SLCM-N: A nuclear sea-launched cruise missile
SLCM-N and B83:
Two Nukes You Need to Know About
Win Without War
(June 4, 2022) — Hawks in Congress are trying to spend BILLIONS on two dangerous, wasteful nuclear weapons that we don’t need. At this critical moment, we’re mobilizing grassroots activists all across the country to send a strong message to members of Congress that we don’t want these nuclear weapons.
This year, President Biden requested that Congress strip funding from two nukes that Donald Trump advocated for — a nuclear sea-launched cruise missile (SLCM-N) and the B83 gravity bomb, a Cold War relic.
But in June, the House and Senate will kick off debates on next year’s Pentagon budget, and hawks in Congress may try to get back one or both of these weapons through these bills. This is a fight we can win because President Biden supports getting rid of these dangerous weapons, Democratic champions are pushing back against funding them, and even some senior defense officials have said they think these programs is a bad idea. If enough of us speak out together right now, we can not only stop these programs, but also create more political space for rolling back the nuclear arms race.
The world changed after the US used nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki — it showed that we could destroy whole societies with a single weapon, and it set off a dangerous and costly race to build that weapon. The B83 nuclear gravity bomb that hawks in Congress are fighting to keep is a relic of that Cold War arms race, with an explosive yield of 1.2 megatons.
In other words, it is roughly 80 times more destructive than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. It makes no sense why we would want to keep such a devastating and destructive weapon that could kill up to three million people with a single use. Just a handful of years ago, the B83 was set to be retired for good — until Trump chose to revive it.
And then there’s the sea-launched nuclear cruise missiles that Trump began to develop and that hawks are also fighting to fund. The SLCM-N is too usable – a nuclear weapon meant for warfighting, and not an unthinkable weapon that has no justified use. If Congress continues to embrace the development of “smaller” or “tactical” nuclear weapons, then allies and adversaries alike will struggle to tell where and how US navy vessels are deploying nukes — a recipe for a dangerous miscalculation and accidental nuclear war.
The B83: a nuclear gravity bomb.
THE LETTER:
To members of the United States Congress:
The SLCM-N and the B83 are two dangerous and wasteful nuclear weapons we do not need. I urge you to support President Biden’s plan to scrap the development of the SLCM-N and fully retire the B83.
Thank you for working for peace,
Eric, Yint, Abbey, and the Win Without War team
