唐纳德·特朗普在2016年当选总统的十天前，美国对伊朗进行了核攻击。场合:每年10月下旬举行核战争演习。在战争游戏中，伊朗击沉了一艘美国航空母舰，并对海军陆战队使用了化学武器，这位中东指挥官要求进行核打击，一对B-2隐形轰炸机，每架都装载了一枚核弹，在总统商议期间待命。
“通过一系列具有挑战性的场景测试我们的部队，可以验证战略威慑力量的安全性、安全性、有效性和战备状态，”时任美国战略司令部司令的塞西尔·哈尼上将说，说当演习开始时。
据一名帮助撰写导致决定使用核武器的复杂场景的政府承包商称，环球雷霆17(因为演习发生在2017财年，所以被称为环球雷霆17)的重点是“在战术层面执行战斗指挥打击”
在英语中，这意味着使用核武器来支持中东、欧洲或朝鲜半岛的三个“战区”司令部之一。尽管朝鲜和俄罗斯当时主导了新闻，但该承包商表示，选择伊朗的场景是因为它允许核武器、常规军事、导弹防御、网络和太空最大程度地整合到核战略家所说的“21世纪威慑”中
哈尼上将在一份声明中说:“我们的威慑远远不止是核武器。”演讲就在全球雷霆17号开始前几天。“如果有必要，”他说，“美国将在我们选择的时间、地点和领域做出回应。”
伊朗的情况从未被公开披露过。All STRATCOM说2016年战争游戏的特点是它遵循了“一个概念上的、机密的场景”
尽管美国从未公开或明确对伊朗进行核威胁，但在过去一年里，它部署了一种新的核武器，增加了核战争的可能性。这种被称为W76-2的新型核武器是一种“低当量”导弹弹头，其目的正是为了应对奥巴马政府最后几天出现的伊朗局势。直接参与核战争计划的军方消息来源称，特朗普政府领导下的伊朗战争计划没有正式改变，但他们所说的“更有用”武器的部署改变了核计算。
1月8日，唐纳德·特朗普总统抵达华盛顿特区白宫大厅，就伊朗局势发表讲话。
在《新闻周刊》的独家报道中，四名高级军官表示，他们怀疑目前与伊朗长达六个月的僵局可能升级为核战争。但是他们每个人都注意到新三叉戟二型导弹弹头的部署，其明确意图是使这种攻击的威胁更加可信，并指出这是一个不为人所知或注意到的增加危险的变化。他们认为，新的能力应该让德黑兰在考虑对美国或其军队发动任何重大袭击之前暂停。但这四个人都非常不情愿地补充说，其中涉及到一个“唐纳德·特朗普”因素:这位总统和新武器的某些方面使得考虑越过核门槛成为一种独特的危险。
核武器是乔治·布什政府应对伊朗军事应急计划的一部分2002年核态势评估。就在9.11事件三个月后，白宫在给核战争规划者的指导中，在战略司令部的任务中增加了“邪恶轴心”国家(伊拉克、伊朗、朝鲜)以及叙利亚和利比亚。
经过多次内部辩论，巴拉克·奥巴马总统写了他自己的核态势评估这证实了“范围有限的突发事件”——要么阻止大规模常规攻击，要么阻止敌人使用化学或生物武器——美国可能首先使用核武器，甚至对无核国家使用核武器，这正是后来在《环球惊雷17》中出现的情景。根据部分解密文档由美国科学家联合会获得，奥巴马政府写的新核战争计划正式包括伊朗。
联合会的汉斯·克里斯滕森(Hans Kristensen)指出，这是唐纳德·特朗普继承的现状。前两届政府确认的国家政策包括对伊朗使用核武器的可能性，而在战争中玩弄这种情景的经验——而不仅仅是针对伊朗——暴露了战略司令部执行这种总统命令的能力的弱点。因此，军方提出了制造新武器来实现第一次打击的“要求”。
克里斯滕森在上周的一次采访中表示:“不管总统是谁，核计划往往都有自己的生活。”他还补充道，“伊朗非常受关注。”这是因为，正如克里斯滕森所指出的，核计划者是根据“相对模糊的总统指导”来运作的，他们会编写场景，进行战争游戏，并调整计划、武器和部队态势来预测无数可能的场景。
唐纳德·特朗普成为总统后，他的第一个行动之一是签署一份备忘录关于“重建”美国武装部队。该备忘录指示他的新任国防部长、退役将军詹姆斯·马丁斯(James Mattis)启动一项新的《核态势评估》，并确保核威慑“已经准备就绪，并经过适当调整，能够遏制21世纪的威胁。”战略司令部已经决定，它需要一种新的核武器来对付像朝鲜和伊朗这样的先进和新兴的核大国。现在他们有了行军命令。
