Pentagon orders study into future of ICBMs amid nuclear posture debate

The Pentagon has asked a Washington thinktank to draw up a report on the future of the US intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) programme and deliver it before the end of January.

The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIP) will present options based on three rounds of virtual consultations, which began on Tuesday, between Pentagon officials, nuclear weapons experts and arms control advocates.

Critics say the Carnegie Endowment consultations and its final report fall far short of an independent assessment that some congressional Democrats had demanded, scrutinising the main options: extending the life of the current ICBM, the Minuteman III, for a few years; or developing a totally new $100bn missile, known as the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD).

Arms control advocates fear that Biden will not keep his pledge to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in US defence planning, and that the president will be boxed in by a set of options drawn up by nuclear hawks in the Pentagon in the 2022 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR).

However, by the time the Carnegie Endowment delivers its report, in late January, the NPR is due to be delivered to the White House, raising questions on whether its findings will have any influence on decisions about the future nuclear arsenal.

In the first Carnegie session, some of the participants asked Pentagon officials what the point of the exercise was, if its conclusions would come too late to influence the posture review.

The Pentagon insisted that her job had been eliminated as part of a bureaucratic reorganisation and that she would be given another role. The assistant secretary of defence Mara Karlin assured Markey that Tomero had not been dismissed. However, Tomero has not been offered another job in the administration, according to her friends.