europe, but what happens if while we are engaged there china now decides to end the to invade taiwan. Now we have to deter china from going nuclear. All of our Nuclear Assets are in europe. Are you going to move some of them over to the asian region and dilute your european deterrent . You do not have to make that choice if you build Nuclear Capabilities that are dedicated to the specific region. If china knows we have those capabilities, then they are less likely to decide to go to work. We do not have any Nuclear Forces structure in there, so one of the examples is a Nuclear Cruise missile where you do not have to ask their allies for their permission, but china knows we have submarines out there that can be used promptly in the region. Now they understand there is no way they could use limited Nuclear Deployment and gain an advantage. It just adds to the deterrent effect, but it does require additional capability. To be fair, with the administrations sink they recognize that problem. They are saying we have capabilities to deal with that. They are suggesting you could launch a b52 bomber with the christmas oh, get it into the region. You could take tactical fire and moving into the region, or maybe use a submarine launch. We have those capabilities, but they are not necessarily prompt. They are not necessarily present in the region, and if they are deployed to the region they are not survivable, but most importantly china is building up its regional Nuclear Capabilities. If we do not respond to that, that sends a signal potentially to try and at that we are not willing to compete in that area, and consequently it sends a signal to the allies that we are not willing to run the risk on their behalf. I think this last point, ruffalo ralph lowe couldnt speak it is a good idea. Not because it adds military capability, although it does. One of our biggest problems in asia is building structure in the region that people are willing to stand up to china, because most of the Asian Countries have some option of accommodation, and it is a problem we do not have to nearly the same degree in data, and i think one of the greatest advantages of a nuclear arm c launched sea launched Cruise Missile is for all practical focuses it is a asia focused capability, and it will allow us without the incredible political chaos of trying to permanently deployed american Nuclear Forces in japan or the philippines or wherever, it provides a genuine answer, it is highly survivable. It is prompt. It is very accurate. It probably has as good penetration as anything else, and we can point to it and say this is the physical manifestation of our commitment to use Nuclear Weapons if necessary in asia. Now, i do not necessarily believe that would succeed in deterring a chinese strike if for some ultimate reason they decided it was important, but in order to have credible conventional defense with a Nuclear Element to it, and in order to have the Political Coalition in asia that will stand up to the chinese, in many ways it is as important to reassure the allies and to deter the chinese, because they are imminently linked, and a system like this is a big contribution to doing that. First of all, i went to agree with something walt said earlier, which is the best way to deter nuclear were complex is to deter a conventional one between great powers would Nuclear Weapons, and that is where our focus should be, and frankly the taxpayer, i would rather see my at a dollar go to defenses to new technologies and not to Nuclear Weapons, which i do not think we need. Second of all, we do have proclivities. We have submarine launched Ballistic Missiles and out thanks to the Trump Administration has a low yield option on those systems. We have air delivered deep ability. We are investing in more long range and standoff weapons, so there are plenty of new here capabilities that can be brought to bear in the region certainly to assure allies and also to deter china. This was one of the points we brought up in the first panel, but i want to ask reviews on the recommendation about new arms control agreements and the likelihood that we could even get russia or china to come to the table on Different Levels of numbers, different types of testing, the different types, new modern bombs in china is developing. Given the current context of the war with ukraine, and how can you get russia in the table, and how can you get china to the table . First of all, i think it is an important element of the report, and i would like to see get amplified in that we should be looking to see whether armscontrol broadly defined, not just legally binding agreements, but cooperative arrangements, this reduction, whether all of that can be used to reduce the threat that we see currently and could develop further. I thought the report was silent on the question of whether it actually matter to us anymore to try to maintain mutual restraint with the russia on strategic numbers, which i think is still important, and as a way of bending that the rent also what we have to do with turnout, and i also think it is potentially achievable, not now clearly, and at some point the fighting in ukraine is going to stop in the climate will change, and the opportunity will arise especially with the pending expiration that there will be a desire, and i hope it is a mutual desire to maintain mutual limits on Strategic Forces, and that needs to include new Systems Russia is bringing online. I also share the desperation to bring in all nuclear heads and nonstrategic warheads. I think that may be a longerterm proposition, and again, withdrawn it i think we are further away from armscontrol, but the first step of dialogue needs to be pursued, but part of that is the report talks about independently establishing our requirements and seeing what you can do with armscontrol, but is more iterative of a process, because requirements are partly determined by four new start, it was not just how many weapons do we need. It was what kind of weapons do we need if russia will agree to these limits . And do we need more if they exceeded . It is not a question that you answer on your