“他们回复了自己的邮件，”特朗普早期白宫的一名退休空军军官谈到国家安全指令时说。
在核设施内部，“适当定制”意味着一种新的小型核武器，一种可由弹道导弹而不是轰炸机运载的核武器。后者，就像全球雷霆演习中的游戏一样，从密苏里州的基地飞到伊朗或朝鲜需要11个小时。另一方面，导弹可能需要30分钟，而向前部署的潜艇发射导弹可能只需要10-15分钟。
一名参与核审议的高级空军官员表示，特朗普政府执政第一年朝鲜的一系列远程导弹试验凸显了美国核能力的“漏洞”。在涉及即将使用大规模毁灭性武器的最紧迫的情况下，现有导弹被拒绝作为可信的威慑威胁，因为它们的弹头尺寸被认为太大而无法“使用”。
美国空军B-2幽灵被分配到空军全球打击司令部(AFGSC)准备从密苏里州怀特曼空军基地的跑道起飞。，2016年10月30日，全球雷霆17号演习期间。美国空军司令部通过提供战略资产，包括B-52和B-2轰炸机，支持美国战略司令部(USSTRATCOM)的全球打击和核威慑任务，以确保一支安全、可靠、有效和现成的威慑力量。科技。
在核战争计划的稀缺世界里，只有从三叉戟潜艇上发射的一枚小型核武器代表了应对新威胁所需的可信和“迅速”的能力。也就是说，一种新的核武器实际上可以用来抢先攻击美国或其亚洲盟友。理论上，B-2轰炸机可以与核弹一起向前部署，以缩短反应时间，但这种向前部署从未尝试过，需要与盟国协商并获得其许可。战争策划者得出结论，即使在那里，轰炸机任务也需要几个小时——不够快——而且轰炸机有可能被击落。
2018年2月，特朗普政府结束了自己的任期核态势评估。
国防部长马蒂斯在导言中写道:“我们必须正视现实，看到世界的本来面目，而不是我们希望的样子。”。
该评论正式呼吁在海军三叉戟二号潜艇发射导弹上部署一种新型低当量弹头。尽管政府和非政府官员今天明确表示要对抗俄罗斯，但他们一致认为，新的W76-2弹头一直以来都是为了填补这一空白，即提供一种可用且迅速的武器来对抗朝鲜或伊朗即将发动的大规模杀伤性武器或远程导弹袭击。
2019年1月下旬，第一枚低当量W76-2核弹头开始在得克萨斯州阿马里洛的能源部生产线上下线，没有引起什么轰动。9月，根据官员们的背景发言，因为还没有宣布，首批W76-2弹头已经交付给海军。W76-2被认为具有5-6千吨(5-6千吨)的爆炸当量——大约是投在广岛原子弹的三分之一。克里斯滕森估计，其中约50枚小型“快速”弹头将部署在三叉戟潜艇上，12艘潜艇上的24枚导弹中，每艘都有两枚装有这种武器。
2016年10月30日，全球雷霆17号结束的前一天，位于华盛顿州的三叉戟弹道导弹潜艇宾夕法尼亚号(USS Pennsylvania)在关岛阿普拉港浮出水面。这是28年来弹道导弹潜艇第一次访问关岛，也是自9/11以来第三次三叉戟潜艇访问外国港口。
“这次访问清楚地表明了美国为支持对盟国坚定不移的延伸威慑承诺而带来的高度生存和致命能力，”说哈里·哈里斯上将，时任美国太平洋司令部司令(现为美国驻韩国大使)。
美国宾夕法尼亚州号的航行是对其独特和扩大的“战术”任务的介绍，这一任务现在正在将核潜艇的任务扩展到俄罗斯和中国以外。
九个月后，另一艘弹道导弹潜艇“肯塔基号”出现在阿拉斯加阿留申群岛的荷兰港外，距离朝鲜目标仅3400英里。
三叉戟潜艇一旦离开港口，很少浮出水面，以100天为周期运行，大约在水下70天，然后在新船员接管之前补充30天。然而，自从唐纳德·特朗普成为总统以来，四艘三叉戟潜艇在巡逻中浮出水面，两艘在太平洋，另外两艘在大西洋，都在苏格兰停靠港口。
为了进行可见的核外交，美国军方依靠其156支强大的轰炸机部队——B-2幽灵隐形轰炸机、古老的B-52同温层堡垒轰炸机，甚至是传统的B-1兰瑟轰炸机。
