Sea, Land, Air, and NC3: Modernizing the Whole Nuclear Enterprise

This transcript is from a CSIS event hosted on November 19, 2024. Watch the full video here.

Clayton Swope: Hello. My name is Clayton Swope. I am the deputy director of the Aerospace Security Project here at CSIS. I want to welcome everyone, thank everyone for joining us today in person and online.

Today’s event is called “Sea, Land, Air, and NC3: Modernizing the Whole Nuclear Enterprise.” Today we have two parts of the event.

Part one is a conversation with General Anthony Cotton, commander of U.S. Strategic Command, and that is moderated by Kari Bingen, the director of the Aerospace Security Project. The discussion will focus on modernization of U.S. strategic forces and current and future threats facing the United States.

Part Two is a panel to discuss bringing perspectives from folks who have served in government and industry, moderated by Heather Williams, the director of the Project on Nuclear Issues at CSIS. This panel will focus on NC3 modernization initiatives and discuss the important role that NC3 plays in the nuclear triad.

Finally, before turning the microphone over to Kari, I want to quickly thank the support of Lockheed Martin Space for helping make today’s event possible, and also point out that we will be taking audience questions for both parts of the event. Questions can be asked through the QR code up here and on the pieces of paper on the chairs for the live audience, and also through a link on the event page.

With that, I’ll turn it over to Kari.

Kari A. Bingen: Great. Thanks, Clayton. Welcome, everybody.

It is such a privilege to welcome General Tony Cotton here today. He is the commander of U.S. Strategic Command. It’s rare to have a public dialogue like this with the commander, so we’re really honored to have you today here.

Nuclear deterrence is once again in the headlines, but in many ways, the challenges before us are different and more complex than during the Cold War. So we’ll have a wide-ranging conversation on the changing strategic environment and how STRATCOM is posturing to meet those challenges.

When talking about U.S. nuclear forces, we tend to focus on the triad: the submarines, the ICBMs, the bombers. But we’ll also focus today on that fourth leg of the triad that’s less talked about, but equally important, NC3: nuclear command, control and communications. General Cotton is steeped in these issues, and I couldn’t envision anyone better to be sitting in the chair that he’s in today. From his first assignment in the Air Force as a missile combat crew commander at Minot Air Force Base, he has spent his career working across nuclear, space, intelligence fields, in operations, planning and policy development. Prior to STRATCOM, he was the commander of the 20th Air Force, responsible for our nation’s ICBMs; the Deputy Director of the National Reconnaissance Office; commander of Air Force Global Strike Command, where he had responsibility for all of the Air Force’s nuclear forces; and also commander and president of Air University. We are fortunate, and I’ve been fortunate to see firsthand his leadership, his inquisitiveness, and his thoughtfulness on these issues. Our next generation of nuclear scholars here at CSIS have also benefited from General Cotton’s mentorship as he’s engaged with them.

So we’ll have about a 30-minute moderated Q&A here. I would encourage audience questions via the QR code. And then for folks online, you can go to our website, where the event page is and click to submit a question. And then I’ll shift to audience questions.

So, General Cotton, my first question for you really focuses on the strategic environment. Baseline us on the changes in the strategic environment. You’ve talked about China’s breakout advances, China, Russia developing a whole range of new weapons. They’re expanding their nuclear infrastructure. What are both doing and why? What are you watching for and what are you particularly concerned about?

General Anthony J. Cotton: Yeah, thanks, Kari.

You know, I think, fundamentally, the first thing that we need to kind of set aside is, you know, most folks that have ever heard me speak, they recognize that I hate the term Cold War 2.0, and the reason I hate the term Cold War 2.0, because I think it oversimplifies the geopolitical environment that we’re currently in. I think there’s an interweaving of not only military power, economic power, financial power, you name it, that’s all interwoven into what we’re seeing in the geopolitical environment today, but there is a scattering of influencing that’s coming from third-party nations, and we can talk a little bit about that. That may not necessarily be something that’s limited to the PRC and/or the Russian Federation, right?

As we look at the environment today, the environment today that that I pay attention to and provide a daily update to the secretary of Defense is Russian Federation, PRC, Iran, DPRK, and then all others that are happening, because what we’re finding is, I think days are gone in respect to just seeing things from a global combatant command perspective. I think whether it’s my fellow combatant commanders that are responsible for a regional location that at the end of the day all 11 of us play together and have to come together and collaborate on what kind of effects do we want to establish?

So you were talking about, you know, what’s different and what does it look like today. So today I have some bombers that are sitting supporting Erik Karilla in the CENTCOM AOR. Today I work hand-in-hand with Admiral Sam Paparo regarding relationships that we have with the Republic of Korea and Japan, as well as understanding what’s going on within the PRC in that AOR, and I have relationships in regards of what our bomber forces can do to have extended deterrence with our allies and partners in that AOR.

In the EUCOM AOR with what’s going on with the illegal invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation, I have dialogue with General Chris Cavoli, who is SACEUR/EUCOM commander, in regards to not only the Ukrainian conflict but the entire European region, his AOR.

And then a daily relationship with my dear friend, General Greg Guillot, who is the NORTHCOM commander. Why is that important? That’s important because my forces, and the way I flow forces for STRATCOM, all of my forces are in the homeland. You know, whether it’s the submarines that are coming out of the coasts or whether it’s the bombers that are in Barksdale or Minot, or whether it’s our ICBM fields that are in the northern part of the United States, all that is now – I would say, you know, you have to pay attention, because I don’t know that that we have sanctuary in the continental United States anymore, and how do we think about that differently, as opposed to the way we thought about it in the past, when I was at second lieutenant that was pulling crew in Minot, North Dakota.

So all of that, you know, kind of coalesced together. And absolutely right; we talk about the triad. But I think foundational to the triad is NC3. And you know, the ability for me to force direct, the ability for me to be able to have think com communication with the president of the United States, as well as my forces are incredibly important, and that is the bastion, to be frank, of not only strategic deterrence and nuclear deterrence, but even the rest of those combatant commanders that I mentioned are relying on those kind of communications with their forces as well.

Ms. Bingen: What I’m struck by everything that you just laid out with all the combatant commands that you’re working with on a daily basis, you know, yes, we’re now talking about a Russia and a China that may have or exceed the United States in nuclear parity. You mentioned Iran, North Korea. So there’s a simultaneity of challenges now that you have to deal with. We read the headlines this morning, and there’s discussion about how Russia has changed its nuclear doctrine and is lowering its threshold for nuclear use. So there’s a lot happening, and this is a very dynamic environment right now. How is that changing what STRATCOM does, how you approach your mission, your operational tempo? Strikes me that it is very different from before.

Gen. Cotton: Yeah, it is, but it isn’t. It’s just that people are paying attention now, right? I think that’s fundamentally what’s different. And I’d love to be able to maybe even talk about nuclear IQ later, if we can. But the fact of the matter is, you know, guess who gets to play and have actually 51 percent of a deterrence vote. It’s the adversary, right? So what’s incredibly important is understanding and being able to, as required, hold adversaries at risk so that they understand that today is not the day, right? It’s, it’s coercion and compellence. So that’s what’s incredibly important for us.

I think when we had the conversations during the Cold War – here I am bringing it up – what made that unique and different was a couple of things. I think the population kind of understood what, you know, their definition of what an adversary was and what an ally was. I think when you looked and saw the former Soviet Union at that time and the Warsaw Pact at that time, it was pretty easy to kind of understand.

But I think the biggest one, Kari, was the decoupling of economic influence from the Warsaw Pact of the Cold War, as compared to the interaction of economies across the world to include, like, for example, PRC. You know, we import a lot of Chinese products, right? So that makes the whole dynamic a little different than it was in the past.

Now, as we look to when we see adversaries and how they behave, and what my role is for the Secretary is, you know, through my different means of being able to collect, we have a team that makes an analysis in regards of risk to strategic deterrence failure and where we stand. And I provide that to the secretary in person once a week, and through other means many other times a week, as well as the chairman. So, you know, pretty interesting work and important work that we do that’s a little different than even other combatant commanders, because my responsibility is for the strategic picture, not necessarily a regional one.

Ms. Bingen: Well, and I want to pick up on your comment on nuclear IQ a bit. I do worry fewer policymakers, members of Congress, and even the American public understand the role of nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence to our security. So if I can maybe back up a bit and have you baseline us on why do we even need nuclear weapons? Why are they important to our security, and how do they deter hostile actions?

Gen. Cotton: Yes, no, I think, you know, so for the United States, nuclear deterrence is actually the baseline strategy of national security for us of which all other national security imperatives are wrapped around, right? And the fact that adversaries, you know, don’t cross thresholds because they understand of where we are in our abilities and capabilities, is a deterrent.

What’s hard for folks to understand that that haven’t participated in strategic deterrence theory conversations in probably over 30 years, is the reality that you don’t have to use a weapon for it to be a deterrent. And that’s sometimes hard for folks to understand.

And then the other piece on the IQ piece is – and you’re absolutely right. You know, I often will tell folks to, hey, raise your hand if you’ve been in government or in the Department of Defense less than 25 years, right? And so by definition – and I see there’s some retired folks here – by definition, that’s probably all the colonels and below, right? And then guess what? Ninety five percent of them raise their hand.

