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Nuclear policy debates are at their best when they force hard questions about risk, deterrence, and military necessity. They are at their worst when disagreement is recast as bad faith. In 2018, as an outgrowth of a rigorous policy review process, the Trump administration’s Nuclear Posture Review identified a need for supplemental low-yield nuclear capabilities to augment the U.S. nuclear arsenal. This was presented as an effort to raise the nuclear threshold of adversaries who may believe they could employ nuclear weapons in limited ways to escalate their way out of failed or failing conventional conflict.
To address this concern, the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review called for introduction of two supplemental low-yield nuclear capabilities: a submarine-launched ballistic missile and a nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missile. Eventually, the United States fielded the low-yield submarine-launched ballistic missile warhead, designated the W76-2. Though the Biden administration later cancelled the nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missile, Congress in 2024 resurrected it, directing the Department of Defense to pursue the capability. More recently, the Department of Defense official responsible for nuclear deterrence policy and programs testified to the importance of such theater-range nuclear options, noting that the nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missile is just “one example.”
In the face of these developments, Jay Tilden, in a recent article, argues that advocates of supplemental low-yield nuclear capabilities have been “contriving imaginary gaps in nuclear deterrence.” According to Tilden, linking a deterrence gap to a need for additional nuclear capabilities is a contrivance, the alleged capabilities gap is a self-imposed personal preference (or in his words a “normative constraint”) rather than a genuine operational deficiency, the United States already has sufficient ways to deter or respond to limited nuclear strikes, and former officials publicly advertising American vulnerabilities to argue for such capabilities are harming the country.
Having spent more than 16 years in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy — including 12 years as director for Nuclear Deterrence Policy — I believe that Tilden’s characterization is factually incorrect, misleading, and unfair. My team and I organized, staffed, managed, drafted, and published both the 2018 and 2022 Nuclear Posture Reviews on behalf of senior leadership. I witnessed firsthand how these decisions were reached and how the underlying analysis was conducted.
Reasonable and informed people can disagree about the necessity of any particular nuclear capability. Such debates are healthy and necessary. But Tilden, whose duties at the time focused on nonproliferation, counterproliferation, and nuclear weapons security, was not present for the deterrence discussions that led to these recommendations, so he has little insight into the operational considerations that weighed in favor of such supplemental low-yield capabilities in 2018. In making his case in 2026 against them, he not only questions the veracity of the conclusions that led to the 2018 recommendations but seeks to undermine the efficacy of the arguments former officials are making today by questioning their underlying motives. The historical record — and my firsthand experience — tell a substantially different story than the one Tilden offers.
To his credit, Tilden concedes that Russia and China field theater nuclear systems and suggests countervailing U.S. capabilities may have significant operational utility. However, he minimizes the risk that such adversary capabilities may pose to U.S. and allied posture today and makes the case that additional U.S. low-yield nuclear capabilities are not just unnecessary, but the product of contrivance and irrational handwringing. A rebuttal of his argument requires a bit of context and a review of the historical record.
President Barack Obama’s eight-year effort to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in U.S. strategy initially bore fruit, leading to the conclusion of the New START Treaty with Russia in 2010 and a revised U.S. nuclear strategy in 2013. But hopes for further progress were dashed in part by Russian unwillingness to agree to further strategic arms reductions, Russia’s cheating on the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, and Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea and aggression in eastern Ukraine. All this was context as the U.S. policy, military, and intelligence communities observed growing evidence that Russian strategy and capabilities contemplated the potential employment of theater nuclear weapons early in a conflict with NATO. In this respect, Russia retains a significant advantage over the United States and its allies in such theater range systems, both in numbers and in diversity.
With this background, the Trump administration initiated a strategy review early in its tenure, releasing its Nuclear Posture Review in 2018. Among other things, it concluded that nuclear-armed U.S. adversaries — particularly Russia — were developing and fielding an array of lower-yield nuclear forces with diverse ranges, yields, and delivery methods to support coercive nuclear escalation strategies against the United States and its allies.
In regional conflicts where the United States maintained conventional superiority, such capabilities could provide adversaries with an advantage in circumstances where the adversary used the threat of nuclear escalation to potentially coerce the United States and its allies from responding decisively to conventional aggression, or where the United States lacked the means to respond to the limited use of nuclear weapons proportionately or in a timely manner. Then-Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, in his preface to the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review, referred to this development as “troubling.”
From this, the Nuclear Posture Review concluded that, if deterrence failed in a regional conflict, the president lacked adequate options to accomplish U.S. objectives, which included the ability to restore deterrence in circumstances well short of an all-out strategic exchange. Put bluntly, credibly deterring or responding to the threat of limited nuclear use required credible and proportionate response options, which the United States at the time lacked. Hence, the decision to pursue the W76-2 warhead and the nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missile. Coincidentally, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, as recently as the June 2026 St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, boasted about the Russian advantage in tactical nuclear weapons, stating that Europeans are “more or less defenseless” against these capabilities.
