{"id":86733,"date":"2017-08-09T15:35:30","date_gmt":"2017-08-09T15:35:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/armytimes\/uncategorized\/2017\/08\/09\/fact-checking-trumps-tweet-on-the-us-nuclear-arsenal\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T00:03:51","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T00:03:51","slug":"fact-checking-trumps-tweet-on-the-us-nuclear-arsenal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/armytimes\/flashpoints\/2017\/08\/09\/fact-checking-trumps-tweet-on-the-us-nuclear-arsenal\/","title":{"rendered":"Fact-checking Trump&#8217;s tweet on the US nuclear arsenal"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">WASHINGTON \u2014 Amid nuclear tensions with North Korea, U.S. President Donald Trump tweeted a fiery boast on Wednesday: His first order as president was to \u201crenovate and modernize\u201d the U.S. nuclear arsenal, and now it is \u201cfar stronger and more powerful than ever before.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But is that accurate?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The tweet, perhaps meant to back down North Korean leader Kim Jong Un or rally Trump\u2019s political base, was met with a quick backlash from arms control and national security experts on Twitter, who refuted the claims as \u201cnonsense\u201d or \u201ca total lie.\u201d This, amid boiling criticism that Trump\u2019s vow to meet North Korean threats with \u201cfire and fury\u201d was not helping to deescalate the possibility of nuclear war with Pyongyang.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">To be clear, efforts to modernize America\u2019s nuclear arsenal were long underway before Trump took office and are years from completion. Its nuclear arsenal has actually shrunk over the last seven months to meet the conditions of New START, the strategic arms reduction treaty, noted defense budget analyst Todd Harrison of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-lang=\"en\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Actually, nuke arsenal has shrunk over the past 7 months to meet New START limits. ICBM force down to 400, lowest level since early 1960s. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/BwnvaUDNYp\">https:\/\/t.co\/BwnvaUDNYp<\/a><\/p>&mdash; Todd Harrison (@ToddHarrisonDC) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ToddHarrisonDC\/status\/895272153561608192\">August 9, 2017<\/a><\/blockquote>\n<script async src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThis is patently absurd,\u201d Stephen Schwartz, former editor of the Nonproliferation Review, said in a tweet responding to Trump. \u201cLiterally nothing has happened in the last 201 days to increase the overall power of the US nuclear arsenal.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The senior policy director at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, Alexandra Bell, called Trump\u2019s claims \u201ca total lie\u201d in her own tweet. \u201cModernization plans for nuclear arsenal were well underway before [Trump] came into office &amp; his own budget isn\u2019t passed yet,\u201d she said in another.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThe recklessness of his nuclear flaunting aside this is nonsense,\u201d Kingston Reif, the director for disarmament and threat reduction policy at the Arms Control Association, said in a tweet. \u201c[President Barack] Obama set in motion massive upgrade plans, which [are] still being implemented.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Reif, in an email, noted that the U.S. arsenal is no more powerful than it was when Trump took office and the president\u2019s first budget request largely continues Obama\u2019s approach. The budget won\u2019t take effect until Oct. 1 at the earliest and may be delayed given the appropriations deadlock in Congress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Trump administration\u2019s nuclear policy is still in its nascent stage, expected to grow out of the Pentagon\u2019s ongoing Nuclear Posture Review. Trump ordered the review as part of a Jan. 27 memorandum to \u201crebuild\u201d the U.S. military, but it did not begin until April and is not expected to finish before September.<\/p>\n\n\n<aside class=\"smg-interstitial-link smg-interstitial-link--fallback wp-block-smg-interstitial-link\"><a href=\"http:\/\/hub.defensenews.com\/whitepaper\/08-07-2017-synchronized-simultaneous-combat\/\" class=\"smg-interstitial-link__fallback-link\">Whitepaper: Synchronized, Simultaneous Combat<\/a><\/aside>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In the balance is whether Trump will continue or expand Obama\u2019s nuclear modernization plans and spend as much as $1 trillion over 30 years to replace America\u2019s aging fleets of bombers, submarines and long-range ballistic missiles. Russia and China are in the midst of their own major nuclear modernization efforts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For the record, Trump\u2019s first official order, signed Jan. 20, minutes after he took the oath of office, was aimed at overhauling Obama\u2019s signature health care law.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In December, Trump made a series of statements that contained his first and clearest support up until that point for the U.S. nuclear arsenal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThe United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes,\u201d he said in a tweet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A day later, Trump said in a TV interview: \u201cLet it be an arms race. We will outmatch them at every pass and outlast them all.