去年5月，特朗普政府开始“为了应对来自伊朗的一些令人不安和升级的迹象和警告”，轰炸机发挥了明显的作用。B-52轰炸机于1996年部署到一个空军基地卡塔尔在波斯湾，呆了两个月。10月底，B-1轰炸机从南达科他州一直飞到沙特阿拉伯，这是自1991年沙漠风暴行动以来，第一次重型轰炸机在该国着陆。
但是后来轰炸机或多或少从中东的天空中消失了。今年的核演习《全球雷霆20》完全聚焦于俄罗斯的场景。2019年10月演习的场景是一年多前选定的。
上周，六架B-52轰炸机出现在印度洋的迪戈加西亚岛上，这是十多年来轰炸机首次以英国控制的领土为基地。退役空军上将霍克·卡莱尔告诉记者空军时报轰炸机部署在距离伊朗南部3000多英里的地方，使它们超出了德黑兰中程弹道导弹的射程。
这些部署在前方的轰炸机没有携带核武器，在太平洋、欧洲或中东使用的六个前方轰炸机基地也没有部署核武器。消息人士一致认为，如果美国对伊朗进行任何可能的核打击，那将来自新的低当量三叉戟潜艇系统。
空军或战略司令部中没有人想公开谈论核计划或核武器在当前伊朗危机中发挥作用的实际前景，在谈论高度机密的战争计划时小心谨慎，并注意总统的操作风格。
关于使用核武器的哲学问题，我与之交谈过的所有六个空军和战略司令部的消息来源都表示担心，这位总统的核选择的存在，使他们原本明确的信念复杂化，即不可能对伊朗使用核武器。他们同意，美国的核使用只能发生在这些国家全面战争之后，在伊朗使用化学或生物武器之后，或者在对美国的直接攻击之后。他们说，即使在那时，只有当有确凿的情报表明德黑兰正准备用某种简易放射性武器或其他大规模杀伤性武器发动一场迫在眉睫的袭击时，才可能讨论核选择。
这些官员同意，在这种情况下，总统的决策既不透明又不可预测。今年7月，特朗普被提供打击伊朗防空目标的选项，以报复无人侦察机被击落，他甚至拒绝了一个非常有限的选项，担心150名平民可能在袭击中丧生。但是总统在1月2日巴格达无人机袭击中选择了最极端的选择，那次袭击杀死了伊朗将军卡西姆·苏莱曼尼。
一名退休的空军军官本周告诉我，令他担忧的是，美国针对伊朗最极端行动的“一揽子”选择将自动包括核选择，即使这是百分之一的选择。这名官员说，“迅速降低附带损害W76”意味着一种可用的核武器。
这是核战争计划者根据总统的指导创造的。
正如目前的核战争计划所写，使用这种武器也是合理的，就像广岛一样，是为了阻止一场更广泛、理论上更具破坏性的全面战争。
“这是一年前美国没有的能力，”这位官员说，这种能力的建立正是为了被使用，甚至是被抢先使用。“让我们只希望永远不会有这种选择。”
威廉·阿尔金是半打核武器书籍的作者。他在写作结束永久战争西蒙舒斯特公司。他的推特账号是@warkin
WITH A NEW WEAPON IN DONALD TRUMP'S HANDS, THE IRAN CRISIS RISKS GOING NUCLEAR
Ten days before Donald J. Trump was elected president in 2016, the United States nuked Iran. The occasion: a nuclear war exercise held every year in late October. In the war game, after Iran sank an American aircraft carrier and employed chemical weapons against a Marine Corps force, the Middle East commander requested a nuclear strike, and a pair of B-2 stealth bombers, each loaded with a single nuclear bomb, stood by while the president deliberated.