So what does that mean? That means that they have never worn the uniform when there was active aggression from the former Soviet Union or the Russian Federation before the wall came down. So that means, by definition, they have no idea what it is to fight a peer adversary, right? I mean – and not their fault, but that’s not the world that they grew up in, because the world we grew up in was post 9/11 world we grew up in, where it was a counter terrorism, VEO fight that we were dealing with.

So what’s the big difference with that? A heck of a lot of difference. The big difference is the VEO threat and the counterterrorism threat isn’t existential to our nation. It could be painful. It was painful. Not existential, right? The understanding of, you know, what can a near peer, you know, what are their tactics and procedures as compared to, you know, a VEO threat – you know, air dominance, air superiority, electronic warfare, all of those kind of things. Was that ever something that anyone in CENTCOM AOR even thought about? Probably not. Is it something that this generation of leaders and future generations of leaders will have to think about in the next for decades to come? Absolutely, right? So, but foundational to that is the understanding of how do you then integrate and have the conversation, knowing that the adversary that you’re talking about is also a nuclear peer or near peer, right? So that’s a different discussion than trying to figure out what it is to fight against Taliban, ISIS, et cetera.

Ms. Bingen: And I don’t think folks realize, to your point, that the strength of our nuclear posture really informs the decisions we make on the conventional front.

Gen. Cotton: It absolutely does. It absolutely does, right? So for us, you know, when I first took over in December of 22, the first thing I did was wanted to understand the posture and alignment of the current force that we had, knowing that, for example, our modernization programs for the three legs of the triad was based on, you know, to be frank, the world environment of 2010, all right? So, you know, when we started talking about the nuclear modernization, that was in a 2010 time frame. Finally, kind of went, came over the hump in 2016, and we’ve been working it since about 2016. But the world has changed since then.

So the first thing I had to think about – and what was good was the Nuclear Posture Review gave me an inroad to be able to do that, because it specifically said to be able to look to see, you know, where is your posture, and is your posture correct, you know, with the current threats. And so we started looking at that right away, and we’re about two years into it, and there’s some folks in this room that have been part of helping us understand where we are when it comes in regards to sufficiency in our posture.

Ms. Bingen: Well, and exactly on that, so we have a nuclear force modernization program of record that’s been underway for many years, but it’s based on assumptions about the strategic environment from 2010.

Gen. Cotton: Correct.

Ms. Bingen: Fast forward 14 years as you’ve described, the world looks different. The challenges are different. We had a really strong bipartisan congressionally directed commission that looked at our strategic forces, and they called for urgent actions to modernize our strategic forces, and said that that program of record is necessary but not sufficient. So what are your thoughts on that, and then the actions or modifications needed going forward?

Gen. Cotton: Yeah, I think the first thing is what was said by the commission. And to be frank, I think the Secretary said the same thing. Fundamentally for me, as the one that will receive the forces that will be provided by my components, the program of record has to happen. We have to maintain the program of record. We have to modernize the three legs of the triad.

I’m sorry. I’ll say it on behalf of all the men and women who work this mission every single day. I’m sorry that we didn’t think about it 30 years ago to figure out how to phase out modernizing the three legs of the triad. But we didn’t. We made a decision, both sides of the aisle. We all made that. That was a political decision that was made. So here we are, right?

That being said, we must do everything in our power to make sure that we can modernize the current forces that we have. My bigger – not a challenge, but what I pay attention to every single day is understanding that I have a legacy system that can be maintained and sustained until the new, modernized systems also come online, because that’s just as important. Because I said it earlier. You know, part of deterrence is making sure that I have a safe, secure, reliable and credible deterrent force. And we do, by the way.

But that being said, Kari, I think one of the things that we need to do that’s a little different is part of understanding what does the program of record look like moving forward. We can’t think that we can be stagnant in just holding to just that and not having onramp and offramps to be able to see what the world is bringing us in the next 16 years and figure out how to do things much quicker, or have some alternatives to be able to add, to be able to produce an effect that my job is, is to be able to produce an effect, offer effects that meets, you know, the objectives of our president.

Ms. Bingen: And let’s talk then about that fourth leg of the triad, the NC3 modernization piece. And I mentioned in the outset, I think it’s easier for people to get their head around the triad, the bombers, the missiles, the submarines. But can you talk to us about NC3? I mean, the triad doesn’t work without those other systems that stitch it all together and allow the president to command the forces. So explain why they’re important, and what’s being done on that front.

Gen. Cotton: Yes, I mean, you know, there’s a decide piece. So NC3, you know, part of the architecture is really being able to feed into a machine, if you will. And what I mean by machine, it’s not a physical machine, but the capacity of being able to have things come for decision-makers, and the direct pieces is really important, because the direct piece is the ability for me, based off of the decisions that are made from policymakers and senior decision-makers, to reach out to the forces forward, right?

And then that other piece is to be able to make sure that I always as the person in my role that presents forces to the president of the United States nuclear forces have connectivity with the president of the United States at all times, right? So, you know that’s, in essence, what that is. You know, I always tell folks there’s three things that I want to be able to have, you know, nuclear officers be able to do: decide when something is valid, decide what that timing is, and also just understand, you know, that it’s authentic. And then finally, understand, if you know there was a termination message that came and said stop, right? It’s pretty much that simple: know when to shoot, know that that order was authentic, and know when to stop. And that’s what the NC3 does for us.

And my God, you know, I thank God for the men and women who were at the forefront of designing a system as robust that we currently have, you know, from decades ago that is still a very robust system, but then understanding that it’s time to modernize with some 21st century capabilities to ensure that that we can always maintain those three things.

Ms. Bingen: Well, and talk about what that modernization looks like. Your predecessor had testified that the NC3 enterprise is composed of something like over 200 individual elements, and I just think from my time in the department that’s spread across services, agencies. How do you with your enterprise responsibility get a hold of all of these different pieces, especially when no one likes to fund integration, so modernization, as well as how do you think about the integration?

Gen. Cotton: Yeah, I think the first part of it – and you’re right, it’s kind of interesting, because you mentioned, you know, in my bio, that, you know, previous to this job, I was the commander of Global Strike Command. So being the commander of Global Strike Command, guess what? I was responsible for about 68 percent of the NC3 architecture, because about 68 percent of it lies within the Air Force Service.

What was difficult about it was explaining it. And you’re right, it was, you know, over 200 and, you know, five systems. And being able to kind of articulate what you want it – you know what it is, what you want it to be midterm, and what you want it to be long term, I think that was part of my challenge as a service component that’s presenting that force to then Admiral Richard. And then when I became the commander of STRATCOM, you know, I was able to kind of watch what you ask, right? You’ve have the former component commander now being in charge. I understood the frustration of the service components.

So the first thing we want to do is lay out the current architecture and then build a road map on what you want the midterm and future architecture to look like, right? I mean, it’s kind of basic acquisition modeling, right? So that’s what we did, because, you know, that’s where we kind of faltered in the modernization aspect of how to mature and build out the next generation of NC3. It was really hard to convince folks that, well, wait, it works now, so why do you need it repaired? Well, what do you need to do to modernize it for, for tomorrow? Well, it’s almost like every – now it does go back to the other legs of the triad. Those all work too.

But you know, how many out there own Teslas? I’m in the D.C. area, so I’m pretty sure someone has a Tesla. See, I had one person raise their hand. Or who has an EV at all? Anybody have an EV? Ah, there we go.

So, so if you kind of think about it, you know, when I think about the three legs of the triad and the modernization of the triad, you know, one of the things that I always – is the men and women who are sustaining that platform every single day, right? So, if you own a current EV, and all you need is, you know, your big plug, you know, in your garage, and that’s basically all you do – Or even if you own an ICE, right, an internal combustion engine car of this generation, you know, guess what you don’t do, right? You don’t do points, plugs, condenser, because half of you don’t even know what a carburetor is, right? So you don’t have to do that kind of work, right? The car automatically, you know, will kind of understand where something’s going a little bit wrong and it’s self-diagnosed and it self-heals. You know, a car of the ’60s won’t do that. So guess what? A weapon system of the ’60s doesn’t do that either, and it just puts a lot of burden, you know, on the men and women that sustain those systems every single day.

So that’s part of the equation that we always have to pay attention to as well, because I was the organize, train, and equip guy, and I know the hours and hours and hours of men and women that are on the bomber side of the house or the ICBM side of the house. Oh, by the way, as STRATCOM commander now I get a good sense of what my SSBN forces are doing too. Now they are incredible men and women. That makes it so it’s still safe, secure, effective and incredibly credible systems. But I think we can do better, right? And the same can be said when it comes to the NC3 enterprise as well.

Ms. Bingen: So I’m going to start weaving in some questions from the audience, because they’re touching on subjects that I want to touch on. I do want to ask my staff, though, if you can help me, because I’m not getting all of the questions coming up here on the iPad.

We do have one from one of our junior nuclear scholars, Lachlan Mackenzie, who asks: How is STRATCOM cooperating with the services, other combat commands, and industry to implement NC3 modernization, and what are those coordination and integration challenges that you face in those areas?

Gen. Cotton: Yeah, so – and Kari, I think you were actually part of this. If you recall, one of the first things I did was I wanted to understand the 110 folks who thought they had a vote in NC3, right, across the department and actually across government. So you know? And what I said was, well, I want a summit. I don’t want a conference. I want a summit. Remember that? And I said, what I want is, if you can’t be a decision-maker for the person that you’re representing of all 110 of you, I don’t want you here in Omaha, because we’re going to make decisions on what we’re going to do moving forward.

