ICYMI: Reed Joins Brookings for Discussion on U.S. Policy in Changing Nuclear Landscape
WASHINGTON, DC – As Russia and China race to simultaneously modernize and expand their nuclear arsenals and with the recent expiration of the New START treaty that has provided significant guardrails for the international proliferation of nuclear arms for more than two decades, U.S. Senator Jack Reed joined Michael O’Hanlon, the director of research for foreign policy at the Brookings Institution, on Friday, February 27, 2026, for a conversation on how the U.S. is adapting its nuclear policies and objectives in a shifting global landscape.
Senator Reed, the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, sat down with O’Hanlon for a wide-ranging discussion that focused on modernizing the essential elements of the nation’s nuclear triad and how deterrence is critical to combat the growth and aggression of both Russia and China as well as the general proliferation of nuclear weapons across the globe.
Reed also discussed recent developments in technology and how they can strengthen national security and the importance of modernizing, growing, and innovating within the nation’s defense industrial base.
A video of this discussion can be viewed here and a transcript of the conversation between Senator Reed and O’Hanlon follows:
MICHAEL O’HANLON: Good morning, everyone. Thank you again for being here. And I am thrilled. I'm Michael O’Hanlon in the foreign policy program. Thrilled to have Senator Jack Reed here today, a great friend of Brookings, a great public servant, now in his 30th year in the US Senate from the small but mighty state of Rhode Island. Let me just give you a quick bio for those of you who don't remember his background. He grew up in Rhode Island. His dad was in the Navy. He went to West Point in the fall of 1967, summer of 1967, right during the Vietnam War, graduated in 1971. Took, from my Princeton and Columbia perspective, an unfortunate detour through Harvard for a while, but nonetheless kept his bearings and served in the US Army with the 82nd Airborne as well as teaching at West Point for a while. Did some law, got interested in Rhode Island politics in the 1980s, then served as congressman from Rhode Island in the early 90s before being elected to the US Senate in 1996. As you know, he's currently the ranking member on the Senate Armed Services Committee, as well as doing many other things for the good of this country. So if you would please join me in welcoming Senator Jack Reed.
U.S. SENATOR JACK REED: Thanks, Michael. Thank you very much.
O’HANLON: So, Senator Reed, I want to talk about some of the specifics in the nuclear weapons agenda that you're dealing with on the Armed Services Committee in a minute. But I thought in the spirit of the first panel, I would just ask you for your general feel about the state of the world and where you have the greatest concerns about nuclear weapons today. Just to give you a quick summary of the previous panel with a regionalist from Europe and the Middle East and Northeast Asia. Mara Carlin asked what's your feel for how dangerous things are today and how much the nuclear issue is paramount? Well, Suzanne Maloney, who's an Iran specialist, said nine given where we are, but the other answers were more like 6. But that's not a comforting number. And then of course, Tom Wright said that in Europe a couple years ago, 2022, he might have said 8 or 9 during the worst of the Ukraine crisis. And Andrew Yoo said maybe in 2017 he would have given a score of eight or nine for the situation in North Korea. But let me just turn to you, whatever, whether you want to use numbers or I’d just be curious for your sense of where we are in the broader nuclear weapons issue today in the world.
REED: Well, we're in a brave new world, frankly. We're now looking at the competition between China, Russia and United States. There's no longer a bipolar nuclear problem, it's a tripolar or multipolar when you take in other nuclear states. So we're emerging out of a rather stable period of the Cold War and the post-Cold War into something that is quite dynamic. China is gearing up, it's estimated by 2035 they could have 1500 warheads. The Russians have about 1500 strategic warheads. That's a lot to contend with. We've never had that force ratio against us before. We're also in a situation where we've seen the end of formal arms control treaties. I hope that's temporary because arms control was a way that provided some certainty, some verification and some lines of communication, which are absolutely critical in a crisis moment. And we have to renew an effort, a sincere effort to get back on the negotiating table with both the Russians and the Chinese. Probably not simultaneously, but get in motion these discussions to try to limit nuclear weapons, to try to verify and to coordinate. So we have opportunities and emergencies to communicate and things like that, and then we've got the proliferation that could take place. It's disconcerting to note that in 2022, our National Defense strategy, extended deterrence was mentioned 16-17 times, the last one in 2026: zero. We're not talking about providing that kind of context for our allies where they don't have to rely on nuclear weapons and proliferation is much more problematic today than it was. So we're, you know, again, a new experience for us.
