Archive: September 14, 2024

This Army division just ran cybersecurity for a far-away brigade

One of the Army’s most modernized armored brigades and its parent division recently conducted the service’s first long-range, fully remote cybersecurity operation at the division level.

The 3rd Infantry Division’s network operations and security cell remained at Fort Stewart, Georgia, in July, covering the first 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team’s cyber 6 as the Raider Brigade conducted a two-week rotation at the National Training Center, Fort Irwin, California.

Army officials believe that such remote cyber protection will be critical to units using cloud-dependent systems on missions, systems increasingly being fielded to the force.

The division cell’s oversight of Internet firewalls, sensors and scanners for a unit more than 2,300 miles away occurred during one of the brigade’s most demanding rotations to date.

Nearly every upgrade is hitting this armor brigade

Brigade soldiers fought across 120 miles during their time at the center, Maj. Gen. Chris Norrie, 3rd ID commander, said Wednesday at the Maneuver Warfighter Conference at Fort Moore, Georgia.

The brigade conducted five force-on-force operations, a full live-fire attack into a hasty defense and seized 20 objectives, Norrie said.

“That’s a really demanding pace and scale for an armor brigade, but it is consistent with what we might expect if we had to go fight large-scale ground formations,” Norrie said.

The cyber soldiers back in Georgia detected 17 million digital threats and manually investigated more than 3,000 alerts as they supported the brigade, according to a division statement.

“We took a capability that was being underutilized at the brigade level and brought up the ability to provide a cyber defense to any of our units,” said Chief Warrant Officer 2 Gregory Hazard, who heads the unit’s Cybersecurity Operations Center.

Hazard stressed that the remote cell was still in the “proof of concept stage” but the division has already heard from other divisions interested in how they can replicate the concept.

Brigade commander Col. Jim Armstrong spoke Thursday at the conference, noting how current adversary threats in cyber and other areas are forcing units to adapt.

“We must not cede this freedom of maneuver,” Armstrong said in a statement to Army Times. “We must re-create maneuver space in multiple domains to maintain our capacity to kill the enemy.”

The division was the first in the Army to receive a slew of upgrades in 2022, including new Joint Light Tactical Vehicles, new maintenance and diagnostic tools, the M109A7 Paladin howitzer, the M2A4 Bradley Fighting Vehicles and the M1A2 Sepv3 Abrams tank.

At the time, the division also tested the new Armored Multi-Purpose Vehicle, which it has since fielded and it was the first brigade to deploy a full complement to the training center, Armstrong said.

Armstrong shared other highlights from the rotation.

The division conducted the first heavy Immediate Response Package since 2003, a scalable, combat-ready force ready for short or no-notice deployment, Armstrong said.

That package includes a company’s worth of Bradleys, JLTVs, tracked maintenance vehicles, fuelers, cargo trucks and about 60 soldiers.

Deploying the response package required C-17 Globemaster plane transports that landed at airstrips meant to replicate real-world remote locations rather than a standard airport.

The combination of new equipment and cyber protection helped the brigade conduct the first successful armored brigade combined arms breach of an urban site at nighttime in more than 20 years, Armstrong said.

France tests space lasers for secure satellite downlink in world first

PARIS — French technology firms used laser to communicate between a low-orbit nano satellite and a commercial ground station in an experiment sponsored by the French Defence Innovation Agency, with France’s Armed Forces Ministry dubbing the test a world first.

A satellite from Unseenlabs with a laser payload established a stable link for several minutes with an optical ground station supplied by Cailabs, according to the ministry, which provided €5.5 million ($6.1 million) in funding for the project. The successful test this summer opens the way to integrating the system on France’s future military satellites, the ministry said.

The point-to-point nature of lasers makes them more secure than radio frequencies, and they can’t be jammed the way radio can, Cailabs CEO Jean-François Morizur told Defense News in an interview on Thursday. Additionally, a laser link can transfer very large files such as detailed Earth images in minutes, something that might require multiple orbits using radio signals, the CEO said.

“Anti-jamming is a big one,” Morizur said. “Low probability of detection, low probability of intercept means you can deploy it in some difficult contexts, you just don’t have the same signature as an RF antenna. Putting that on a ship makes sense, because you then reduce the radio footprint of your ship – both for ship-to-ship and ship to satellite.”

The higher data rates offered by laser are important for intelligence applications, as the growing volume of detailed satellite images of Earth is creating “very, very big files” that can be “quite tricky” to transfer with today’s satellite radio transmitters, according to the Cailabs CEO.

The successful test will make it possible to use space-based laser comms on mobile, land-based, naval and airborne platforms, the Armed Forces Ministry said. While the experiment is not the first for space-to-Earth laser communications, it’s the first using a commercially available ground station, according to Morizur.