So that’s when we first introduced the roadmap, if you recall. And one of the things is, you know, being a guy who actually walked the halls of the Pentagon, I immediately knew that part of the problem was it wasn’t based on POM, right? So it wasn’t based on five-year epochs, which that’s all the Pentagon thinks about, right, is five-year epics to read that FYDP, right? So for a service, they needed to understand. So what are you talking about? Are you talking about we need to fund something to modernize something in this FYDP, the next FYDP, or the one after that? You know, what are you talking about? So we were able to talk in a language, and we were collaborated to make sure that we had common vocabulary – seems strange, but welcome to a bureaucracy – a common vocabulary in order in which we can then better articulate what the requirements would be.

And then I did those in three phases. I wanted the roadmap to talk about near term. So basically, what needs to be done to fight tonight? What needs to be done in the next five years? And then, to be frank, anything after that is long-range planning, right, in the eyes of the department, right? So that’s future. That’s next gen-type of stuff.

The big thing that we incorporated was R&E. Incorporating R&E to work with my NC3 Enterprise Center was key.

And then the other piece that was key was a collaboration that we had with our FFRDCs to make sure – to kind of grade our homework a little bit.

And then finally was it couldn’t just be General Cotton. It had to be General Cotton. It had to be Admiral Aquilino. It had to be General Cavoli. It had to be General Kurilla. Because like I said in the opening, it’s all about the strategic picture that can actually still drive my response, but my fellow combatant commanders that were geographic combat commanders and other AORs need to be power brokers and cheerleaders and advocates as well. And so we spent a lot of time doing that, and I think we got there actually.

Ms. Bingen: I think you are.

Okay, NC3 and AI, Artificial Intelligence. You talked last month in a speech that AI had a role to play in increasing the safety and resilience of NC3 systems, but emphasized that a human would always be in the loop on decision-making. President Biden, President Xi also talked about it this weekend and issued a joint statement.

So I’m going to bundle a couple of questions here, one from another one of our CSIS nuclear scholars, Diya Ashtakala, who says: Talk about the role of AI in the nuclear mission overall in NC3 and how you think about balancing AI integration with human decision-making. And it was a similar question from Professor Larafi as well.

Gen. Cotton: Yeah. So I’ll start with the bottom line up front. The bottom line up front, because, you know, when I spoke, even, you know, last month that, you know, got some feedback and like, oh my god, I think I read one where, you know, Cotton, you know, just wants AI to make the decision nuclear – that’s absolutely not what I said, but that’s how it was interpreted, somehow.

But here’s what I really mean. If we think that United States Strategic Command can’t take advantage of artificial intelligence to preserve the terabytes of data that would otherwise hit the floor and still do things the old fashioned way as far as not decision-making, but planning efforts, efficiencies, then we might as well move out of the beautiful building we have and just go into something that has rotary phones. I mean, that’s what I mean. What I mean is, take advantage of the efficiencies that are gained for the men and women that are nugging it out, but at the same time, losing the ability to potentially utilize additional information because they just don’t have the throughput to be able to kind of figure out how to utilize some of that information.

Then why not at that point then introduce the data that’s validated data that comes from someone that can kind of help us in my planning shop, for example? You know, if I fundamentally just say it this way, I much rather have an opportunity if asked, you know, by the president – for example, the president says, well, here’s what I want you to do, I’d much rather say, well, Mr. President, hold on. I’ll get back to you in a couple of hours, and we’ll talk about how we can execute that. You know, it would be much nicer for me to be able to kind of go, yes, Mr. President, give me a couple of minutes and we’ll come back to you with some options. That’s what I’m talking about, right?

And here’s my little joke for today. So I think most of you may not recognize this movie. Anyone watched the movie “War Games”? Okay, right? First of all, Cheyenne Mountain doesn’t look like that, because I was there working for General Kehler. But you know, in “War Games,” it has this machine called the WOPR. So the WOPR actually was that AI machine that everyone is scared about. And guess what? We do not have, you know, a WOPR at STRATCOM headquarters, nor would we ever have a WOPR in STRATCOM headquarters. That’s not what I’m talking about. What I’m talking about is how do I get and become efficient on ISR products, you know? How do I get, you know, efficient on understanding what’s the status of my forces? You know, those are things that AI and machine learning can absolutely help us and really shave a lot of time off on being able to do those type of things. But it’s not about, you know, having a machine present forces to the president United States. It’s just the opposite of that.

Ms. Bingen: Well, and what I don’t think folks fully appreciate is there’s so much to your mission beyond I’ll say the nuclear button.

Gen. Cotton: Absolutely right.

Ms. Bingen: And there are so many I’ll say mundane, kind of labor intensive things, where having this kind of technology could be so beneficial to your mission and your day-to-day job.

Gen. Cotton: It is. Very much more efficient.

Ms. Bingen: But also, because of the nuclear responsibility that you have, there is going to be a higher bar assigned to STRATCOM than maybe other combatant commands when it comes to integrating AI into your nuclear mission. So how do you think about the department’s broader tenants on responsible AI, some of the legal, ethical test evaluation kind of dimensions to this?

Gen. Cotton: No, I mean, we’re running in line with that. Matter of fact, that’s one of the first – you know, I think I was probably one of the first combatant commanders to literally write a, you know, authoritative document describing, you know, what the do’s and don’ts are in regards to my command and how we prosecute AI in the future. I mean, it is – and I do not take it lightly that what I’m responsible for is a little different than what other combatant commanders are responsible for. I absolutely take it incredibly seriously, and so does the men and women of my team understand, understanding that we’re responsible for crown jewels of this nation, in regards of nuclear weapons.

Ms. Bingen: Well, and let me shift here to allies and partners. Can you talk a bit about the how we coordinate with our allies and partners in the field of NC3? And then I’ll talk extended deterrence.

Gen. Cotton: Yeah, so for NC3, it really is not – the NC3 system itself is not a system that is that is shared with allies and partners in its current form. What I would tell you about allies and partners and what I think there’s some great collaboration and work that’s moving forward, is our relationship in understanding the conventional nuclear integration aspects of our relationships that we have with allies and partners across the world. I think the NCG, the Nuclear Consultative Group with the Republic of Korea is one aspect of that, and that relationship that I have through INDOPACOM and the combined forces commander/USFK commander is one that is incredibly key for that extended deterrence relationship. The same can be said with the Japanese that are there.

I think when you go to the other AOR in EUCOM and SAC AOR, the relationship that we have there, I obviously go through EUCOM Commander/SACEUR with my relationship with NATO, and I think we have a burgeoning relationship on what is the art of the possible of even non-nuclear nations in supporting some of my mission set, especially when it comes to like support apparatus, right?

The relationship that we have with the United Kingdom, for example, is a very special one. The relationship that we have with Australia, the relationship that we have with France who is a nuclear power, but, you know, we understand what deterrence means for the French Republic, for example. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t get assistance from a conventional means, from our allies and partners. And we’ve been working that for the last two years that I’ve been there. Whether it’s T-tails, you know, so that’s C-17, C-17 equivalents, to move things forward, whether it’s tankers, et cetera, et cetera, those are things that a lot of our allies and partners actually can help me and help my mission set in that is not necessarily having to have a nuclear weapon to be able to help do the mission set that’s at hand.

Ms. Bingen: Yeah, and on the point of extended deterrence, another aspect of overall nuclear deterrence that maybe isn’t fully appreciated is this concept of extended deterrence and the premise that our allies don’t develop their own nuclear arsenals in exchange for us extending our nuclear umbrella to them. But with many of the threats that we’ve discussed, it has been striking to me to see our allies in Japan and South Korea discussing their nuclear options, and even more openly than maybe in the past.

Gen. Cotton: Yes.

Ms. Bingen: So how do you look at this? Do our allies, do they still have confidence in our nuclear umbrella? What are they sharing with you? And then if I compare that with a question from Dan Wang at DTRA, so how does STRATCOM engage with our allies to strengthen assurance but then also prevent proliferation?

Gen. Cotton: Yeah, so I’ll answer that question. You know, first is constant engagement. You know, the relationship we have, LNO from the Republic of Korea, that’s at STRATCOM. We have an LNO from Japan. That’s STRATCOM. Like I said, I always go back to the relationship and collaboration I have with my INDOPACOM brother Admiral Paparo and the relationship that I have with General LaCamera in regards to that extended deterrence.

You know, the Busan Port visit was a good example of extended deterrence, because that was an assurance and deterrence mission. Our bomber Task Force, our assurance and deterrence missions I think are beneficial and helpful. I think my counterparts in the Korean Peninsula absolutely understand it will be there for them – at least I hope they continue to believe that too, because we’ll be there for them. But that relationship and being able to have the collaboration between not only the ROK, but combined operations that we’re seeing exercises between ROK and Japan has been incredibly beneficial as well.

Ms. Bingen: And then you mentioned the conventional piece. Looking at that conventional and nuclear relationship, and even I’ll say intra war deterrence, how do you ensure that a conventional conflict doesn’t then cross the line into nuclear? How do you see that relationship between conventional nuclear forces, especially in the context of a two peer challenge? But then maybe, what are some of the lessons that you’re learning from Ukraine? We see in Russia, they saber rattled back in 2022, they’re frankly doing it again now.

Gen. Cotton: Yes.

Ms. Bingen:

 Perhaps what they’re doing with their space based nuclear anti-satellite weapon. What do you see as that conventional-nuclear relationship?