O’HANLON: Thank you. If I could, I want to get a little bit more programmatic now. And we didn't talk about that a lot on panel one, but you obviously live this stuff day in and day out. And for a decade now at least, the Pentagon's been saying through Republican and Democratic administrations nuclear modernization is our top priority and the Congress has tried to support that agenda. Overall, just to remind folks of where we are, we've got B-21 bombers starting to be produced and starting to fly. They're going to replace some of the existing nuclear deterrent, but they're not yet operational in deployed units. We've got the Columbia class submarine about to, I think the first boat is supposed to hit the water next year and maybe be deployable within about five years. And then the ICBM, the Sentinel ICBM has had some delays, but it's expected to replace the Minuteman in the 2030s. And then of course, there's all the warhead modernization and then there's the cruise missile, both air launched and sea launched. I wondered if you could just give us a sense of how you feel, how these programs are going and just your gut feel for how we're doing?
REED: No, we're at a critical moment where every aspect of the triad has to be updated, modernized and that's expensive, time consuming and difficult. And that is a challenge both in terms of budget and in terms of technology. When you look at the Columbia, it's a year behind schedule. There are great efforts now both from the Pentagon, and Deputy Secretary Feinberg I think is really engaged directly, to try to get that program back on track and on budget. But I expect it's going to be a difficult process to do that. And we need it because our previous Ohio class submarines are literally wearing out. They can't be forever at sea. So that's one program that's behind and very expensive. The B-21 is a success. It's done quite well and I, you know, commend the department and the contractors for doing it. The problem is we have to build 100 of them and they're replacing, in large part, the B-52. The last B-52 was built in 1962. So we're in a real dilemma there. We have good technology, but we've got to multiply it extensively. When you get to Sentinel, it's really a problem. It's had a Nunn-McCurdy breach already. It's very expensive and it is, in reality, the largest military construction project we've ever undertaken in terms of dollars. And we're running into the same problems we're running into in other areas of our economy. We don't have the workers to go up there into the plains of Montana. We don't have the access to the raw materials, etc. It's a very difficult problem and we have to do that. So we're facing a very challenging situation. And then of course we've got, as you mentioned, new weapons systems that are coming on that we have to develop responses to, you know, we're talking seriously about: can we use lasers to deflect some of these new sophisticated weapons? That's in research, but it's not in the field yet. And put on top of that, the president’s proposal for Golden Dome, which is a very expensive and technically challenging operation. So we're in a very, I think, precarious moment in terms of all of our triad and our deterrence.
O’HANLON: I want to get to the Golden Dome in a second, but first on a couple of the specific offensive weapons programs. You mentioned Sentinel, but there's also been efforts that you've been part of and had an important role to try to extend the life of the Minuteman in the meantime. So we still have a land based ICBM component to the Triad. Are you comfortable that that's going to be OK, that's going to bridge us to the point where Sentinel can be deployed? In other words, is your concern about the ICBM primarily about expense, which obviously is serious but is not necessarily going to threaten our deterrent. Or do you think there could be a gap between the two programs?
REED: I think we'll do everything conceivable to avoid a gap. That might be not only extending the life of Minuteman, but thinking of other creative ways of repositioning systems that might be able to, you know, compensate in some part for the failure of our Sentinel systems going forward, but we're working very, very hard to prevent any type of gaps. We need a triad. It's been a sturdy form of deterrence over 60 plus years and we understand that. But it's difficult to predict given the technical complexity of these systems and also as I pointed out, with the Sentinels, some old-fashioned bricks and mortar problems, we just can't get the people to do the work.
O’HANLON: Could I come back to that issue and from the great state of Rhode Island, of course, you're involved in building submarines, nuclear armed as well as nuclear powered attack submarines. Could you give us a quick update on where we are in trying to strengthen and enlarge the submarine industrial base?