"Testing our forces through a range of challenging scenarios validates the safety, security, effectiveness and readiness of the strategic deterrent," Adm. Cecil D. Haney, then the commander of U.S. Strategic Command, said as the exercise got underway.
According to a government contractor who helped write the complex scenario leading up to the decision to use nuclear weapons, Global Thunder 17 (as the exercise was called because it took place in fiscal year 2017) focused on "execution of a combatant command strike at the tactical level."
In English, this means using nuclear weapons in support of one of three "theater" commands in the Middle East, Europe or the Korean Peninsula. Though North Korea and Russia dominated the news at the time, the contractor says the Iran scenario was chosen because it allowed the greatest integration of nuclear weapons, conventional military, missile defense, cyber, and space into what nuclear strategists call "21st Century deterrence."
"Our deterrence is much, much more than just nuclear weapons," Adm. Haney said in a lecture at Kansas State University just days before Global Thunder 17 started. "If necessary," he said, the United States "will respond at a time and place and domain of our choosing."
The Iran scenario has never before been publicly divulged. All STRATCOM says of the 2016 war game is that it followed "a notional, classified scenario."
Though the United States has never made any public or explicit nuclear threat against Iran, in the past year, it has deployed a new nuclear weapon which increases the prospects for nuclear war. The new nuclear weapon, called the W76-2, is a "low yield" missile warhead intended for exactly the type of Iran scenario that played out in the last days of the Obama administration. Military sources directly involved in nuclear war planning say there has been no formal change in war plans with regard to Iran under the Trump administration, but the deployment of what they say is this "more usable" weapon, changes the nuclear calculus.
President Donald Trump arrives to speak about the situation with Iran in the Grand Foyer of the White House in Washington, D.C., January 8.PHOTO BY SAUL LOEB/AFP/GETTY
In exclusive reporting for Newsweek, four senior military officers say they doubt that the now six-month standoff with Iran could escalate to nuclear war. But they each note the deployment of the new Trident II missile warhead explicitly intended to make the threat of such an attack more credible, and point it out as a little understood or noticed change that increases the very danger. They argue that the new capability should give Tehran pause before it contemplates any major attack on the United States or its forces. But all four also add, very reluctantly, that there is a "Donald Trump" factor involved: that there is something about this president and the new weapons that makes contemplating crossing the nuclear threshold a unique danger.
Nuclear weapons have been a part of military contingency plans dealing with Iran going back to the George W. Bush administration's 2002 Nuclear Posture Review. In its guidance to nuclear war planners just three months after 9/11, the White House added the "axis of evil" states (Iraq, Iran, North Korea) plus Syria and Libya to Strategic Command's missions.
After much internal debate, President Barack Obama wrote his own Nuclear Posture Review that affirmed there were "a narrow range of contingencies"—either to deter a massive conventional attack or to stop enemy use of chemical or biological weapons—where the United States might use nuclear weapons first and even against non-nuclear nations, precisely the scenario that later played out in Global Thunder 17. According to partially declassified documents obtained by the Federation of American Scientists, new nuclear war plans written in the Obama administration formally included Iran.
Hans Kristensen of the Federation points out that this is the state of affairs inherited by Donald Trump. National policy affirmed by two previous administrations includes the possibility of nuclear use against Iran, while the experience in war gaming such scenarios—and not just against Iran—exposed weaknesses in the ability of Strategic Command to carry out such a presidential order. Thus emerged the "requirement" on the part of the military to create a new weapon to fulfill this first strike scenario.