The French government is keeping some information around the testing under wraps, including details on the date or who provided the laser payload. The ministry said the Keraunos project contributes to objectives in the 2024-2030 Military Programming Law to strengthen France’s space capabilities.

One of the goals of the Keraunos optical communications satellite project is to mitigate the effect of atmospheric turbulence that can hurt transmission quality, the ministry said. While the laser system used in the test will pass through some clouds, it can’t penetrate heavy cloud cover, according to Morizur.

The changed security situation in the world has accelerated government thinking around space, “one of the battlegrounds,” with a growing realization that space supremacy will be important, according to Morizur. In addition, the reduction in launch costs and cheap access to space are speeding up the space economy, he said.

“The more the space economy is growing, the more you have new tools, it becomes a field like any other, basically, where battle happens.”

The Cailabs ground station used in the test consists of a dome with a large telescope and several smaller ones, with the complexity being in processing the laser light, “that’s kind of where the magic happens,” Morizur said. The ground station can be made truck-sized, according to the CEO. Cailabs competitors include Safran in France and BridgeCom in the United States, he said.

Cailabs has seven ground stations under contract, including the one used in the test for the Armed Forces Ministry and a second one on order for the French government, as well as stations to be built for civilian clients including the European Space Agency and South Korea’s Contec. Most orders are for civilian applications, mainly for imagery, according to Morizur.

Morizur said the market for radio satellite gateways is valued at around $3 billion a year, and while optical ground stations will initially be a fragment of that, over time the opportunity will be “in the billions.”

Cailabs is currently leading in technology, price point and product maturity with its ground stations, and was picked for a number of recent competitive contracts, according to the CEO. The company has set up a team in the United States, where it sees contract opportunities, “and we are looking forward to supporting the U.S. government in many different ways,” Morizur said.

The company, which was co-founded by Morizur in 2013 and which has raised €46 million from investors, is unprofitable for now as it continues to spend on R&D and expansion, the CEO said. Cailabs received more than €10 million in orders last year, and “we stopped calling ourselves a startup a few years ago,” he added.

Pentagon readies for 6G, the next of wave of wireless network tech

Since transitioning most of its 5G research and development projects to the Chief Information Office last year, the Pentagon’s Future Generation Wireless Technology Office has shifted its focus to preparing the Defense Department for the next wave of network innovation.

That work is increasingly important for the U.S., which is racing against China to shape the next iteration of wireless telecommunications, known as 6G. These more advanced networks, expected to materialize in the 2030s, will pave the way for more dependable high-speed, low-latency communication and could support the Pentagon’s technology interests — from robotics and autonomy to virtual reality and advanced sensing.

Staying ahead means not only fostering technology development and industry standards but making sure that policy and regulations are in place to safely use the capability, according to Thomas Rondeau, who leads the Pentagon’s FutureG office. Staking a leadership role in the global competition, he said, could give DOD a level of control over what that future infrastructure looks like.

“If we can define those going into it, then as we export our technologies, we’re also exporting our policies and our regulations, because they’re going to be inherently part of those technology solutions,” Rondeau told Defense News in a recent interview.

The Defense Department started making a concerted investment in 5G about five years ago when then Undersecretary of Research and Engineering Michael Griffin named the technology a top priority for the Pentagon.

In 2020, DOD awarded contracts totaling $600 million to 15 companies to experiment with various 5G applications at five bases around the country. The projects included augmented and virtual reality training, smart warehousing, command and control and spectrum utilization.

The department has since expanded the pilots and pursued other wireless network development projects, including a 5G Challenge series that incentivized companies to move toward more open-access networks.

The result has, so far, been a mixed bag. Most of the pilots didn’t transition into formal programs within the military services, Rondeau said. Several of the failed efforts involved commercial augmented or virtual reality technology that wasn’t mature enough for DOD to justify continued funding.

Among the projects that did transfer, Rondeau highlighted a pilot effort at Naval Air Station Whidbey Island in Washington to provide fixed wireless access to the base. The project essentially replaced hundreds of pounds of cables with radio units that broadcast the communications network to the personnel who need it. Today, the system is supporting logistics and maintenance operations at the base.

“This could be a huge benefit for readiness, but also I think it should be very cost-effective way to slim down on everything that you pay for cables,” Rondeau said. “That will be a continued, sustainable project.”

This and other transitioned pilots will likely make their way into a formal budget cycle by fiscal 2027, he added.

DOD also saw some success from the 5G Challenges it staged in 2022 and 2023 to encourage telecommunication companies to transition to an open radio access network, or O-RAN. A RAN is the first entry point a wireless device makes into a network and accounts for about 80% of its cost. Historically, proprietary RANs managed by companies like Huawei, Ericsson, Nokia and Samsung have dominated the market.

“They’re driving a world where they control the entire system, the end-to-end system,” Rondeau said. “That causes a lack of insight, a lack of innovation on our side, and it causes challenges with how to apply these types of systems to unique, niche military needs.”