REED: We are taking strong steps to do that. I think everyone recognizes that the strongest aspect of the triad is our submarines because they're very difficult, if not, we hope, impossible to detect. But they provide the real essential counterpunch that we need in a situation that could develop. What we've done, and this started back in 2017, with John McCain – my good friend and a remarkable senator, see he didn't go to college, you know… That's a joke, ladies and gentlemen. He went to the Naval Academy. No, John was one of the most remarkable and greatest senators I've ever served with. But back in 2017, we created this industrial submarine base fund, which was designed to give the tools to the companies, particularly in training manpower. That was one of the great problems, getting in the machinists, the welders, the people into the yard. So that was adopted by the Navy and now that's an official Navy program. But the administration, both the Biden administration and Trump administration, has really stepped up and trying to incentivize, encourage and demand that the companies expand, that they invest more of their money into the submarine industrial base and that we are – because this is the key, I think – if we can produce replacements for the 688, the Ohio class, and then I think we'll be in in a good shape in terms of particularly as you mentioned, if we have a slight gap in one of the other aspects to the triad. We're making progress, but we have a long way to go. We have to build new facilities. We have to also establish sort of warehousing capacities. One of the problems in the submarine industrial base and I think in the other industrial bases is we're not sending constant demand signals to suppliers. It was every year, maybe every year, probably, etcetera. What we have to do is be able to send that constant demand signal, which means Electric Boat has to be able to store equipment and parts that they can't use right away, so they can still keep buying them from the suppliers. So those are some of the aspects that we're trying to develop now.
O’HANLON: Do you feel like the policy is basically on the right path in terms of strengthening and enlarging the submarine industrial base or do you feel like there is still major new ideas that are needed?
REED: Well, I think it's on the right path, but it takes constant supervision and it also takes, you know, the focus of: we've got to get this done. And that I hope, is going to be apparent and evident everywhere throughout the industrial base. Congress is committed to the submarine. That's one issue that's not debated on partisan or parochial or geographic lines. We understand this. This system is the number one priority to the Navy and probably to DoD. So that's good. The financial support will be there. One thing we have to do, and this goes I think for all systems, is we can't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. We have to go ahead with technologies that might be improved, but they're good now. Let's get them in, get them to sea. And that's something that I think along the way we've been tempted: the multiple redesigns of systems, the multiple changes to make them better, slow us down and we’d rather have, I think, a very good ship in the water now rather than a perfect ship someday.
O’HANLON: Let me ask you if I could about missile and air defense and drone defense. Golden Dome. Because you and I have both been around this debate a while and I guess, you know, it's now been 43 years since President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative, Star Wars speech, but it's now about a year since President Trump's vision for something similar. And the stated goal is to be able to defend the entire country against many types of attack, including large scale Russian, Chinese attack, if I understand the vision correctly, is that your understanding of the vision as well? And is that a realistic standard or should we be maybe ratcheting down our expectations just a little bit?
REED: Well, I think what we should do is look very carefully at can we produce a system that is both effective and reasonably cost efficient, I hope. I think we have to make that investigation seriously, which we're doing now. We have to understand though that our key aspect of deterrence is our triad. It's not golden Dome, it's our triad. And that should be the first priority. Golden Dome, I think it’s going to have to incorporate different aspects, some of them novel, like we talked before about laser weapon systems, you know, to hit things like hypersonics that are coming in. Ballistic missiles aren't going to help a lot. Some lasers might. That's something we have to work on, and we have to work on it regardless of whether we create a big Golden Dome system. We need those platforms. Then I think also the communication system and the command and control systems are critical, but they're critical for not just Golden Dome, for our whole military system, but part of the development of Golden Dome has to be and should be integrated with the development of a comprehensive command and control system for nuclear weapons and for operations in general. So I think it has to be explored and we have to make some hard choices along the way. Is this feasible or is it too expensive? Or is it just technologically not achievable? But we have to start.
O’HANLON: Are you getting any sense yet of what the architecture might look like? I was reviewing the Bush, the first Bush administration's G pal system, global protection against limited strikes for the old timers in the room who've been around this debate as well for a while. And that was a vision to maybe have about a half dozen strongholds of defense capability more or less along the perimeter of the United States, but East Coast as well as West Coast, maybe even southern border as well as northern border. And to think about limited strikes, accidental strikes, unauthorized strikes from whomever. It seems like that logic is even more compelling now when we have drones that could be launched from who knows where. And so is that the kind of an architecture we should be expecting or that you would advocate? Or do we have any idea really where the Trump administration is going to come down and how they would position and posture different types of capability?