Gen. Cotton: Yeah, so it’s incredibly important. So one of the things that we spend a lot of time on is ensuring that – you know, I think gone are the days of, well, we won’t think about it, because it’ll never happen, right? I think, you know, we have two adversaries that have the capacity, whether they’re peer or near peer. I think nuclear weapons are foundational to their national strategy. You know, we say it’s foundational to ours.

But what is important for me is to be able to, in the interwar periods, understand how, you know, what do we do conventionally actually, one, first, to prevent conflict at all, but two, if not, to make it so it would never go to vertical escalation, where it would cross a threshold against peers that are nuclear near peers.

Ms. Bingen: So I have a few questions here on the cost of nuclear modernization writ large.

Gen. Cotton: It’s a bargain.

Ms. Bingen: Well, and I want you to tease that out for me. I mean, I’ve seen reports that talk about we’ll be spending $1 trillion over the next 30 years, but let’s break it down into what that looks like. Yeah, can America afford these modernization programs and is that a dollar taken away from conventional force modernization?

Gen. Cotton: Yeah, so from my perspective, it’s 4 percent of the defense budget, and it’s 4 percent of a defense budget that extends 30 years. So when you think about – and we’re not talking about one leg. We’re talking the entire three legs of the triad getting modernized. I think when you put it in that perspective, it comes out to be, you know, not cost prohibitive by any stretch of imagination.

You know, like I said earlier, is, yeah, you know, should we have, you know, phased out and built out and, you know, modernized the triad in phases? Absolutely. You know, would it have had less sticker shock? Absolutely. Are we at a point now where we just, we need to modernize all three legs of the triad? Absolutely, right? So I don’t want to mess up the quote from former Secretary Mattis, but you know, I think we can afford survival.

Ms. Bingen: That’s well said.

Another question here, also from a CSIS junior scholar, Catherine Murphy: How is STRATCOM evaluating the post-Cold War landscape with multiple nuclear capable adversaries, regarding the norms and understandings around interference with NC3 systems? I mean, back in the Cold War days, there was this mutual understanding, you don’t touch our missile warning satellites, our communication satellites. Do you think Beijing would adhere to these principles?

Gen. Cotton: Well, at least I would hope they would, right? I would love to have a dialogue with my counterparts in the PRC to have an understanding of, you know, what are some of the lines you don’t want to cross. But that being said, one of the things we’re also doing – and I failed to mention Tim Haugh, the commander of CYBERCOM and DIRNSA, in regards to the things that as we talk about NC3, understanding that you have adversaries that would look at it maybe a little differently than the understood, you know, norms of the Cold War that we’re building in being able to, you know, do the sensoring and the monitoring and understanding, you know, if, in fact, we would have an adversary that tried to do exactly just that.

Ms. Bingen: I’m going to try this question. We’ll see what you’re able to say. This is from Sarah Salem at The Exchange Monitor: The Pentagon just sent a report to Congress about the administration’s nuclear employment guidance. Will there be a hearing on this unclassified document? And what can you share about it? What can we expect from this as we look to a new administration?

Gen. Cotton: Yeah, so as far as hearings, I have no idea if there will be a hearing on it or not. Will it be something that I’ll probably have conversations with my posture hearings, you know, in the March time frame, if that stays in alignment with it has in the past? Probably so. It really is in alignment with what I had mentioned earlier, and that’s the fact that the day I took command, we started to look at posture to see if we’re sitting in the right spots.

I did see the unclassed report and it’s pretty much in alignment with the Strategic Posture Commission’s reports, and the reality is that we are going to have to seriously look to see if we can – if we have the sufficiency with the current forces to be able to hold two adversaries plus third parties at risk. So I look forward to the conversations during hearing season.

Ms. Bingen: Well, if I can ask two more questions of you.

One, when I think about arms control, we have New START that expires in 2026.

Gen. Cotton: February, not that I know.

Ms. Bingen: Yeah, around the corner. China has declined arms control talks with the United States.

Gen. Cotton: Yes.

Ms. Bingen: So as a combatant commander, how are you preparing for this era without arms control? What does it mean for your intelligence needs in your overall posture and capability requirements?

Gen. Cotton: Well, I mean, if you look at the Federation, heck, you know, they have over 1,500 weapons, if not more, that aren’t under New START today. So from an operational perspective, you know, we are paying attention to that today.

I think at the end of the day, Kari, what it really means is, I take the objectives of the president, and if those objectives change with the new administration, I take those objectives and I present options on the capabilities to be able to give an effect on those objectives that the president would want me to be able to accomplish. At that point in time, the decision-maker will say, well, will we accept risk there or not? And if the answer is we don’t accept risk, then we’ll look at what does the configuration need to look like in regards to be able to hold all those objectives and have the effects that the president is expecting from me. If they’re willing to accept risk, then it’s my job to then be truthful and kind of go, okay, here’s what you’re not going to get, you know, Mr. President, if that’s what you’re wanting to do. And then it’s the president’s role, obviously, to then say, yep, I’m willing to accept that risk on behalf of the nation.

Ms. Bingen: My last question, I’m going to make it a two-parter.

Gen. Cotton: Okay.

Ms. Bingen: One is you themed this year your year of action at STRATCOM. So what should we expect to see?

And then last thoughts, I want to go back to where we started, which is really on nuclear IQ. And what do you want young scholars thinking about? How do we convince them to work in this field, and what is that strategic thinking you really need out of not just the next generation, but scholars, practitioners in the field? What do you need out of them going forward?

Gen. Cotton: Yeah, so we’ll start, and then I’ll ask you to repeat the first question.

Let’s start with the last one. You know, what we need is, while we are able to kind of dust off, you know, nuclear theorist of the ’50s and the ’60s, and there’s incredible pertinent information that’s in there, what does the new generation – you know, what kind of conversations do we have in that dialogue in understanding the other nuances that I told you that were a little different than what we saw in third-war theory determination? And that is the interweaving of potential adversaries, even in day-to-day, you know, things that that not only we, but allies and partners, you know, their relationships with folks where we didn’t even – we just didn’t recognize or see that during the Cold War, because that didn’t exist, right?

You know, I don’t think anybody wanted to drive, you know, a(n) Eastern Bloc car, right? So we never had to worry about one, you know, being delivered to the United States, or anything. There was nothing economically that the Eastern Bloc could offer the West, right?

But that is not the case today. So then, how do you theorize that interweaving of national interests that would be different, even amongst fellow, you know, Western-minded folks, right? When there’s an economic interweaving, you know, that then drives a national interest that might be different, right, even when they’re even when they’re allies and partners. I mean, I think that’s a different thinking that is worth looking at very seriously.

Then the first part?

Ms. Bingen: So last words from you tied to –

Gen. Cotton: IQ?

Ms. Bingen: – this is your year of action.

Gen. Cotton: Oh, year of action.

Ms. Bingen: What should we be looking for?

Gen. Cotton: So year two was the year of action. The year one was re-baselining. Year two was year of action. I’m a kind of guy who I don’t like to just – I don’t like studying things to death. You know, I just behave. I think the way we prove things out is we show and then we can kind of do some course corrections, if required, on certain aspects of things. So that was year of action.

The third year is acceleration. Because the reality is we’re in a transition. The administration is going to transition. We’re in the middle of that, regardless of who the winner was going to be. I keep telling my folks, to your point, I think there’s a lot of folks that don’t understand strategic theory and strategic deterrence. So I’m a realist. I’m going to spend six months doing that. I have one year left, right? So, but I think it’s important enough for myself and my organization to spend that six months to get it right – right? – to make it so decision-makers understand what this portfolio is, you know, who our adversaries are, especially that have that capability. And we only get to do that right once, right? And then after that, I just want to make sure that that I leave STRATCOM ready for the next person.

Ms. Bingen: Well, General cotton, thank you. This has been a really insightful discussion. As you said at the outset, a strong nuclear posture, nuclear forces really is the bedrock of our nation’s security. So thank you for everything that you’re doing.

Gen. Cotton: Thank you.

Ms. Bingen: Thank you for prioritizing NC3, and we’re very much lucky to have you in this job. Thank you, sir.

Gen. Cotton: Thank you so much. (Applause.)

(Break.)

Heather Williams: Thank you all so much for being part of this afternoon’s discussion with us. The goal of this panel, it is partially as a follow-on to General Cotton’s comments, so that we can do a bit of a deeper dive into some of those. But it’s also to put NC3 modernization into the wider context.

To state something that probably everyone in this room knows and hopefully agrees with, a credible nuclear deterrent relies on a credible NC3 system. I’ve heard the NC3 system referred to as the, quote, “central nervous system” of the nuclear triad. And the importance of NC3 modernization was really highlighted in the Strategic Posture Commission, in the Nuclear Posture Review. It just keeps coming up, the importance of NC3 modernization.

So for this panel, some of the questions that we’re going to get at, where does NC3 sit in relation to the wider nuclear modernization effort and modernization of the triad? What are some specific challenges for NC3 modernization? And then also, I think we will probably get a bit into AI integration. General Cotton had some really helpful remarks on that, which I think it would be useful to get after.

I would also just say when we were planning this event, we did not know when the nuclear employment guidance would come out, and we also did not think that Biden and Xi would release a statement or that they would talk about this issue, but all those things happened. And in both of those statements, they reaffirmed the importance of keeping a human in the loop in NC3 and in nuclear decision-making. And so the timing of today’s discussion, I think, is just really fortuitous, so that we can talk about what all that really means.

