A recent analysis cautions that America’s nuclear stockpile is aging and insufficient against escalating international risks, urging a near-tripling of deployed warheads by mid-century to address emerging threats.
Obtained exclusively by Fox News Digital, the study highlights the limitations of the current approximately 1,750 deployed nuclear weapons, noting vulnerabilities as Russia, China, and North Korea rapidly bolster their capabilities. The Pentagon estimates China is adding 100 nuclear weapons annually and could achieve parity with the U.S. by the mid-2030s.
“The newest warhead that we have was built in 1989,” Robert Peters, the report’s author from the Heritage Foundation’s Allison Center for National Security, told Fox News Digital.
“The force size that we have now … That was a force design that came up when President Obama was in office in 2010, and the assumptions were in 2010 that there would be no more real competition between the United States and Russia, and China was not even a real player on the nuclear field.”
Proposed Expansion and Force Structure Details
Authored by Peters, the report recommends growing the U.S. operational nuclear force to about 4,625 deployed weapons by 2050, comprising roughly 3,500 strategic warheads—delivered via intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarines, and bombers—and 1,125 non-strategic ones, including gravity bombs and shorter-range missiles.
This comes as concerns mount over Russia’s thousands of non-strategic nuclear assets in Europe, potentially outnumbering U.S. equivalents by a factor of ten, alongside China’s advances in stealth bombers, submarine-launched missiles, and orbital systems. North Korea holds around 90 warheads and persists in testing intercontinental-range missiles.
“We’ve got an arsenal today that is decades beyond its planned life cycle, and a force construct that was designed for a very benign world.”
The blueprint outlines a revitalized inventory featuring Sentinel ICBMs to succeed Minuteman III, Columbia-class submarines, B-21 stealth bombers, extended-range cruise missiles, and hypersonic theater weapons—scaling up from current levels but remaining below Cold War peaks of tens of thousands.
Allocations would prioritize 3,200 warheads under Northern Command for domestic defense, with 750 in Europe and 675 in the Indo-Pacific, including upgrades to B-21 and B-52 aircraft with standoff munitions.
Strategic Rationale and Policy Considerations
The analysis stresses that nuclear arsenals prioritize counterforce targeting—such as silos and command centers—over urban destruction, countering myths of overk*ll. For instance, destroying China’s projected 500 hardened ICBM silos might require multiple warheads per site.
“A U.S. President with some regional nuclear options but only token damage-limiting capacity would quickly be confronted during a limited nuclear conflict with two unpalatable options: surrender or threaten widespread attacks on the adversary homeland, thus inviting an in-kind response, meaning su*cide,” the report warns.
“As Peters puts it, ‘the goal is never to get to this point. That’s why you have nuclear weapons, to make sure you never get to this point.'”
Whether the Biden administration will adopt these ideas remains uncertain, given President Trump’s past advocacy for “denuclearization” dialogues with adversaries.
“Trump very understandably doesn’t like nuclear weapons,” Peters said.
But, he added, “we tried [denuclearizing] under President Obama in 2009 and 2012 and no one followed.”
“Tremendous amounts of money are being spent on nuclear, and the destructive capacity is something we don’t even want to talk about today, because you don’t want to hear it,” Trump mused in remarks to the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland, in February.
“I want to see if we can denuclearize, and I think it’s very possible,” suggesting talks on the issue between the U.S., Russia and China.
Russia paused New START participation in 2023 amid U.S. Ukraine aid, following prior violations, while China and North Korea have shunned reduction talks. In September, Russia floated a one-year extension to the 2026-expiring treaty, awaiting White House reply.
The expansion could cost around $56 billion annually—about seven percent of the defense budget, per Peters—while advocating forward deployments to Finland, Poland, and South Korea to shorten response times, adjusting for shifted geopolitical lines since the Cold War.