REED: Well, I don't want to comment specifically on the architecture because I don't want to get into areas that I should not be in. But I think one of the aspects that we've seen now and this is again, a new development. You know, 20 years ago space was not an arena of conflict as it is today. So space is going to be critical in many aspects of this. One is, we believe in public reports that the Russians are weaponizing space, and the Chinese are thinking about it if they haven't already done it. So how do we respond to that? And also from the perspective of trying to hit these targets coming from over the horizon or even closer, you know? The Gulf of Mexico, I think that's the term. Space offers us a vantage point that is probably better than just land systems or other systems. So I think that's one of the aspects that's going to be developed significantly – our role in space and how we're going to deal with its weaponization. It's now an arena of conflict that used to be a semi passive area where we could operate and others could operate relatively peaceful.
O’HANLON: You said something a second ago that caught my attention. The implication that a number of dimensions of Golden Dome may be classified, is that my understanding, is that correct, and is that going to be the way it stays or are we going to be given more detail for the public debate pretty soon about what the overall capabilities might look like?
REED: Well, you know, we have to be respectful of, you know, intelligence. But one of the aspects of the administration which I've publicly criticized is the lack of sharing information. Which is not or should not be classified. Just not sharing information, not just with the public, but with the Congress too. There has to be more forthcoming discussions about systems without violating, you know, security or classifications. But we have to engage the American people in this debate because they ultimately would be paying for it and supporting it and so I again I think there should be much more discussion of this not just slogan but at least an outline of what they intend to do where do they intend to do it.
O’HANLON: I have just two more questions so please start thinking of your own in the audience but I wanted to ask you, just step a little bit broader and above the nuclear issue alone, but in the spirit of what we were just discussing, to ask about this purported $1.5 trillion budget request that President Trump's been saying he might put forth to the Congress, which I'm interpreting to be sort of in the spirit of last year's big beautiful act where he asked for another $100 billion in unusual funding, mandatory funding for the Defense Department. Normally it's of course a discretionary account. And what I'm wondering is, are they going to ask for a sort of a trillion dollars in old fashioned discretionary money and then another half trillion in mandatory money they could spend at their own discretion with less reporting, less congressional oversight? And on whatever time horizon they choose, but in the meantime, President Trump can claim to have created the largest defense budget in U.S. history. Is that your expectation of where this might be headed or do you think they're going to rethink that whole $1.5 trillion?
REED: I would not be surprised if it evolves as you suggest, which is there's a budget line which is enhanced significantly, but there's also this reconciliation process where they have money that's very flexible. I’m being polite, but very flexible. The issue I think we have to start asking, we're raising these questions now is, can the Department of Defense spend the money they already have effectively and efficiently? And if they can't, then why are we putting more money into the system? That's one question. I think also every program has to be looked at. You know, we were just talking about Golden Dome. I mean, the price tag has not been announced, but I would assume it's not trivial by any means. Are we paying for that? Well, where's the, the science, the plans so we know that we're, we know we're making an investment in something that's real, not just a slogan like I suggested before. So I think there's going to be real questions. The other aspect of this we have to consider is: we're facing significant deficits and we have to be conscious of those. We're also facing significant issues: Social Security, Medicare, our demographics are changing dramatically, and those programs are becoming more and more expensive, fewer people paying into the system. Where are we going to get this adjustment in terms of defense spending versus domestic spending? We have to in good faith and honestly do that for the American people. So, and then of course, the administration continually suggests the way to prosperity is tax cuts. Well, that's nice too. But how does that factor into significant defense spending and then these other vital programs? At the State of the Union, the president was pounding the table: We will not cut Social Security, will not cut Medicare. Well, how do we fund it?
O’HANLON: Do you think that's going to rise to a high level political debate issue in the coming midterm or next presidential election? Because the American people don't seem to react to that issue very, very well in terms of, we don't have the same political champions of reducing the deficit that we did 30 and 40 years ago anymore.
REED: No, I think though that the reality is just becoming more apparent to everyone. And it's frankly, the last time we had a surplus was at the end of the Clinton administration. We estimated to be over 10 years about $7 trillion of surplus. Which I think we could have spent wisely had we not dissipated it. But that was the result of the votes I took in 94 to balance the budget, which was cutting expenses and raising taxes. And you know, you have a lot of people who will talk about the deficit but also want to cut taxes. And the arithmetic usually doesn't work out so well.