The 5G Challenge offered companies a chance to break open that proprietary model by moving to O-RANS — and according to Rondeau, it was a success. The initial challenge then expanded into a broader forum that addressed issues like energy efficiency and spectrum management. Ultimately, the effort reduced energy usage by around 30%, he said.

Rondeau said that while much of the focus of these initiatives was on 5G, the work has informed the Pentagon’s vision and strategy for 6G, which the department believes should have an open-source foundation.

“That is a direct result of not only my background and push for some of these things, but also the learnings that we got from the networks we’ve deployed, from the 5G Challenge,” he said. “All these things come into play that led us towards an open-source software model being the right model for the military and, we think, for industry.”

One of the FutureG office’s top priorities these days, a direct outgrowth of the 5G Challenge, is called CUDU, which stands for centralized unit, distributed unit. The project is focused on implementing a fully open software model for 6G that meets the needs of industry, the research community and DOD.

The office is also exploring how the military could use 6G for sensing and monitoring. Its Integrated Sensing and Communications project, dubbed ISAC, uses wireless signals to collect information about different environments. That capability could be used to monitor drone networks or gather military intelligence.

While ISAC technology could bring a major boost to DOD’s ISR systems, commercialization could make it accessible to adversary nations who might weaponize it against the U.S. That challenge reflects a broader DOD concern around 6G policies and regulation – and drives urgency within Rondeau’s office to ensure the U.S. is the first to shape the foundation of these next-generation networks.

“We’re looking at this as a real opportunity for dramatic growth and interest in new, novel technologies for both commercial industry and defense needs,” he said. “But also, the threat space that it opens up for us is potentially pretty dramatic, so we need to be on top of this.”

Ukraine wants 12 Viper attack helicopters spurned by Slovakia

WARSAW, Poland — As Slovakia’s government wobbles over the previous Cabinet’s plan to buy 12 AH-1Z Viper attack helicopters from the United States, Ukrainian officials are intensifying their lobbying in Washington to secure the aircraft for their defense against Russia.

The U.S. State Department in July approved a tentative foreign military sale of 12 Vipers, made by Bell, to Slovakia for an estimated $600 million, a hefty increase compared to the initial offer of $340 million extended to the previous Slovak government. The discount was in part due to the fact that a deal with the initially envisioned recipient of the U.S. equipment, Pakistan, had fallen through.

A senior industry official close to the talks said Bratislava’s efforts have since aimed at decoupling the discount from the Vipers and instead apply it to other prospective purchases like F-16 warplanes and air-defense systems. That has left officials in Washington miffed, the industry official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss ongoing negotiations.

Meanwhile, Vadym Ivchenko, a Ukrainian lawmaker for the Batkivshchyna party, told Defense News that Ukraine has shown interest in the 12 Vipers since 2022. At that time, the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces filed a letter of request to the U.S. to obtain the aircraft through a foreign military sale.

“We need these helicopters for our soldiers who are fighting on the frontline in the Ukrainian provinces of Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and other regions but also leading an operation in the Kursk region,” Ivchenko told Defense News.

As a member of the parliamentary Committee on National Security, Defense and Intelligence, Ivchenko said he has written letter to U.S. lawmakers to convince the Biden administration to reroute the Vipers to Kyiv if Slovakia turns them down.

“Slovakia should decide what kind of weapons and equipment they require for their military, and if they don’t need these helicopters, then their delivery to Ukraine should take place as soon as possible,” he said.

Ivchenko said that officials in Kyiv are also making efforts to host the production of Bell helicopters at a designated Ukraine-based facility.

“We wish to deepen our industrial cooperation with the United States to produce such helicopters in Ukraine,” according to the lawmaker. “This foreign investment would be guaranteed by the Ukrainian government.”

In March 2023, then-Slovak Defence Minister Jaroslav Naď announced the U.S. had offered to Slovakia the copters along with AGM-114 Hellfire II air-to-ground missiles, valued at about $1 billion, for roughly a third of their regular price to compensate the country for its donation of Soviet-designed Mikoyan MiG-29 fighter jets and 2K12 Kub air defense systems to Ukraine.

However, since a new Cabinet headed by Prime Minister Robert Fico was sworn in last October, Bratislava has suggested that attack helos are no longer high on its shopping list. Instead, the Slovak ministry would rather use the offered discount to buy Patriot air defense systems or additional F-16 fighters on top of the 14 jets it ordered in 2018, local officials suggested.

Naď, who chairs the opposition Demokrati (Democrats) party, told Defense News the new government in Bratislava, which is more aligned with Russian interests, still has gripes about the transfer of outdated fighters and air defense systems to Ukraine during the early days of the war. Fico officials now claim those donations had no basis in law, making Slovakia the only country of Eastern European allies to Kyiv where legal trouble is brewing over military aid to Ukraine, Naď said.