own. It is a question that you answer on what is the other party willing to do . It may not seem viable right now, but i think the opportunity will return in the future. I think there is an error. You only have armscontrol agreements or any other kind of agreements with both parties think it is in their interests. I think one of the things we ought to do is focus on some of the things, some of the concerns that only Nuclear Superpowers can have, and one is being shirked it if you use Nuclear Weapons it was really, really necessary, and this is sometimes described as an accidental problem. It is much more a problem of decisionmaking under incredible pressure, and i think there are a number of steps which can be taken which do not include dealerting, which is the worst possible answer and the worst way to make the problem harder rather than easier, but there are other things that can be done, and it might be an area where you could talk seriously to both the russians and the chinese. There is another area which is how do you let me think about how to articulate it. I want to put a finger on that and note the by the administration discover the undertaking a Nuclear Failsafe review as mandated in the National Defense authorization act. It is looking specifically at assuring the safety, security, reliability of u. S. Nuclear weapons and command and control systems to avoid inadvertent work miscalculated nuclear use, so things like looking at Cyber Threats or problems in the supply chains. This review should hopefully yield some technical as well as policy recommendations for steps the u. S. Can do, many unilaterally, but there may be ideas for things we can do in parallel with other states would Nuclear Weapons or encourage them to do on their own. Anyway, i think if Something Like this was done 30 years ago, it is now being done again, and can i just say one other thing about the threat from the other side . There is some element of we have to ask ourselves about our own restraint, and inking about what is the reaction that our actions, even our planning let alone are actually developing and deploying these things will engender in the other side . The Missile Defense discussion is a good example of something that could be seen is very provocative to russia and china. Everything in this report, a laundry list of items that matt read to us, just the idea that we are planning for that can be very provocative, and ice think some thought needs to go to because at some point if we do not do certain things, it will not be sensible for another country to keep building up. I agree with lynn, as we start to get close to the expiration of the treaty, peoples minds will focus on what comes next. I think we have time to assess our deterrence requirements and build that into a proposal that we can then present to the russians. China will not come to the table, forget about a three way talk. Figure out what our deterrence requirements are, russia will figure out what their czar and now we have a basis for conversation. You will not have another treaty. Republicans are not going to agree to a new start framework unless there is some additional Nuclear Force capability. I am not talking about 5000 more Nuclear Weapons, but some number of uploads of the current missiles. Likewise, it is going to be difficult i think for the republicans to secure administrations support for these additional capabilities unless there is some armscontrol framework built into that, right . And there cant be restraint. Going back to 2200 is a constraint. The arms deal not like the fact that we are going back to 5200, that they should like the fact that we now have constraints. I would like to also refer we get to audience questions, talk about the other ways to provide deterrence through space, through cyber. Lets start with space. It is becoming a more critical element to detection, to potentially being able to shoot down an incoming missile. What more needs to be done in this realm to bolster strategic posture . It is probably first of all, i assume most of the answers to that question are classified for very good reason. The second thing is i think space is primarily relevant or warning and surveillance and command and control rather than another place to put Nuclear Weapons. The two sides agreed not to do a stupid system, but i think we need to think a lot more, and it may well be going on in the system on how we use space to strengthen surveillance and control and survivability into resilience of a workable command system. I go back to something walt said about survivability of u. S. Nuclear forces. I think it is the same in space. The key to stability, a key to not having to use Nuclear Weapons, the key to deterring the adversary is to make sure you have the ability to respond. Now we need to have survivable space forces as well, and i think the administrations general approach is to proliferate the number of centuries sentires we have out there to make sure the adversary cannot conduct a first strike that would bind us. We are also looking at a potential counterspace capability against the other side, so this is happening, but the key will be survivability. I do not think there is an armscontrol framework that solves this problem. Delete survivable part i think it is survivable, the most vulnerable to disruption is not any of the nuclear systems, platforms. It is the commandandcontrol system. The early morning, the communications to the force, that i think its a place, and i understand why the commission did not emphasize it, because there is not a lot you can say about it, but it is terribly important. The commission spoke about Missile Defense. That is another capability. There is probably no issue in policy that ranks more emotion. Those that believe Missile Defense is stabilizing and does the plea for print provides protection. We have had this terrible debate going on since the days of the adm treaty and before. At the end of the cold war, we decided we will no longer build homeland Missile Defenses against russia and china, on the against iran and north korea. Now as the committee points out, china is building