WASHINGTON (The Daily Mail) – One of America’s most senior military commanders who oversees the U.S. nuclear weapons program urged the United States to dramatically upgrade its defense capabilities, warning that China was developing nuclear weapons faster than the U.S. and adding, “The big one is coming”.
Navy Adm. Charles A. Richard, the commander of U.S. Strategic Command, issued an unusually blunt warning, saying that China’s nuclear capability was a “near-term problem”.
“As I assess our level of deterrence against China, the ship is slowly sinking,” Richard said.
“It is sinking slowly, but it is sinking, as fundamentally they are putting capability in the field faster than we are,” he said.
He said the military was encumbered by red tape, slow to react, and at risk of being dramatically outspent and outmaneuvered by its adversaries.
“As those curves keep going, it isn’t going to matter how good our [operating plan] is or how good our commanders are, or how good our horses are — we’re not going to have enough of them,” he said, adding, “And that is a very near-term problem.”
He added that the country needed to regain the dynamism and can-do spirit of the 1950s and 60s.
“This Ukraine crisis that we’re in right now, this is just the warmup,” he said, addressing the Naval Submarine League’s annual gathering in Arlington, Virginia.
“The big one is coming. And it isn’t going to be very long before we’re going to get tested in ways that we haven’t been tested a long time,” he said.
Richard, who has led Stratcom since November 2019, is described by the Pentagon as being “responsible for the global command and control of U.S. strategic forces to meet decisive national security objectives”.
As such, his job is to provide recommendations to the president and secretary of defense on the military capacity necessary to keep the U.S. safe, and fulfill its strategic aims.
Richard said the current thinking was outdated - and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s nuclear sabre-rattling showed that an urgent reassessment was overdue.
“We have to do some rapid, fundamental change in the way we approach the defense of this nation,” he said.
“I will tell you, the current situation is vividly illuminating what nuclear coercion looks like and how you, or how you don’t stand up to that,” he said.
He said America’s rivals, such as China, are making dramatic strides in military innovation - posing a threat to the U.S.