While the cruise missile story has evolved since 2018 — a topic discussed further below, Tilden broadly attacks advocates of such low-yield theater weapons as advancing a personal preference and not solving an operational challenge. According to him, these advocates misuse concepts such as proportionality and immediacy to make their case when the United States already has sufficient options to respond to a non-strategic nuclear attack. But his argument is superficial and incomplete.
Yes, immediacy and proportionality are important operational considerations, though Tilden’s linkage of proportionality to the law of armed conflict in this context is inapt, as addressed by Brad Clark in a 2025 article. But by narrowly framing this aspect of his discussion Tilden creates a straw man that is easily dismissed. The list of operational considerations that inform this debate goes far beyond Tilden’s treatment, both in public debate and in classified settings.
In a 2025 article on the importance of augmenting U.S. theater nuclear forces, Greg Weaver, the former deputy director for strategic stability in the Joint Chiefs of Staff’s Strategic Plans and Policy shop and deputy director for policy and plans at U.S. Strategic Command, reviewed the limitations of current U.S. theater nuclear forces and arguments in favor of augmenting them. Weaver focuses specifically on the “operational details” that Tilden demands. He identifies a series of attributes that credible U.S. theater nuclear systems should possess, explains why they are operationally important, and identifies alternative capabilities for consideration. The attributes he identified include: survivable without a lengthy time to get ready for employment (hours, not days), forward deployed continuously in both Europe and Asia, warheads with a range of explosive yields and multiple fusing options, deliverable on operationally relevant timelines, highly likely to penetrate adversary defenses even in very limited strikes, effective against the full range of likely targets necessary to enable U.S. strategy, and able to enhance the nation’s technical hedge capability and contribute to meeting increased strategic nuclear targeting requirements.
I will not restate all that is in Weaver’s comprehensive article. But to expand on one element of it, and to illustrate the broader point, I will briefly address operational aspects of U.S. and allied dual-capable aircraft in Europe.
Over the last six decades, U.S. and allied dual-capable aircraft have served as the backbone of NATO’s deterrence and defense posture. These aircraft are operated by the United States and select allies and are designed to deliver U.S. nuclear gravity bombs forward-deployed in Europe.
Should conflict arise, say because of a Russian incursion into the Baltics, there may be days, weeks, or months of conventional kinetic operations between NATO and Russia before the conflict approaches the nuclear threshold. In that period, there is a risk that fixed locations such as dual-capable aircraft operating bases and nuclear weapons storage locations will have been attacked conventionally, causing attrition to the aircraft and weapons needed by the United States and its allies in extreme circumstances. Similarly — because these aircraft are dual-capable — some, many, or all of them will have been conducting conventional missions. In that time, there is no telling how many dual-capable aircraft – and their crews – will have been attrited. And, if that time comes, it is hard to predict how effective Russia’s integrated air and missile defenses will remain, or whether the dual-capable aircraft and their accompanying support packages will be able to prosecute the targets necessary to favorably manage escalation.
This and the issues Weaver more fully addresses provide a flavor of the types of operational considerations discussed in reviews like the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review. Such considerations were central to Nuclear Posture Review deliberations and to subsequent efforts to implement its results. Given the existential risk that nuclear war presents, and the real-world operational implications of a capability such as dual-capable aircraft in Europe — or their complete absence from the Indo-Pacific — there are legitimate reasons for the United States to consider, and advocates to recommend, the addition of supplemental regional nuclear capabilities to the U.S. arsenal.
Tilden also does not address the multiple mechanisms in both the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review and its 2022 successor that safeguarded against the kind of threat inflation he alleges and the alleged normative analysis he decries.
First, the reviews were inclusive, involving all relevant stakeholders, including multiple components from the Office of Secretary of Defense, the Joint Staff, combatant commands, the military services, and other agencies, including the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration, the agency where Mr. Tilden worked during this timeframe. Stakeholders were represented by veteran national security experts and practitioners at the senior executive, general, or flag officer level. With this collection of participants, there was ample opportunity for institutional and bureaucratic views and concerns to be registered and questionable assumptions and conclusions to be challenged.
Second, each review began with an intensive analysis of the intelligence issues associated with actors of relevance in the nuclear deterrence space. Only with a common sight picture of the threat is it possible to conduct informed discussion and debate over strategy adjustments and needed capabilities. Intelligence officials from across the intelligence community contributed to the review, and dissenting views, where appropriate, were raised. There was no cherry-picking of intelligence and, when questions were raised, they were subject to further briefing and analysis until consensus was reached.