a conventional icbm to attack the United States , so now it begs the question, would it not make sense to maybe move the needle in our homeland Missile Defense policy to include limited protection against these capabilities . The other side is how do you reactivate . We could explore that issue with the other side. There may be a way to do this without threatening russia or Chinas Nuclear retaliatory capability, which is what they are most concerned about. A more conventional Nuclear Defense in their gator, ultimately provocative . Would we allow the same . We would be deploying this on u. S. Territory, right . You are talking about regional. Also, it is a little hard for me sitting it to figure out why it would be a good idea or a country to use an icbm if an icbm means anything like we understand it to mean today to deliver a thousand pound bomb. That strikes me as a remarkable nonproblem. There is some vulnerability, and maybe you can think of point defenses, but they would be a very different kind of defense. Among other things. Listed Missile Defense against Nuclear Weapons, which is 90 effective is essentially not very good. If you are protecting the homeland and populations, but if you are protecting u. S. Retaliatory forces, that is a good probability. Up to a point, but i think there is a real danger that we fall back into the illusion that you are going to defend the whole force. Defending is not the way to make a survivable force. It is to put it in places and it ways that are hard to attack rather than affirmatively defending it. Back to basics, the idea is that our nuclear Strategic Force is supposed to be first and foremost a deterrent against use by russia or china, and so and the whole idea is national Missile Defense is not viable against a russian force, and we do not actually say it explicit, but against the chinese either, so this idea of having a limited capability. I do not even know what that means, because it is the idea that china or russia with think they could send one missile to the rest homeland and think that would be limited. It is just more scenarios. There is no capability to defend against. It becomes much more feasible. It is more a question of the seriousness. It can be overwhelmed by the offense. Why is trying to building a conventional icbm . That has a good question. That is why descendant decided it was destabilizing, and we would not doing. Lynn is getting back to the most fundamental question in this field, and that is what deterrence . How easy is it to deter . And i get the sense that lynn believes a relatively modest Nuclear Force that can threaten russian or chinese population in urban areas would be sufficient for deterrence. I think it is much more complicated. When you are trying to be deterrence on behalf of allies, you have to threaten to use Nuclear Weapons at your own risk, and why with the adversary believe the u. S. Attacking their cities would be a credible deterrent . If we attacked their cities, think attack ours. I am talking about the program of record. The baseline of the program of record. You think we can get by with fewer Nuclear Weapons . Right now i said i do not see the case that has been made for more. It is a very interesting question of why the chinese would want to do that. I believe the chinese may well exaggerate the degree to which modest damage to the American Homeland would coerce us into not responding in it to get her decatur theater. On the other hand if we have icbm Nuclear Weapons that can knock out essential capability, we better fix that problem by fixing the system, not explaining that we will defend against it. The point of defense is a much easier area, and there may be options. It does not strike me on any kind of a largescale as a place to put a lot of emphasis. The Northern Command commanders are worried about attacks on u. S. Infrastructure. Attacking ports with high explosive weapons is not done with one palm no matter how powerful. It would be a suite of bombs. It could be crews missile attacks, icbms, but if you are concerned china and russia may attack european ports or south korean ports or guam, why would they not also attack ports in the United States . Because the americans would be furious. Lets keep going. I went to get to some audience questions. Does the commission adequately address the scale of change needed in the weapons production complex to meet this evolving threat environment . I think one of the most interesting parts of the report is the proposals with respect to what is called the Nuclear Enterprise. That is the infrastructure that is responsible not to deplatforms, which is where almost all of the public debate is about platforms in many ways. The question of the infrastructure to make sure that the weapons are safe and reliable and effective, not vulnerable, is extremely important. I do not have anything like the detailed knowledge of the enterprise, but i think there are probably things in the Nuclear Enterprise system as a whole that do need improvement in the commissions list and recommendations for that. If you are planning to expand the capabilities, you still need to boast of the current infrastructure just to support this program of record. The program was strong on that. It does strike me as i think that is urgent, to answer my own question in terms of or at least urgent to keep at it and continue bringing the weapons complex up to the modern day so that you are in a position to respond in the future if you need to. I do not quite know that it meant by expanding the capacity. I think we have got our hands full with just being able to bring the complex uptodate to do what we are doing now, but certainly that is important, and it is always under invested in. In congress, people are more interested in the next widget, the next weapon, the next vehicle than they are in the festivities and the people. The report makes a strong case for investment in our scientific and Industrial Base and personnel and all of that. I think one of the biggest problems is to attract brilliant young scientists to be willing to work on nuclear problems. If you did not have that, you