The way that this panel will go, each of the speakers will provide seven to 10 minutes of remarks. They’re going to address some of the broader questions that I just raised. But I have also asked each of them to address a really specific issue about NC3 and NC3 modernization.

And then we’re going to open it up for questions. Same format, please use the QR code, and I will track them from there.

So the speakers in the order in which we’ll go, we’ll first hear from General Robert Kehler, who is former U.S. STRATCOM commander; and then from Sarah Mineiro, who is a senior associate non-resident here with the aerospace program. And then lastly, we’re going to hear from Mike Drews, who is Vice President for Global situational awareness and NC3 advanced capabilities and mission strategy at Lockheed Martin.

But the goal of really being at the end of this – well, the goal is at the end we’re all better informed on NC3 and NC3 modernization, but also to have a bit of an interactive discussion. So I really do encourage folks to start thinking about questions and putting them into the QR code thing that we will do for that.

And so to get us started, I’m going to turn over to General Kehler. But first I’m going to slightly embarrass you just a little bit. General Kehler has been a really fantastic supporter of the PONI program, which has a really big next generation component. And he took a couple hours out of his day – I think was in April, maybe – to have an evening chat with our nuclear scholars cohort specifically on this issue. And he walked through with them this is what nuclear decision-making actually looks like, here’s the amount of time required. And it was such a fantastic discussion. I think that I’ve called on you multiple times since to do a repeat and so he’ll be touching on some of those topics now. But just really appreciate your support for PONI, for next-gen issues, and look forward to your remarks.

So, General Kehler, get us started.

General (Ret.) C. Robert Kehler: Well, thanks. It’s always entertaining to be the retired commander and follow the actual commander of STRATCOM. And I was in the back. I didn’t hear all of his remarks. I was in the back listening very carefully to what he was saying, and I’m glad to report to you in advance that I’m going to say a lot of the same things that he said. So I would be very concerned if I was sitting here thinking, gee, I was going to say something completely different.

So let me begin by trying to put a little context around the conversation. You’ve already heard a lot today about this, but, you know, we use NCCS, NC2, and NC3 almost synonymously, and they are not. So we have a nuclear command and control system that includes command and control and command, control, and supporting communications. They are all part of a great, bigger whole.

But what you need to know about the nuclear command and control system and our nuclear command system is a couple of important attributes. One attribute – and General Cotton said both of these – one attribute is human beings are in the loop all the time. Human beings make the decisions.

Which leads to point number two. Nothing happens automatically. The Soviets and the Russians for years have sort of slyly intimidated that they have something called the Dead Hand system. And there’s always a question about, do they have it? Do they not have it? But they claim that they have an automatic system that if they are decapitated or certain elements of their structure go away, that things would happen automatically. That is not what we believe. I mean, we may believe that about them. That is not the way we view nuclear command and control.

The other piece to nuclear command and control that you need to remember is that we – well, Peter Feaver, a professor at Duke University, says this the best: The policymakers over the years have placed three requirements on the nuclear command and control apparatus, and they can be described in four words: “always,” “never,” and “civilian control.”

So always means nuclear weapons must always be available for the president to use if needed. Never means they can never be used inadvertently or by accident or in an unauthorized way. And civilian control means that in our system, we have placed authority to use these weapons in our highest elected official, and that’s the president of the United States. And for decades, a succession of presidents have claimed that they have sole authority to order the use of nuclear weapons. People have said to me, when I was still wearing a uniform, well, you’re not even in the nuclear chain of command. And that’s not true. I was in the chain of command all the time as a commander. What I never had was the authority to order the use of the weapons.

That issue, by the way, came up four years ago about sole authority, and we may be hearing that again. Who knows as time passes here. But I think it’s an interesting question. It’s really an Article I versus Article II of the Constitution issue. Executive and legislative branches have struggled for, let me think, since ratification of the Constitution about how much authority a president really has as commander in chief. And I think it’s an interesting question. It bears on this set of issues, though, because if you add more people at the top who have to be in the decision process, then that puts additional demand on the NC3 system.

For example, if we want to add somebody at the very top – by the way, everybody below the level of the president falls under the two person control aspects, which is not authority; that’s process. Command Authority is what we’re talking about here. It’s command authority, authority of the commander in chief to order use of nuclear weapons.

And it’s an interesting question. I don’t know what the answer to it is. But Congress and the executive need to hammer that out if they have disagreements over all of that, and so we’ll see whether that happens.

The other question about two-person control at levels below also places an interesting burden on our nuclear command and control system, because the third big attribute is it must always be available for use through any set of circumstances. So now think about this. If somebody said to you, here’s a set of requirements for you. Got to be a human in the loop, nothing can happen automatically, and it must always be available and capable of carrying out its mission regardless of the circumstances surrounding it. Floods, fires, attacks, terrorists, doesn’t matter. All of that still needs to connect the president to his advisers and the people who need to be in that decision process with him, and it needs to connect him all the time with the forces.

The other big difference here for nuclear command and control is this authority to use the weapons, employ them in combat that would come directly from the president, doesn’t then get passed to the commander of STRATCOM, who passes it to the commander of a numbered Air Force, who passes that to a crew member on the flight line. It goes direct to the forces. We do not do that with conventional forces.

So if we are executing a conventional war plan, what happens is, the president says, here’s an order, go do this, hands that over to the secretary of Defense, the secretary of Defense hands that to a combatant commander, who then passes it down, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. That’s not the way we do nuclear command and control.

So those are the kinds of requirements we’re talking about. If the president ever orders the use of nuclear weapons, he doesn’t say, okay, military, go ahead and use whatever ones you want, however you want to do it. Tell me how it went. That’s not the way it works. He will order the use of a specific number of weapons, for a specific amount of time, for a specific set of purposes. Everything else remains under what we call positive control of the president.

So that’s the system that we have turned to our colleagues in industry and said, by the way, do that in the face of unprecedented cyber threats, in the face of unprecedented physical threats to the networks, et cetera, and we’re going to hand you something, as you heard General Cotton say, that literally, we are going to get spare parts out of museums.

So here’s the good news. You don’t have to worry about a cyber threat to a lot of this. Here’s the bad news. You don’t have to worry about a cyber threat to a lot of this, which means that it is woefully behind.

And think about this for a minute. If you were a decision-maker right now, wouldn’t you expect that in this highly specialized, highly protected, highly guarded nuclear command and control system that we would give you the same kind of capabilities that I can go buy downtown for, you know, whatever these things cost now? Too much, but you get the point. You know, there’s a ton of information on here I can go find any time I want almost anywhere on the face of the planet. But we say to the president, I’m sorry, sir, you can only use this phone right here for this purpose, and then sorry, you’re out of luck. It’s all you can use.

So it’s not going to work that way. People expect that we’re going to have the kind of decision quality information and the kind of decision quality – especially in extremis, we’re going to have the kind of decision quality tools that are widely available now, and we come to expect. These are all requirements that we are placing on the nuclear command and control system.

And by the way, in my day as a second lieutenant, which was not during the War of 1812, so let me set that up front. But even then, we were sharing commercial pieces of the network. In Strategic Air Command, we sat in a missile launch control center, listening to the incessant crackle of some speakers that were called the primary alerting system. Turns out that the primary alerting system came over leased telephone lines.

So we say today, well, we ought to be able to use that commercial stuff. Wait a minute, you can’t do that for the following hundred reasons. It’s not true. We’ve used that stuff before, but the threat today would look a lot different. So how do we take advantage of the things that we need to take advantage of to improve decision-making and improve resilience and improve survivability, when, in fact, that brings with it certain kinds of threats that we haven’t had to deal with before? It’s an interesting set of challenges.

The final thing that I would just take a moment to chat about here is in the decision process, we have tended – well, let me back up for a second. One of the things that always used to make me unhappy as the commander of STRATCOM was when I would read or someone would say to me, you’re stuck in the Cold War. These STRATCOM guys are stuck in the Cold War. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

I think there are still a lot of people stuck in the Cold War, but I don’t think we have a new Cold War. I think the scenario that we face today is so different that Cold War thinking only takes us so far. There’s some stuff we need to bring forward from there, but we cannot think of where we are today as a new Cold War.

Nor should we be thinking that the scenarios we are most likely to face are the canonical Cold War scenarios. General cotton touched on this a little bit. We are facing two nuclear peers, two nuclear peers, one of which now has a nuclear-capable ally that has deployed combat forces to their home country. How will they behave in a future crisis, if we ever have one between us and the Russians? How will that ally of the Russians behave? How will the other uninvolved parties behave? Will they be opportunistic? How will they react? What demand signal does this place on our NC3 system?

And I think it is a set of concerns that we haven’t had before, and we still must deter what I think is the least likely scenario, but the Russians can still do a massive, short warning or no warning attack on the United States and destroy us over the course of the time that this seminar was going on. So must we deter that? Yes. But that cannot drive all of our thinking.

In the Cold War, we were driven by a sense of time urgency. That sense of time urgency still has to be there, but the most likely scenarios today for nuclear use, in my humble opinion – by the way, I represent nobody today; I should have said that at the beginning. I no longer represent the department or STRATCOM or the Air Force, or anybody else. I represent me. My opinion is the most likely scenario we will find for nuclear use is one that has grown out of a regional conflict, which says something also about nuclear command and control, and gets to the point that General Cotton was making about how do we view elements of the nuclear command and control system that we are using heavily for conventional purposes? How will an adversary view those? Is it realistic for us to say this is off limits for you? Sorry, our missile warning satellites can’t be used. It can’t be attacked by you. Okay. How about these high-capacity communication satellites, anti-jam, anti-spoofing, that kind of stuff? You’re using those for the conventional war. How about those? No, you can’t attack those either. Why not? Because we also use them for command and control for nuclear stuff.