Third, only after completing the intelligence briefings did participants turn to questions of strategy and the capabilities needed to execute the strategy. Though conducted in classified spaces, these discussions were open and transparent, and participants had a full opportunity to address their unique concerns. This environment did not lend itself to imaginary or contrived conclusions.
Finally, when discussions were complete, high-profile recommendations were made to senior leadership for decision: the secretary of defense, interagency principals, or the president, depending on the topic. Ultimately, those decisions became core components of the written Nuclear Posture Review, which was then coordinated within the Department of Defense, the U.S. military, and other agencies for final review and approval. These processes are critical to understand, as the coordination process of the written document itself afforded senior leadership from any stakeholder — including Tilden’s National Nuclear Security Administration — a final opportunity to object to Nuclear Posture Review conclusions.
The bottom line is to demonstrate not just the rigor of this process, but to point out that threat inflation and material solutions based on normative analysis alone would not have passed muster. While Tilden is free to disagree with Nuclear Posture Review conclusions or policy prescriptions, his assertion that the results were imaginary and the capability recommendations were contrived is simply not true.
Tilden cannot also avoid the fact that three separate review bodies — and Congress — have reached remarkably similar conclusions. The Biden administration’s 2022 Nuclear Posture Review identified the same fundamental deterrence challenge for the United States as the 2018 review:
[W]e must be able to deter conventional aggression that has the potential to escalate to nuclear employment of any scale. Russia presents the most acute example of this problem today, given its significantly larger stockpile of regional nuclear systems and the possibility it would use these forces to try to win a war on its periphery or avoid defeat if it were in danger of losing a conventional war. Deterring Russian limited nuclear use in a regional conflict is a high U.S. and NATO priority.
While choosing to cancel the nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missile, the Biden review concluded that U.S. low-yield capabilities remained key in deterring theater nuclear attacks and resisting nuclear coercion. It then chose to retain the W76-2 in the U.S. arsenal, noting that it “currently provides an important means to deter limited nuclear use.” Ultimately, President Joseph Biden issued nuclear employment strategy guidance in 2024, emphasizing the importance of fielding capabilities suited to deterring and responding to limited nuclear employment to favorably manage escalation.
The 2023 bipartisan Strategic Posture Commission report recognized the same fundamental challenge. The Commission recommended that U.S. theater nuclear force posture be urgently modified to provide “a range of militarily effective nuclear response options to deter or counter Chinese or Russian limited nuclear use in theater.” Importantly, the Commission was not bound by either the Trump or the Biden administrations’ assumptions or conclusions regarding deterrence needs or the proposed solution. Nevertheless, it independently reached a similar judgment.
While Tilden may point to the Biden administration’s decision to cancel the nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missile as evidence that the solution proposed by advocates is contrived, I reach the opposite conclusion. First, the Nuclear Posture Review is evidence of a rigorous review process where serious people debated serious issues. In both 2018 and 2022, these debates led to different solutions for the same problem. This is not evidence of imagination or contrivance, but rather the product of a healthy bureaucratic and interagency review process that led to different, but nevertheless defensible recommendations. Second, and more important to refuting Tilden’s point on the nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missile, Congress in 2024 overruled the Biden Administration’s cancellation decision, directing establishment of a nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missile program of record. That effort is ongoing today.
Ultimately, far from just a normative preference for more capabilities, a wide array of deterrence and national security professionals in different venues over a period of years examined the security environment and adversary capabilities to ascertain whether the United States had the operationally relevant capabilities needed to credibly deter adversaries or, if deterrence failed, to achieve U.S. and allied objectives across the spectrum of conflict. It cannot be reasonably said that two different Nuclear Posture Reviews, the Strategic Posture Commission, and Congress each fell victim to an imaginary deterrence gap and independently contrived a need for supplemental low-yield nuclear capabilities to address this challenge.
Perhaps the most troubling aspect of Tilden’s article is his criticism of former government officials for speaking out in favor of supplementing U.S. theater nuclear capabilities. He asserts that former officials who identify weak spots in U.S. deterrence posture are doing strategic damage to the United States or, worse, that some of them have institutional incentives to prevaricate on these issues.
Tilden is correct to the extent he argues that policymakers and former government officials should be cautious about overstating threats or creating self-fulfilling procurement pressures. I am sure the former officials he names in his article would agree with this. But is the only alternative their silence?