face much more difficult problems, and that goes back to the whole basic question of how do we support education and science in this country . How do we build trust in scientists . Whether we make it an attractive field for people to work who have the scientific, Technical Capability to work in. A question for you, you said you need to find ways to incentivize china and russia on arms control to reduce this threat. How do you do this while balancing adversarys own security and balancing leverage . It is hard, but i do think historically, and again russia is doing a number of these things right now, so we do not know what the future direction of russia will be, but historically they have found it in their mutual interest as we have for over 50 years to maintain mutual limits on our Strategic Forces. I think the russians are still interested in that. It is a more complicated negotiation, because there are other capacities of strategic effect that we know they want to bring into the conversation. I think there is that overarching mutual interest, and i think the opportunity will open up to get back to the table with russia, and again, legally binding verifiable agreements are the gold standard, but there are other options short of that. China will be tougher, because they were in a different place, but i think i agree. I dont think we should still be pursuing bilateral constraints with russia even as china is building and we are trying to establish dialogue with them, but i do not think it is a three Party Negotiation to realistically, and i do not think we should be letting russia run free, because all of the second graders are running to the soccer ball, which is china. It is russia that has more than 4000 Nuclear Weapons, so we cannot take our eye off the ball. [indiscernible] i agree with lynn that we probably should engage the russians come put everything on the table, but at the end of the day it cannot be just about extending the current framework. Even this administration has agreed the next round of discussions with the russians have to include nonstrategic systems. It has got to be included, and at the commission is recommending that we are going to need some i will use the word modest increase in our Strategic Forces. Lets start negotiating with russians and see where this turns out. We have a question. With the capability of u. S. Attacks, i would try be able to differentiate between conventional and Nuclear Christmas was during a crisis . It doesnt matter, because they will see Cruise Missiles coming at them and they will think they are Nuclear Weapons so they will lunch at their own. During this crisis, Chinese Forces will be on alert. There is no way one or two u. S. Crews missiles headed to china will be misconstrued as a disarming first right strike. They will determine whether it is nuclear and then respond. We are going to be attacking them with conventional crews missiles Cruise Missiles. The problem is not limited to Cruise Missiles. We plan to use b52 bombers, which strangely enough were designed before i was born. We have all kinds of Fighter Aircraft that are nuclear capable, and it is hard to tell which ones are new here capable. This problem i think is overstated. The problem of seeing an attack on the homeland coming out of nowhere i think is overstated too, but there are ways to deal with that. I think discrimination of dual capable systems is something to be concerned about. Out of my own curiosity, what did you think of the commissions recommendation on a mobile sentinel program, potential risks or advantages they might bring . The clayton Clinton Administration tried that. It does not seem to iran iran without we had one but no one seemed to like it as much. It seem like a hard way to approach the problem. Maybe as an adjunct to a small highly survivable force, but when modern surveillance technology, it is not clear and supposedly we no longer have the access to be sure about this. Supposedly, we worry about the oppositions ability to track things and presumably we believe there is a possibility of tracking. Mobile missiles theoretically are more so. 1 08am more so. But, politically to me, it is a nonstarter. Maybe it would remind the American People who are blissfully unaware that we have Nuclear Weapons and a lot but, i think it is a nonstarter. One other thing, i do not see the wisdom from a stability standpoint of uploading our icbms. Right now there are single warheads. They are also planning to do that with the next generation. It is the lake of the triad that is the least stabilizing. I think that it speaks to survivability. Things are different now. We are not talking about Nuclear Weapons roaming the countryside. During the crisis, they would be flushed out. That is the one we cannot settle. Lets toss it in the mix. We may need more Nuclear Weapons we may need to make the existing force more survivable or a combination. Instead of adding another combination of 150 sentinels. If you make 150 more survivable, maybe it achieves a similar result. Any closing thoughts you wish to raise before we conclude . Im sorry. This uncertainty is creating a lot of friction. We need demonstration to take on the recommendations of this commission and try to think about how they would react to that. Whether it is some other capability, some other forces that can be packaged. Lets get the opposition on the table and them we can have a more logical approach to this. Only that i think one other thing that the Commission Report does is to bring limited and specialized group, a kind of focus on these issues. One of the remarkable things raab made a real contribution to this in the defense department. We have a pretty good consensus in this country and supporting a very ambitious strong and survivable Nuclear Force. In maintaining this as a subject that people understand and it is also wildly divisive. We are out of time, we are actually over time. I have a feeling this panel could keep talking about this. Thank you very much for attending. [applause] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2023] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org]