"Regardless of presidencies, nuclear planning tends to have a life of its own," Kristensen said in an interview last week, adding that "Iran is very much in the crosshair." That's because, as Kristensen notes, nuclear planners operate from "relatively vague presidential guidance," writing scenarios, conducting war games, and adjusting plans, weapons and the posture of forces to anticipate countless possible scenarios.
When Donald Trump became president, one of his first acts was signing a memorandum on "Rebuilding" U.S. armed forces. That memorandum directed his new Secretary of Defense, retired Gen. James Mattis, to initiate a new Nuclear Posture Review and to ensure that the nuclear deterrent was "ready and appropriately tailored to deter 21st-century threats." Strategic Command had already determined that it needed a new nuclear weapon to deal with advanced and emerging nuclear powers like North Korea and Iran. Now they had their marching orders.
"They answered their own mail," one retired Air Force officer involved in the early Trump White House said of the national security directive.
Inside the nuclear establishment, "appropriately tailored" meant a new small nuclear weapon, one deliverable by a ballistic missile rather than from a bomber. The latter, as was gamed in the Global Thunder exercise, would take 11 hours to fly from home base in Missouri to either Iran or North Korea. A missile, on the other hand, could take 30 minutes, and a forward-deployed submarine-launched missile could take just 10-15 minutes.
North Korea's string of long-range missile tests in the first year of the Trump administration accentuated this "hole" in U.S. nuclear capabilities, a senior Air Force officer involved in the nuclear deliberations says. In the most pressing scenario involving the imminent use of weapons of mass destruction, existing missiles were rejected as a credible deterrent threat because their warhead size was thought to be too large to be "usable."
U.S. Air Force B-2 Spirits assigned to Air Force Global Strike Command (AFGSC) prepare to take off from the runway at Whiteman Air Force Base, Mo., Oct 30, 2016, during exercise Global Thunder 17. AFGSC supports U.S. Strategic Command's (USSTRATCOM) global strike and nuclear deterrence missions by providing strategic assets, including bombers like the B-52 and B-2, to ensure a safe, secure, effective and ready deterrent force.
In the rarified world of nuclear war planning, only a single small nuclear weapon launched from a Trident submarine represented the credible and "prompt" capability needed to respond to new threat. That is, a new nuclear weapon that could actually be used to preempt a strike on the United States or its Asian allies. B-2 bombers in theory could be forward deployed with nuclear bombs to shorten response time, but such a forward deployment had never been tried, and would demand consultation with and permission from allies. War planners concluded that even there, that a bomber mission would take hours—not fast enough—and there was a possibility that a bomber might be shot down.
In February 2018, the Trump administration concluded its own Nuclear Posture Review.
"We must look reality in the eye and see the world as it is, not as we wish it to be," Defense Secretary Mattis wrote in the introduction.
The Review formally called for a new low-yield warhead to be deployed on Navy Trident II submarine-launched missiles. Though articulated as a counter to Russia, government and non-government officials today agree that the new W76-2 warhead was all along also intended to fill the niche of providing a usable and prompt weapon to counter imminent North Korean or Iranian attacks, either with WMD or long-range missiles.
In late January 2019, with little fanfare, the first of these low-yield W76-2 nuclear warheads started rolling off the Department of Energy production line in Amarillo, Texas. In September, according to officials who spoke on background because no announcement has been made, the first W76-2 warheads were delivered to the Navy. That W76-2 is thought to have an explosive yield of between 5-6 kilotons (5-6 thousand tons) – about one-third the size of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Kristensen estimates that some 50 of these small, "prompt" warheads will be deployed on Trident submarines, and that two of the 24 missiles aboard each of 12 submarines will be so armed.
On October 30, 2016, a day before Global Thunder 17 ended, the USS Pennsylvania, a Trident ballistic missile submarine based in Washington state, surfaced in Apra Harbor, Guam. It was the first visit of a ballistic missile submarine to Guam in 28 years and only the third Trident submarine to make a foreign port visit since 9/11.
"This visit is a clear demonstration of the highly survivable and lethal capabilities the United States brings to bear in support of the unwavering extended deterrence commitments to our allies," said Adm. Harry Harris, then the commander for U.S. Pacific Command (and now U.S. ambassador to South Korea).