So I think that’s a lift, by the way. I would like to see that happen, that we isolate some things and say, look, there are some parts of this that that are off limits because they are escalatory, perhaps. And I think we need to think our way through that. But realistically, is that possible? Well, I don’t know. I think we’re going to have to frame it correctly, and we’re going to have to make sure that we address those issues. So, you know, to quote Dorothy, we’re not in Kansas anymore regarding nuclear weapons, nuclear use, nuclear deterrents, the scenarios we might face, the most likely of them. The fact that we still have to be concerned about other things that are Cold War-ish, like a massive attack, how likely is that? I don’t know. A friend and a mentor of many of ours in this room, used to look at us and say where an enemy is concerned, you have to look at their intent and capability. Intent can change overnight. Capability cannot. And so if they have a lot of capability to attack us with no notice in a massive way, but they don’t have the intent to, you’ve got to deter the capability, and we’re going to have to continue to do that. They are the only nation right now that can attack us in a massive way and destroy us in basically the course of an afternoon. And no military person will accept that as acceptable risk. We must deter that. And so an NC3 system has to be able to do that as well as go through a crisis, a regional conflict, maybe a larger conventional conflict, and then up to what our policy people call extreme circumstances involving national interests, when we would be considering the use of nuclear weapons.

And with that, let me stop. And I’ll look forward to your questions.

Dr. Williams: Thank you, General Kehler.

Sarah, turning to you, I think General Kehler really nicely laid out the challenge, which is how to improve decision-making and survivability, leveraging new technologies, but while managing the associated risks with that. And so I wanted to make sure we capture that and put that out there, but we’ll turn it over to you for some thoughts and comments as well.

Sarah Mineiro: Yeah. I mean going off of the “Wizard of Oz” theme, if I only had a brain, I think I could figure this out, right? But there are tremendous and non-negotiable requirements about nuclear command and control up and down the chain. There’s also tremendous opportunity that American exceptionalism in our amazing technological ecosystem right now, our innovation base presents that can be used to better inform the decision-makers. And at the end of the day, so I’m a space nerd. I’m a very unapologetic space nerd. I’m specifically like a space surveillance nerd and a space software nerd. I know this. I’m really taxonomizing in my nerdiness, but I feel like, if we’re all here and/or watching this, we can all identify.

At the end of the day, you know, there is no artificial intelligence that can be abstracted or implemented into the nuclear command and control system that is going to obviate the need and the real requirement for human intelligence, for actual intelligence, for human judgment, right? And so the question is, can we use the toolset that artificial intelligence presents us to be able to let computers do what computers do best, but let humans do what humans do best, which is make judgment calls that they are authorized and responsible for doing.

And if you can expand that decision envelope to give your commander in chief a couple more minutes on that decision process while you’ve got a computer doing pattern recognition, anomaly detection, crunching yottabytes of data that are coming down, let the computer do that. Make sure that you are enabling the decision-maker and the ultimate command authority with enough time to be able to make decisions that will impact all of humanity, right?

And so for me, this again – and I love how general Kehler started this. It’s like, let’s talk about what actually NC3 is. Let’s talk about the conflation of all of these systems. I mean, at the end of the day, the Department of Defense is working with over 200 programs of record that are part of the NC3 system of systems, right, everything from radios all the way up to satellites to ground terminals.

You have to parse as well what artificial intelligence means, right? Like I said, most days I’m looking around just trying to find, like, actual human intelligence. It’s very hard to find. But when you talk about like artificial intelligence, what are you actually talking about there, right? Are you talking about automation? You’re probably not talking about a tremendous amount of automation in the context of the employment of nuclear weapons. It’s probably a good thing. But are you talking about pattern recognition, right? Are you talking about being able to collate specific and characterize, right, flight patterns, missiles, develop an actual site of what’s going on to increase your situational awareness so that you can do something with that? That’s kind of where I come from.

I’m wearing this delightful jacket. What you don’t see under this is like I have very large tattoos, right? And so I come into and I would come – I used to work on the Hill. You can hate me for that later. You can kick me in the shins. It’s fine. I don’t have feelings. You can’t hurt them. But when I would walk into, you know, the building, and I’d have these big, long, big, huge tattoos, and I’d sit down for these new command and control briefs, I think people were really surprised, because I’d be like, look at me. I’m a moderately risk tolerant individual. This is 70 hours-plus worth of tattoo work. You know the one place I probably will not be accepting a tremendous amount, if any, risk? You command-and-control guys, we’re not doing it, right? Let’s find somewhere else to absorb risk. And I think some of them appreciated that. You know, it got to chuckle out of some of them.

But it’s genuinely true, right? We should be able to harness what’s going on in the commercial world, and specifically in the amazing stuff that’s going on in space, space software, all of this, while also meeting the non-negotiable requirements that nuclear surety demand. I have faith that America can do both of those things at the same time. It ain’t going to be easy, but I think we can do it.

Dr. Williams: I appreciate the message of optimism. It is an inspiring –

Ms. Mineiro: It’s very rare for me actually.

Dr. Williams: I feel like it’s very rare in nuclear issues at the moment.

I am keeping a bit of a list of some of the challenges around this. And so we have a bit of the conceptual challenge that General Kehler outlined. You’re rightly pointing to, I think, some of the bureaucratic and complexity challenges. So, as you said, over 200 programs of record just on NC3, and that this is a system of systems piece to it.

And so now, Mike, I’m going to turn it to you. You can either choose to resolve all of these challenges or add to the list.

Michael Drews: Well, great setting the place map here with both of your dialogues. You know there’s so much to unpack about the challenges for NC3 – 200 systems, all three services, right, Space Force, Air Force, Navy, predominantly delivering those 200 systems, have been doing so reliably and assuredly for over five decades.

But – and Bob to your point, and General Cotton’s, the world has changed a lot in that timeframe. And General Cotton talked about not using the term Cold War 2.0, but today’s security environment is exponentially more complex than the single polar environment of the original NC3 system construction in the ’50s and ’60s, right? We’ve gone from a single peer threat who still has the ability to in the course of our panel discussion wreak unimaginable havoc on our nation, to a situation where collaboration among our adversaries, destabilizing weapons like hypersonics, aggressive adversarial action in the cyber domain, and then put in there the exit from treaties and compliance, it is exponentially more complicated.

So we can bring technology, to Sarah’s point, to bear on this. So as the exponential access there of threats go up, we need to be able to apply technology to allow us, over the many dimensions of NC3, to be able to respond to this threat environment. But it’s really critical that – and to your point, it’s not an area where we take risk. And whether it’s AI, ML, other communication transports, other capabilities for decision-making, it’s our responsibility as a nation, government, DOD, and industry partnering together to realize that next generation system.

So in the area of I’ll say the mission engineering that I lead for Lockheed Martin, we’ve identified a few different attributes, I think in alignment with DOD vision of the next generation system, but in particular around the areas of flexibility and persistence.

But they have challenges to bring them to bear, and I’ll talk a little bit about those two areas. The challenge of flexibility is, as we modernize the triad for the next 50 years, we need to modernize this kind of fourth leg of the triad, which is the NC3 nervous system, I think was stated earlier.

But it’s not a step function, like we’re just going to modernize it next year, and then it’s good for 50 years. We need to build into that new system a much more adaptable and evolvable NC3 set of capabilities, because the adversaries will continue to innovate and grow, and we just can’t have a static system that we put in place for the next 50 years. We’re kind of living in a modestly adapted system from the past 50 years, but it really needs to transcend that as we go into the future.

So some aspects or priorities of that of flexibility inherently is we need to have modular open system architectures. And open standards like OMS and UCI that really allow us to be able to bring together best of breed technologies, whether it’s commercial technologies that we bring into the aerospace and defense sphere, or I’ll say intentional, exquisite capabilities we develop for NC3. And by having modularity built in from the start and knowing that we want to upgrade and change it over time, it’ll really help our nation not have vendor lock or technology lock in these systems.

And the second aspect I’ll say is we need to maintain the persistence we have today, but we really need anti-fragile constructs going forward to deal with the adversary environment and to maintain the maximum number of pathways and decision-making capabilities that the president needs to assure our survivability. So I think those are some of the thoughts about – obviously, industry partnering with government and DOD is the essence, really, of how we move NC3 forward as kind of the bedrock for 21st century security.

So General Cotton talked about the different phases, right? Whether it’s limited strike, extended deterrence, the reliance of our allies on us, it’s a very complex environment, and so there’s many elements of what it means to have security in the 21st century that are wrapped up in how we deal with NC3 going forward.

 Dr. Williams: There’s one point in particular, Mike, if I can just draw you out on a little bit more, and it was what you were saying about the need for continuous innovation and growth in how we modernize NC3. One thing that I hear from other parts of the nuclear enterprise, particularly the labs, is that they are also trying to change kind of the culture and just the thinking about nuclear modernization. And a term that I’m hearing more is continuous modernization, or persistent modernization. We can no longer think of modernization of the triad, or nuclear modernization writ large as like one and done. Oh, Sentinel will be done, and then that’s over with. It seems like that’s particularly the case with NC3 modernization. Do you think that’s a fair characterization?

