Unleash the Nuclear-Armed Robo-Bombers: Air Force Researcher

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Unleash the Nuclear-Armed Robo-Bombers: Air Force Researcher

President Barack Obama may be beating a path toward nuclear disarmament. But that doesn’t mean a strategist can’t dream of new and better ways to maintain a nuclear deterrent.

Adam Lowther, a research professor at the Air Force Research Institute at Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala., argues in the new issue of Armed Forces Journal that the Air Force should consider replacing its strategic bombers with a nuclear-armed drone, called the nuclear-dedicated unmanned combat aerial vehicle, or ND-UCAV. The ND-UCAV Lowther writes, could be based on the Navy’s X-47B (pictured), a carrier-capable drone that the Navy began funding a few years ago.

“The Air Force could take advantage of the more than $800 million previously invested in the Joint Unmanned Combat Air Systems (J-UCAS) program and the $635 million currently dedicated to X-47B development and rapidly develop a ND-UCAV capable of penetrating defended air space with a small nuclear weapons payload,” Lowther writes.

Before looking closer at Lowther’s arguments, a little context is needed here. Obama’s vision of nuclear abolition faces resistance from the Pentagon, where powerful figures like Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen and U.S. Strategic Command chief Gen. Kevin Chilton all support modernization of the U.S. nuclear deterrent. Lowther recently made waves within the nuclear strategy community with “Learning to Love the Bomb,” a Boston Globe op-ed that succintly laid out the views of the “modernizer” camp.

via Unleash the Nuclear-Armed Robo-Bombers: Air Force Researcher | Danger Room | Wired.com.