US STRATCOM boss Air Force Gen. Kevin Chilton said there are positive side effects to rehabilitating the nuclear warhead arsenal. (See above) He proposes making the warheads physically larger than those now in the inventory and of such a design that they would be doubly hard for a terrorist to steal and, if stolen, wouldn’t work. Also, if the US fails to maintain the credibility of its nuclear forces, those under the US nuclear umbrella who have never built their own such weapons, such as Japan, might feel compelled to do so. Rebuilding a warhead-making capability thus discourages proliferation, Chilton asserted during AFA’s Air Warfare Symposium in Orlando.
The defense intelligence community has tried three times in the past decade to build a “common intelligence picture”—a single data stream providing the information that commanders need to make decisions about the battlefield. The first two attempts failed. But officials say things are different today.