Mr. Drews: Yeah, I do. And so, Bob, you talked about – you pulled out your smartphone and said, hey, you know, people expect to have this kind of capability in the future. They need that situational awareness, that access to data, the ability to crunch the sense making, to make sense of the threat environment and help inform very complex decision-making in very short timelines, especially if you think about hypersonic weapons, not just kind of the ballistic trajectory. So it’s critical that we bulletproof those systems as we make them available. And even though people expect smartphone-like capabilities, we can’t afford to, you know, go use the NC3 app, oh, it’s updating, just give me a couple minutes, right? Or, oh, it looks like it’s time for this to be upgraded and so we’ll go offline for a little while, right? We need to mesh the best of modern software and communication transport capabilities with hardened systems, DevSecOps in a 100 percent assured deployment and tested and practiced with before it ever gets there.

And I’ll just say one more thing. NC3 systems need to be survivable through NC3 environments, right? So, you know, we talked about pre and post event, right? So NC3 is meant to deter. Its essence is deterrence. But the requirements for NC3 are to survive the worst day and keep operating, and those kinds of sets of requirements aren’t deployed on other systems. And so we, as industry partners, supporting our nation, right, we need to team together to ensure that, yeah, we’re going to bring new capabilities as fast as we can, but they have to meet all of the heritage NC3 requirements, and probably some expanded ones, as we see the threat environment continue to increase.

Gen. Kehler: So could I jump in here?

Dr. Williams: Please.

Gen. Kehler: So when I was the commander of Air Force Space Command, before STRATCOM, we were charged with trying to prepare the Air Force and write the initial blueprint for how the Air Force was going to structure itself for cyber operations. And so one of the things we did was we went to Seattle, and we went to Microsoft. And we did that for a couple of reasons. One was to talk to them about how they do things, and the other was, there was a National Guard unit up there that I think had been a command and control unit, and we were wanting to transition them to a cyber unit. And so, I mean, you walk in and talk to the National Guard unit, and you say, in the audience, how many of you work at Microsoft? You know, three quarters of the hands went up. Went to Microsoft and said, how many are in the National Guard? You know, three quarters of the hands went up. And so it was the right conversation.

But here’s what I learned from the some of the senior executives at Microsoft. If we were having this conversation at Microsoft and talked about continuous modernization and all that stuff, they would say, well, duh, of course; that’s the way you have to do business. So why is it such a struggle for us? And here’s what I’ve come to, the conclusion. We have two fundamentally incompatible acquisition systems. Our acquisition system is requirements-based. A requirements-based acquisition system gives you the F-35. Their acquisition system, if there is even such a thing, is opportunity based. Nobody sat down at Apple and said, here’s a requirement for the iPhone. Somebody walked in the door and said, look at what we can do with all this stuff.

And so how do we get these pieces to fit together across an industry that operates in an innovative way when we’re not telling them how to do it, and then, how do we make this work? And I think that’s been one of the interesting challenges with NC3, is, how do we make these two really foreign entities work together to produce something that isn’t going to be one and done, and, oh, by the way, don’t have to worry about that for 50 more years? This is going to be a continuous thing that is going on all the time, or else we will be behind in two years instead of 50 years.

So anyway, I think just my observation is these are incompatible ways of thinking about this problem, and so we’ve got to think differently about the problem on the DOD side of this, and then turn industry loose on their side of it.

 Dr. Williams: We have some really great questions coming in online and in the room using the QR code. So thank you all for that.

Sarah, we have quite a few about AI, following up on your comment. So I wanted to put these to you. I’m going to group a few of them together.

One of them is what steps are necessary to ensure that the human element within NC3 and the broader nuclear enterprise serves as a strength rather than a vulnerability, particularly in light of evolving threats and challenges.

The other one was – this is an interesting one, I think. Are you worried about an over reliance on AI for integrated early warning and decision support technologies? Because while there might be a human in the loop, is there a danger that that human will almost always go to AI for the suggested actions? And so I think a lot of the questions in here about when do you rely on AI, the risk of over reliance on AI, and how do you ensure that the human in the loop really is a human in the loop.

Ms. Mineiro: OK, let me start by saying I have no idea, but I will give you some of my thoughts, and they may be moderately informed. They will at the very least be entertaining.

So one of the challenges with AI is making sure that you have a true data set that you can train against, right? And so I think a lot of this comes down to figuring out what kind of data set you would be using to train algorithms that then would be doing things like characterization, pattern deviation or pattern recognition. You’re probably not doing a lot of natural language processing. I don’t think that an inappropriate use of AI in the context of NC3 is coming up with, necessarily, scripts and COAs. I think that that relies on humans, and I think AI can help generate some of that, but that is not what’s going to be put into the book.

And so I think if you look at where you’re going to use AI tools, artificial intelligence tools, they are going to be predominantly left – left of launch, left of response, right? It’s going to be on notification, characterization, anomalous behavior. And I think that is where the preponderance of those toolsets are useful.

I think that they are significantly less useful on, again, coming up with script generation, natural language processing, and/or automation of weapons release authority, which I think is not a thing that’s going to happen. So that’s kind of how I would characterize that.

I also think, again, the challenge here is going to be training data, both real data and synthetic data, and making sure how that works. One of the things that – I mean, we’ve made it probably a whole half an hour, and nobody’s said JADC2, CJADC2, or some sort of variation of JADC2. Since every service has its own version of JADC2, I like to refer to it as “sad C2” usually, because it makes me very sad.

Dr. Williams: Can you explain what JADC2 is?

Ms. Mineiro: Actually, I can’t, but I can tell you what the acronym stands for. Joint All Domain Command and Control. And so when General Kehler opened and he talked about, you know, the different kinds of nuclear command and control, nuclear command systems, command and control systems, there’s, you know, overlapping Venn diagrams about these command and control systems in the context of conventional forces, in nuclear forces. And there’s a big kind of conversation about how nuclear command and control, where the touch points are and where they should be integrated with a joint all domain command and control. You heard General Cotton talk about the limits of being able to do this with allies. And so one of the things that the department is also thinking about is combined joint all demand command and control, what kind of opportunities, responsibilities are implied if you’re going to have an allied command and control, and how that interacts with nuclear command and control.

Dr. Williams: I have a specific follow-up question on this point that also came from online, so I’m going to stay with you for a second. This comes from Peter Hayes.

Ms. Mineiro: Peter, why are you doing this? Come on.

Dr. Williams: And the question is: What is the appropriate balance between systems dedicated solely to NC3 versus systems that support the other missions? It seems like a logical follow on to your point.

Ms. Mineiro: It is. These Ph.D.s, never trust them.

I don’t know what the correct balance is. I think that it’s healthy to have a real discussion about that tension. I think that at the end of the day, this is an architecture question that spans all of the services. And thankfully, we have people in A&S, in acquisition and sustainment, OSD, acquisition and sustainment, that are looking at the program in a holistic way, which is something that the department has struggled with in the past. I think that there’s a real need to look at how we are now doing missile warning and how that feeds into not only missile defense, but into all of the COAs that we would be developing, all the courses of action that we may be developing for nuclear command and control.

I don’t know that there is a finite, identifiable answer about what that balance should be. I am heartened by the fact that the question was asked and that there are people that are way smarter than me that are doing this, some of whom I have, like, literally worked for in this room, this guy, that woman, multiple people in this room.

You know, one of the things that’s really interesting right now is the place where I sit is at the confluence of a lot of these really interesting policy debates. But what you find in the communities is – you know, I sit in this weird kind of space community. I sit in this weird nuclear community. They’re both very weird communities.

But in the space community, I’m, like, the oldest and least tattooed person in that community. I go out, you know, to these places, and they’re all, like, young and amazing. The nuclear community, I’m, like, the youngest and most tattooed person in this community. I would love to see, right, some confluence there. I think that there’s a lot of intellectual overplay.

And I think General Cotton talked about this as he was leaving. One of his remarks was, you know, how do we bring and energize new young people into thinking about these really complex issues that they, quite frankly, haven’t been forced to think about in the past, because they’ve kind of assumed it away. And one of the ways that you do that, I think, is by having amazing programs and friends and mentors like Tony, like general Kehler. I mean, I was a young, young intel analyst when I first had to brief General Kehler and I was scared to death. Scared to death.

Gen. Kehler: For good reason.

Ms. Mineiro: Exactly. One of my dearest friends and professional mentors going up through grad school was Janne Nolan, who I loved dearly. The person that is probably very responsible for me landing one of my favorite and most amazing and perhaps most impactful jobs on Capitol Hill is Elaine Bunn. And all of these people have done a fantastic job of really trying to empower and bring enthusiasm to what can be a really almost religious and arcane kind of debate and making it real for people. And I think that’s really, really important.

Dr. Williams: That was the greatest plug for PONI I think I have ever heard. We are going to splice that and use it in all of our social media.

Also, great answer to the question that, you know, what is the balance and it’s not a clear line, that it’s going to have to be responsive.

A question for Mike, But General Kehler, you might also want to jump in on this one. This comes from Clayton Swope here at CSIS. And the question was, noting that there are dozens, if not hundreds of programs that make up the NC3 enterprise, what is the best way to do integration so that all the systems within the larger system can work together?

Mr. Drews: That’s a big question. Leave it to Clayton.