The voyage of the USS Pennsylvania was an introduction to its unique and expanded "tactical" duty, one that was now extending the mission of nuclear submarines beyond Russia and China.
Nine months later, another ballistic missile submarine, the USS Kentucky, showed up off Dutch Harbor in the Aleutian Island chain of Alaska, just 3,400 miles from its North Korean targets.
Trident submarines rarely surface once they leave their ports, operating on 100-day cycles, about 70 days underwater followed by 30 days replenishment before a new crew takes over. Since Donald Trump has become president, though, four Trident submarines have surfaced during their patrols, the two in the Pacific and two others in the Atlantic, both making port calls in Scotland.
To conduct visible nuclear diplomacy, the U.S. military relies on its 156 strong bomber force – the B-2 Spirit stealth bombers, the venerable B-52 Stratofortress bombers, and even the conventional-only B-1 Lancer bomber.
Last May, as the Trump administration began accelerated military deployments "in response to a number of troubling and escalatory indications and warnings" from Iran, bombers played a visible role. B-52 bombers were deployed to an airbase in Qatar, on the Persian Gulf, for two months. And at the end of October, B-1 bombers flew from South Dakota all the way to Saudi Arabia, the first time heavy bombers were on the ground in that country since Operation Desert Storm in 1991.
But then bombers more or less disappeared from Middle East skies. Global Thunder 20, this year's nuclear exercise, completely focused on a Russia scenario. The scenario for the October 2019 exercise had been selected more than a year before.
Last week, six B-52 bombers showed up on the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia, the first time bombers have forward based to the British-controlled territory in more than a decade. Retired Air Force Gen. Hawk Carlisle told Air Force Times that the placement of the bombers 3,000-plus miles from the southern edge of Iran put them out of range of Tehran's medium-range ballistic missiles.
None of these forward deployed bombers have nuclear weapons with them, nor are there nuclear weapons deployed at the half dozen forward bomber bases used in the Pacific, Europe or the Middle East. If there was any conceivable American nuclear strike on Iran, sources agree, it would come from the new low-yield Trident submarine-based system.
No one in the Air Force or Strategic Command wanted to talk on the record regarding nuclear plans or the actual prospects of nuclear weapons playing a role in the ongoing Iran crisis, cautious in speaking of highly classified war plans and mindful of the president's operating style.
On the philosophical question of using nuclear weapons, all six Air Force and STRATCOM sources I spoke to expressed concern that the very existence of nuclear options, with this president, complicated their otherwise clear conviction that there was no way nuclear weapons could be used against Iran. American nuclear use could only occur, they agree, after the countries were in a full-scale war, and after the Iranian use of chemical or biological weapons or after a direct attack on the United States. And even then, they say, a nuclear option might only be discussed were there unmistakable intelligence that Tehran was preparing an imminent strike with some kind of improvised radiological or other weapon of mass destruction.
In such a scenario, these officers agree, the president's decision-making could be both opaque and unpredictable. In July, when Trump was offered the option of striking Iranian air defense targets in retaliation for the downing of an unmanned reconnaissance drone, he rejected even a very limited option, concerned that 150 civilians might die in the attacks. But the president chose the most extreme option in the January 2 drone strike in Baghdad that killed Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani.
One retired Air Force officer told me this week that what worries him is that a "package" of American options in response to the most extreme Iranian actions will automatically include the nuclear option, even if it is one option out of a hundred. Having a "prompt low collateral damage W76," the officer says, connotes a usable nuclear weapon.
That's what the nuclear war planners created, based upon presidential guidance.
As the current nuclear war plans are written, the use of such a weapon could also be justified, almost Hiroshima-like, as a shocking thunderclap to forestall a wider and theoretically more destructive all-out war.
"It is a capability that the United States did not have a year ago," the officer says, built precisely to be used, even to be used preemptively. "Let's just hope that that option is never offered."
William Arkin is author of a half-dozen books on nuclear weapons. He is writing Ending Perpetual War for Simon & Schuster. His Twitter handle is @warkin