O’HANLON: Last question, thank you. We mentioned arms control before and you talked about the importance of trying to revive it. I realize we're all sort of in early days and this is one of our jobs at a place like Brookings to help come up with new ideas, but do you have any initial instincts about how to involve 3 major nuclear powers in an arms control conversation or maybe even 5 or maybe even more? I mean, how would we envision a future arms control framework?
REED: Well, I think benefiting from the advice of Rose Scott Mueller, who has testified before the committee, I think it should be a two track process. We have an established cultural, sort of institutional relationship with the Russians in terms of the office negotiation. We should actively re-engage in that and it's going to require not just a one off, you know, somebody showing off for a couple of days and talking. We're going to have to invest institutionally in the staff and committed experts to sit down with their counterparts and start talking about how we can develop again arms control that benefits both of us because that's the whole key to an agreement. With the Chinese, I think we would be sort of naive to pull them in and suggest that they're going to be ready to negotiate with the Russians and ourselves. But I think we can start exploring things like early warning communication, fail safe, and Sam Nunn and Ernie Moniz are doing an excellent job. They are going to China, they're talking to the Chinese and the Chinese at certain levels are responsive. So I think we take two distinct tracks. One is, for example with the Russians, can we start thinking about, well, let's have an overall warhead cap so we don't get into the strategic and tactical issues? That might be an approach that would work better now. With the Chinese, I think it's much more limited, saying why don't we have several lines of communication that are real, that when we call you will pick up the phone? And we can have a real dialogue to avoid mistakes which we would both sides would regret.
I think that's the way we begin.
O’HANLON: That's great. One last footnote question and then we'll go to you in the audience. Recently we've seen discussion about whether the Chinese in 2020 conducted a very low yield nuclear test to whether that should then be a basis for the United States considering doing the same. For those of you who don't follow this stuff in detail, I think it was the kind of a test that might involve a small amount of fissile material, but be measured with a yield and sort of at roughly the same size explosion as the conventional explosive inside the warhead. Not a real explosion of a nuclear scale, but designed to really test the components more fully, the United States considered doing these for a while and historically did before I think our test moratorium in 1992. And of course all three major powers, Russia, China, the United States where all signatories of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, but no one has ratified it or at least no one's currently in good standing on that. Any thoughts you've got about where we stand with that Chinese nuclear tests? As it was alleged to have occurred, and whether the United States should reciprocate?
REED: Well, I think we have to look at where we are, frankly. We have conducted over 1000 nuclear tests since 1945. The Russians about 500 to 700 tests. The Chinese much less than. And you go down to the most recent entries into the arms race, about less than 10, Pakistan and India. We have so much data from those tests, much more so than any other nation, that we don't necessarily need more data. We also have spent a roughly $10 billion on the National Ignition Facility in which we are studying and have fairly good aspect of view on the physics of nuclear reactions, which no other nation has that kind of analysis and data. And then every year, as you know, the three national labs have to certify that our systems are ready and also the STRATCOM commander. And they've done that for the last 25 years. So we're not in the position I think of desperately needed to test. Once we do test though, if we did, it would be an invitation to all these other countries to say, oh, we're going to catch up. We're going to learn so much via tests. Our real issue in terms of testing is related to the problems with the plutonium pits degenerating, etcetera. We're building new plutonium pits and I think that's the way to do it rather than, you know, trying to test them, etcetera. So I think if we got into testing, we would end up giving our opponents a boost without any material gain for the United States. In fact, it would be quite dangerous because you could see the North Koreans just automatically saying oh, me, me, me, I’ve got to do this, this is great. And then you generate the notion of, well, why are they testing? Are they preparing for something? Well, then I have to out prepare them. You know, we wanted to again, get back into negotiations, not back into, you know, dramatic demonstrations of our ability to blow the place up.
O’HANLON: It's sort of interesting the North Koreans haven't tested since 2017, even though we were pretty convinced they would. And I guess maybe still are wondering if they might.
REED: If we do a test, I would bet some money on, you know, that they would.
O’HANLON: Yeah, I think so.