So in a system of systems in the complexity of NC3, I think it begins with thinking through what you want the end state to be. And a roadmap – General Cotton talked about his roadmaps, right? They’ve already – STRATCOM and the stakeholders within the community have begun to do this work of, you know, what is the journey to reach that end state and deciding on it.

We need to be very thoughtful and use digital twins and modeling and all of our abilities to – and this is one area where Gen AI, I think, different AI type capabilities and massive processing can help us understand, you know, in terms of Monte Carlo runs and variations of different architectures, you know, what are the mission capabilities and performance of making these changes and look at the different constructs along the way.

But at the same time, I think take a step back, there needs to be a sense of national urgency, and there can be an analysis paralysis if we just exist in that modeling and sim of the future state world. So I’m a big advocate of prototyping and experimentation at every stage to inform and validate requirements, concepts of operation, especially new and emerging ones that are adherent to the very rigid aspects of how our nation handles employment of nuclear capabilities. And the ultimate goal to deter that, the goal is not to have to use but to deter conflict, but you know, doing the validation and experimentation along the way, bringing in commercial providers and best of breed technologies, and trying them out and working with them on long-term roadmaps and availability of capabilities. It’s hard to answer it just in even a few sentences, the question that Clayton asked.

And Sir, I would very much like to hear your input as well.

Gen. Kehler: So would I.

Well, part of the problem here with big, complex systems of systems that we are typically dealing with is they were never created from the start to be a big, complex system of systems, and so part of our problem is always trying to decipher how it works now, how do the pieces fit together and getting our heads around all of the pieces.

And that has been a multi-year project in the Department of Defense about NC3, is trying to sort out, what is it? I mean, my own Air Force, at one point in time, finally said, we’ve got to treat this like a weapon system. What’s in it? And then you go to the budget people, and you start ticking off things. Yep, it’s that line item and that line item and that line item, and people’s eyes just got bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. It’s incredible how big and complicated it is.

So again, when I was doing the space thing, we had at that time something called the space architect, and the space architect did these magnificent architectures for what we should be doing in space. And they had a library full of them, and nobody ever paid any attention to them. But the point was, they were getting their head around the system of systems that really is our space stuff as well, and then, because if you don’t understand that, you don’t know where the vulnerabilities are, and you don’t know where the opportunities are, and you don’t know where those other things are.

So there’s nug work that’s required up front here to try to get to some stable point. Then I think there’s got to be a vision out there that says this is what we want this to be without being overly prescriptive. And here are the attributes it needs to have. It needs to take advantage of modeling and sim. It needs to take advantage of this constant infusion of new technologies. It needs to do all these following things.

And then, as a commander, I would ask a couple of questions about all of this. One of them deals specifically with AI, but it’s a bigger question than that. Where do we need this to be? In what piece of our nuclear command and control system do we need artificial intelligence? That’s not a requirements question necessarily, as much as it is a fundamental philosophical question about where does it go, what does it do for us, what do we want it to do, what don’t we want it to do for us. Because that begins to get to these boundaries about where you put it and avoid, you know, the other movie that General Cotton didn’t mention, which is “The Terminator,” right, where Skynet takes over and, you know, goes to war with itself and all that jazz. So certainly, from a commander standpoint, I would want to know what the limits are.

Now, if you’re listening to this and you’re an AI purist, you have just turned me off and said, that’s what’s wrong. You know, you got an old guy who says, nah, I’m going to limit what you technology weenies can bring in the door every day. And the answer is, yes, I would. For a time I would for sure until we get comfortable with how we’re going to use it and why we need it and where we’re going to put it and what the safeguards are around it. It’s one thing to tell people that you’ve got a car that you can push autopilot on and go to sleep in the back seat. It’s another thing to actually do it. And you know who’s worrying about public safety? So those are different things. And I would ask that question.

The other question I would ask of everybody involved here is, what confidence should I have in this new system, and how are you going to prove it to me? So how do we do that today? We have entrusted our nuclear command and control business to, as I said earlier, specially trained and certified human beings using specially built and certified equipment on specially built and certified networks. OK? We do that today in basically a paperwork trail for how do we certify that the radar at Tule Greenland is OK for missile warning? I mean, we nug our way through. A bunch of engineers go and make sure the radar works. And, you know, and then there’s a process.

And everybody in the budget process in the building will tell you, the certification process for nuclear is the reason why you never want to be part of it, because it costs more and takes longer and all that stuff and all that’s true. And we’ve got to fix that part of it.

Plus, are we going to be able to certify every piece of it that way? I don’t know what the answer to that question is, but what I would want to be able to do as a commander is look at someone and say, prove to me that we can have 100 percent confidence in this system. Well, that’s not possible. 99.99999 percent confidence. Well, that’s not affordable. All right, what can you give me? Those are the questions we need to be asking ourselves. I think this isn’t just a technology conversation. This is some questions about the human beings that have the judgment inserting themselves in the process up front, so that we’re not chasing our tail. It doesn’t take us 10 years to figure out what the architecture is and all the things that go with that, and then we’ve got some better idea about how we want to do this and how to focus ourselves, because a lack of focus has driven us crazy in the past on this issue.

 Dr. Williams: A really hard but really fantastic question from Catherine Murphy on the CSIS PONI team, and I’m just going to put this out there and see if anybody has an answer and wants to respond: What do we know about the NC3 modernization programs of America’s adversaries like China and Russia, and how do they compare to the American NC3 system? Anybody want to take this one?

Mr. Drews: I don’t know.

Ms. Mineiro: I would say I don’t know much. I suspect that they don’t have the same requirements and budgeting system that the United States feels like they need to impose upon ourselves, and so they will probably pop something out quicker on the other end. Whether that’s a good bet or I’m not making a judgment on quality or efficiency, but you know, if you’ve ever been through the requirements and budgeting process for an NC3 system, it’s pretty rough, and I think at some point our adversaries probably don’t subject themselves, self-flagellate themselves as much as we’ve managed to do in our own PPBE system.

Gen. Kehler: So I don’t know either. That doesn’t mean that nobody knows, but I don’t. But we can speculate on a couple of things, because I think history would show this is true. I agree they don’t have the same constraints that we have. I hope they have the same kind of guardrail concerns that we have as we are looking at all of these new technologies in particular. I’m not as frightened about how we might be using AI as I am about how Kim Jong Un might be using AI. I’m really uncomfortable with that because I don’t know anything about how he’s doing nuclear command and control. So again, that doesn’t mean nobody knows, but I don’t, and that makes me personally uncomfortable. And so I was sitting in General Cotton’s shoes, I would be very uncomfortable if that was the case.

The other thing that I think we know, the Chinese are probably investing an enormous amount of money here. And as the Russians, let me get to them in a second. The Chinese would be investing an enormous amount of money, and they would be doing it in a way I think that leverages technology in ways that benefit them.

The Russians, what you can know about them is they will be extremely redundant. They will have a lot of it, and it will be, you know, deeply buried, some of it. And I mean, they don’t give anything up, as you know, as you’ve seen in Ukraine.

The most important thing, though – and General Cotton said this, and I think everybody heard him say it, but I want to foot stomp it – we’re not talking to them, and that is really bad. We need to be talking to them, to them being the Russians and the Chinese in particular. And there are reasons for why we’re not talking. I get it. I understand why we’re not talking, but it’s not good that we’re not talking.

My arms control friends told me more than once since the end of the Cold War that by the end of the Cold War they would go to meetings and they felt like they knew more about the Russians than the Russians knew about themselves. Some of that was great intelligence over the decades, but a lot of it was because we were talking to one another, and so we learned a lot about one another through the very fact that we were talking, and I think that’s important. And I think that we miss that, I think that’s that makes it a far more dangerous world right now that we are not talking to one another at the mil-to-mil level in particular.

 Dr. Williams: So we are out of time. However, there are a couple questions coming in online that are so good that I’m going to read them out anyways. And for those of you online, encourage you to keep engaging in discussion, keep engaging with CSIS. For those of you in the room, there are beverages outside. I encourage you to go outside and answer these questions.

But in the spirit of continuing the discussion, there’s a couple here that I do want to flag. One comes from Todd McAllister at NDU: What are your thoughts on the STEM human capital requirements for the future force and maintaining and modernizing the nuclear enterprise?

A couple questions came in from Allie Maloney at the Federation of American Scientists on the budget implications of all this. You know, we had talked about a more persistent modernization. What does that mean for the budget?

And then the last one, this is a bit of a cheeky question, but I love it. I’m going to put it out there anyways, which is, as we’re thinking about modernization of the triad, and potentially the need for more low-yield weapons, should the Army be brought back in as a fourth leg of the nuclear triad? I figured that one will spark some discussion. That’s from Erin Shellinger at the University of Pittsburgh.

So just a reminder for those of you in the room, we do have an informal reception out in the atrium now to hopefully continue the conversation, and that’ll be immediately after this. And then my last job here is really to do some thank-yous. Thank you, first and foremost, to the project sponsor. Thank you to all of you in the room and online. We have 100 people online, and got some really great questions coming in, so really great engagement, and also just really great to know that this specific aspect of nuclear modernization, some space-based issues, some AI issues, that this is generating this much interest. That’s really encouraging to hear.

Thank you to our panelists, and last but absolutely not least is a thank you to the ASP and PONI teams for helping make this happen, and in particular, to Kendra LaFave for getting us all here. So, everyone, please join me in thanking the panel. (Applause.)

(END.)