A new report warns the U.S. nuclear arsenal is dangerously outdated and too small to confront growing global threats — and recommends nearly tripling the number of deployed American warheads by 2050.
The report, first obtained by Fox News Digital, argues that America’s current force of about 1,750 deployed nuclear weapons leaves the nation vulnerable in an era when Moscow, Beijing, and Pyongyang are all expanding their arsenals at breakneck speed.
China alone is building 100 new nuclear weapons a year, according to the Pentagon, and is on track to reach strategic parity with the U.S. by the mid-2030s.
‘The newest warhead that we have was built in 1989,’ Robert Peters, author of the Heritage report, told Fox News Digital.
‘The force size that we have now … That was a force design that came up when President Obama was in office in 2010, and the assumptions were in 2010 that there would be no more real competition between the United States and Russia, and China was not even a real player on the nuclear field.’
The report, authored by Robert Peters of Heritage’s Allison Center for National Security, proposes that Washington expand its force to roughly 4,625 operationally deployed nuclear weapons by 2050.
That number would include about 3,500 strategic warheads — carried by intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), ballistic missile submarines, and bombers — and about 1,125 non-strategic weapons, such as gravity bombs and theater-range missiles.
It comes amid warnings that Moscow maintains thousands of non-strategic nuclear weapons in Europe, outnumbering U.S. stocks by as much as ten to one, while China races to deploy stealth bombers, submarine-based missiles and even orbital strike systems. North Korea already possesses about 90 warheads and continues testing missiles that can reach the U.S. homeland.
‘We’ve got an arsenal today that is decades beyond its planned life cycle, and a force construct that was designed for a very benign world.’
Peters’ proposal envisions a modernized force including new Sentinel ICBMs, Columbia-class ballistic missile submarines, nuclear-capable B-21 stealth bombers, long-range cruise missiles and theater-range hypersonic weapons. The plan would still keep U.S. forces below Cold War levels but significantly above today’s posture.
It lays out a plan for regional nuclear allocations in each theater, with the largest number of assets, 3,200 warheads, being placed under Northern Command and focused on homeland defense. Some 750 warheads would be placed in Europe and 675 in the Indo-Pacific region.
It calls for Sentinel ICBMs to replace Minuteman III and B-21 and B-52 jets with new long-range standoff cruise missiles.
During the Cold War, the U.S. fielded tens of thousands of warheads, deployed in Europe, Asia and at home. The new 2050 arsenal would still be far smaller than Cold War levels.
‘A U.S. President with some regional nuclear options but only token damage-limiting capacity would quickly be confronted during a limited nuclear conflict with two unpalatable options: surrender or threaten widespread attacks on the adversary homeland, thus inviting an in-kind response, meaning suicide,’ the report warns.
Skeptics often ask why nations need thousands of nuclear weapons when a single warhead can level a city. Peters argues that this is a misconception rooted in Cold War imagery of mushroom clouds over Manhattan.
In reality, most modern nuclear warheads are not designed for ‘city busting’ but for striking enemy nuclear forces — silos, missile fields, and command-and-control centers. China, for example, is building up to 500 hardened ICBM silos in remote deserts. Military planners assume it could take at least two U.S. warheads to guarantee destruction of each site.
As Peters puts it, ‘the goal is never to get to this point. That’s why you have nuclear weapons, to make sure you never get to this point.’
It’s unclear whether the current political leadership would heed Peters’ recommendations. President Donald Trump has proposed ‘denuclearization’ talks with U.S. adversaries.
‘Trump very understandably doesn’t like nuclear weapons,’ Peters said.
But, he added, ‘we tried [denuclearizing] under President Obama in 2009 and 2012 and no one followed.’
‘Tremendous amounts of money are being spent on nuclear, and the destructive capacity is something we don’t even want to talk about today, because you don’t want to hear it,’ Trump mused in remarks to the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland, in February.
‘I want to see if we can denuclearize, and I think it’s very possible,’ suggesting talks on the issue between the U.S., Russia and China.
President Vladimir Putin announced Russia would suspend its participation in the New START treaty in 2023 over U.S. support for Ukraine. Russia had frequently been caught violating the terms of the deal. But China has never engaged in negotiations with the U.S. over arms reduction.
North Korea has rejected any suggestion of denuclearizing from the U.S.
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In September, Russia proposed a one-year extension of the New START treaty, which technically expires in 2026, but the White House has yet to respond to that proposal.
Expanding the arsenal won’t be cheap. But at around $56 billion, the U.S. only spends around seven percent of the defense budget on nuclear weapons, Peters argues.
The report also calls for nuclear capabilities to be deployed forward to Finland and Poland, a proposal that is certain to rattle the Kremlin and would cut strike times down from hours to minutes.
Nuclear weapons are currently hosted in Italy, Germany and the Netherlands — bases chosen in the Cold War when they sat just 150 miles from the Soviet front line. But Russia’s front line has now moved 800 miles east.
He made a similar call for nuclear capabilities to be placed in South Korea. Washington periodically deploys U.S. nuclear-armed submarines to South Korea and involves Seoul in its nuclear planning operations in exchange for an agreement from Seoul not to develop its own nuclear weapons.