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Trump had just met with a number of the military\u2019s top policy and procurement officials, including Vice Adm. James Syring, head of the Missile Defense Agency, and Lt. Gen. Jack Weinstein, deputy Air Force chief of staff for strategic deterrence and nuclear integration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A month after taking office, Trump derided New START in an interview with Reuters as \u201ca one-sided deal,\u201d saying that \u201cif countries are going to have nukes, we\u2019re going to be at the top of the pack.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Signed in 2010 by Obama and Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, the treaty calls for the number of strategic nuclear missile launchers to be reduced by half.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Trump\u2019s statements upset nonproliferation advocates and roiled the delicate political consensus in Washington on nuclear arms. Generally speaking, Obama traded support for nuclear modernization for the support from defense hawks for the treaty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Nuclear modernization was a hot topic in Washington long before Trump was elected. The arsenal is estimated to cost at least $400 billion through 2026, and modernizing it faces a so-called bow wave of spending that adds up to $1 trillion over 30 years, by some accounts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Defense Department officials have repeatedly made the case to Congress that 40-year-old Minuteman III missiles and Ohio-class nuclear missile submarines need to be replaced, while a new nuclear-capable bomber must be built to retire the venerable B-52.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The nonproliferation community, and some Democratic lawmakers, are pushing back against modernization plans over the cost, and they say a new nuclear cruise missile, the Long-Range Standoff weapon, could fuel a new arms race.<\/p>\n\n\n\t<aside class=\"smg-interstitial-link wp-block-smg-interstitial-link\">\n\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/defensenews\/smr\/space-missile-defense\/2017\/08\/09\/north-korea-missiles-that-can-potentially-hit-guam\/\" class=\"smg-interstitial-link__inner\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"smg-interstitial-link__media\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"300\" height=\"201\" src=\"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/AP17221262354775.jpg.jpg?w=300\" class=\"smg-interstitial-link__image wp-post-image\" alt=\"\" \/>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"smg-interstitial-link__content\">\n\t\t\t\t<span class=\"smg-interstitial-link__kicker\">Related<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t<h3 class=\"smg-interstitial-link__title\">Can North Korea missiles hit Guam?<\/h3>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<p class=\"smg-interstitial-link__excerpt\">Analysts believe North Korea has several missiles in its arsenal capable of reaching the Pacific island of Guam.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/a>\n\t<\/aside>\n\t\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">On Tuesday, Trump remarked to reporters that Pyongyang is not to make any more threats against the United States or it will \u201cface fire and fury like the world has never seen.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">North Korea published a statement Wednesday saying it was reviewing plans to strike around the U.S. territory of Guam, in the Pacific, including Anderson Air Force Base. It accused the U.S. of provocative flights and tests in the Pacific.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><i>Aaron Mehta and Valerie Insinna in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Amid nuclear tensions with North Korea, the president boasted America&#8217;s nuclear arsenal is \u201cfar stronger and more powerful than ever before.\u201d But is it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":114732,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":8,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[100,8,12,25,70],"tags":[],"coauthors":[3380],"class_list":["post-86733","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-news-roundup","category-flashpoints","category-news","category-newsletters","category-your-army"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"K7LPSWTMXRGURCTWU6GD2CAWTQ","arc_canonical_url":"\/pentagon\/2017\/08\/09\/fact-checking-trumps-tweet-on-the-us-nuclear-arsenal\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.0 (Yoast SEO v28.1) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Fact-checking Trump&#039;s tweet on the US nuclear arsenal - Army Times<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Amid nuclear tensions with North Korea, the president boasted America&#039;s nuclear arsenal is \u201cfar stronger and more powerful than ever before.\u201d But is it?\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/defensenews\/smr\/space-missile-defense\/2017\/08\/09\/fact-checking-trumps-tweet-on-the-us-nuclear-arsenal\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Fact-checking Trump&#039;s tweet on the US nuclear arsenal\" \/>\n<meta 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