To the contrary, former civilian and military officials should not be expected to fall silent when they leave government. The United States has long benefited from a tradition in which former officials continue to contribute to public debate on defense policy, military strategy, and force structure. These individuals often possess decades of experience in government, operational commands, intelligence organizations, and defense planning. They retain valuable expertise that can help policymakers, legislators, journalists, and the public understand emerging threats and assess whether the nation is adequately prepared to meet them. This is particularly important on these topics, given the specialized knowledge and expertise that comes only from long study and involvement in nuclear policy and the nuclear deterrence mission, combined with the profound soberness that comes from a life’s work seeking to reduce the risk of nuclear war.
Dispensing with this, Tilden wields his arguments as both a sword and a shield. On the one hand, he asserts that the deterrence gap is imaginary and that the solutions proposed by experts are normative and contrived. On the other hand, he argues that former officials who highlight their concerns publicly are doing strategic damage to the United States. He cannot have it both ways. To the contrary, former government officials perform an important public service by identifying emerging dangers before they manifest, and open debate helps decision makers and the public understand the risks and prioritize resources to address them.
Winston Churchill provides perhaps the most famous example of this. During much of the 1930s, while out of government, Churchill repeatedly warned that Nazi Germany was rearming and that Britain was inadequately prepared for the challenge. His warnings were frequently criticized as alarmist and politically motivated. Yet his willingness to speak publicly about what he perceived to be a growing strategic danger contributed to a national debate that, in hindsight, appears prescient rather than reckless.
The lesson is not that former officials are always right. It is that democratic societies benefit when experienced practitioners are free to challenge prevailing assumptions and raise concerns about looming security risks without having their motives impugned. It would be manifestly irresponsible for current and former officials to fail to inform the public and their elected representatives of a potential existential threat to the United States.
Do such public arguments hand adversaries an advantage? I think not, for at least three reasons. First, China and Russia are sophisticated military competitors in their own right. The contemporary issues debated by U.S. experts — targeting strategies, strategic force size and posture, U.S. regional nuclear capabilities, etc. — are likely well known to them based on their own assessments of the security environment and venues where such issues are discussed openly, such as in regular meetings in support of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. Second, current plans to modernize and sustain the U.S. nuclear deterrent are projected by the Congressional Budget Office to cost nearly $1 trillion over the next decade. Given the scale of this effort, congressional members need to understand in an unclassified manner why such capabilities are needed so that they can later defend their votes to the public. In fact, in an annual spring ritual, senior civilian and military leaders are called to Congress to testify on a myriad of such topics related to a president’s budget submission, including recommendations for such capabilities. Third, the United States has a long-standing legal and regulatory practice of providing unclassified reports to Congress, and of declassifying formerly classified national security materials. Because U.S. nuclear policy today reflects more historical continuity than change, many of the issues reflected in current debates are already well known and in the public realm.
Fortunately for Tilden and for those former officials he references in his article, we live in a democracy where such transparency and debates do not reflect a flaw in the system. Rather, it is evidence that the system is functioning as intended. Debate — informed by the facts and the record — should be welcomed.
It is possible that this facet of Tilden’s argument is more than just a rhetorical tool. Former government officials who held security clearances have a lifetime obligation to protect classified information. Some may still hold clearances and do classified work. There are also ethical rules governing conflicts of interest once an official leaves government. Beyond vague but carefully worded innuendo and colloquial phrases — referencing a “self-licking ice cream cone” — Tilden offers no evidence to back up such serious charges.
Ultimately, there was nothing about these discussions and decisions that was imagined or contrived. And former officials who continue to make the case for low-yield capabilities are performing a valuable public service. Tilden is welcome to join the debate. But that debate should be based on facts and the record, and not upon vague allusions to impropriety intended to undermine the credibility of opposing voices. The debate and our country deserve better.
Reasonable people can disagree about the nuclear capabilities the United States should field to confront the 21st-century security environment. But disagreement and informed debate are not what is at issue here. The historical record is clear. Two presidentially directed posture reviews, a bipartisan commission, Congress, and experienced practitioners examined the same security environment and identified the same underlying challenge. They did not all arrive at identical solutions for the challenge, but their conclusions were remarkably similar. To characterize those conclusions as imaginary, contrived, or self-interested is not an argument — it is an unsubstantiated assertion. Given the rapidly changing nuclear landscape, the United States needs more serious debate on deterrence, not less. The stakes are too high for anything less.
Paul Amato is the former director for Nuclear Deterrence Policy in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, where he and his team led the development and publication of the 2018 and 2022 Nuclear Posture Reviews. He retired from government service in 2025 after more than 16 years in national security policy positions. He also served twenty-eight years of active and reserve service as a U.S. Marine Corps infantry officer. Prior to his government career, he practiced law in the private sector. The views expressed are his own.
Image: Petty Officer 1st Class Ronald Gutridge via DVIDS