Industry officials have noted that the latest U.S. offer for the Vipers no longer includes Hellfire missiles, attributing the change in scope to growing discontent in Washington.

Italian Air Force’s famed acrobatic squad changes course on new planes

ROME — Italy’s Air Force acrobatic team is to switch to flying the Leonardo M-346 jet trainer after using the aging M-339 for decades, the Italian Air Force announced on Thursday.

The upgrade marks a change of plan for the team known as the Frecce Tricolori, which had previously planned to use Leonardo’s M-345 jet – a more basic version of the M-346.

The announcement of the use of the M-346 was made on Thursday at Istrana Air Base in Italy with the presentation of a jet in Frecce Tricolori colours, coinciding with the team’s return from a tour of the United States.

“The version of the M-346 presented in Istrana today will be produced by Leonardo for the National Aerobatic Team with specific requirements of the Italian Air Force,” Leonardo said in a statement.

The Air Force originally envisioned adopting Leonardo’s M-345 for the acrobatic role as well as to replace all its M-339 trainer aircraft which entered service in 1982.

While the M-346 is designed as an advanced jet trainer, the M-345 is built to compete with equivalent turbo-prop basic trainers on operational costs.

The M-346 is now in service with the air forces of Italy, the Republic of Singapore, Israel, Poland, Qatar and Greece, while Turkmenistan and Nigeria have purchased the light fighter version.

Nigeria is due to take delivery of the first six of 24 aircraft it has ordered by year end, the country’s Air Force has said.

Pilots from Canada, the U.K., Germany, Japan, Austria, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Sweden and the Netherlands have sent pilots to train on M-346 in Sardinia, Italy.

Navy to commission first sub designed for both men and women sailors

The Navy is slated to commission its very first Virginia-class submarine designed for a fully gender-integrated crew on Saturday.

A submarine designed and built for both genders has been a long time coming. The New Jersey is entering the fleet roughly 14 years after then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates ended the ban on women serving on subs in 2010.

Female officers did not join the submarine force until 2011, and such roles only opened up to enlisted sailors in 2015.

A commissioning ceremony for the submarine will occur in Leonardo, New Jersey, according to the Navy. It is the third Navy vessel bearing the name of the Garden State.

This officer is the first woman to serve as XO of a submarine

HII-Newport News Shipbuilding delivered the New Jersey to the Navy in April.

Female trailblazers in the submarine community include Lt. Cmdr. Amber Cowan, who became the first woman to serve as the executive officer of a submarine in 2022 aboard the ballistic missile submarine Kentucky.

Master Chief Information Systems Technician (Submarine) Angela Koogler also became the first woman to serve as a chief of the boat, the senior enlisted adviser to the commanding and executive officers, aboard the nuclear ballistic missile submarine Louisiana that same year.

Plans are underway to expand the number of submarine vessels with women.

Adm. William Houston, then-commander of Naval Submarine Forces, said last year that he signed a “major revision” to the Navy’s plan to integrate women into the submarine fleet. The new guidance calls for women officers to serve on 40 submarines – up from the original 30.

Army picks two companies to get small drones to brigade combat teams

The U.S. Army has picked Anduril Industries and Performance Drone Works to provide Small Uncrewed Aircraft Systems, or SUAS, to Army units as part of an effort to buy capability fast and get it into soldiers’ hands as the service races to modernize its force.

Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George has called the effort “transformation in contact,” where the service buys available commercial-off-the-shelf capability and then battle tests it with soldiers, instead of spending decades developing something before fielding it only to discover it is outdated by the time it gets to units.

“Transforming in contact is the way our Army can adapt its formations and get new technology in the hands of soldiers to experiment, innovate, learn, and change at the pace required,” George said in a statement Thursday. “The Company Level Small UAS Directed Requirement effort is a great example of how we are achieving this.”

The program “is another example of the Army’s ability to rapidly move from an idea to a requirement, to a competition, to testing, to contract awards for production,” the Army’s acquisition chief, Doug Bush, added. “This shows the acquisition system can move at the pace needed to support the Army, especially in rapidly emerging technology areas like small uncrewed aircraft systems.”

Anduril and Performance Drone Works will provide the first tranche of systems that will meet the company-level SUAS requirement in a deal valued at $14.42 million. The service approved the requirement in June 2023.

Change of plans: US Army embraces lessons learned from war in Ukraine

Performance Drone Works’ C-100 UAS and Anduril’s Ghost X will give brigade maneuver companies the ability to conduct reconnaissance, surveillance and target acquisition missions. The drones will be reconfigurable with modular payloads and attritable.

The Ghost X drone was spotted earlier this year as part of the Army’s human-machine integration evaluation event at Fort Irwin, California, where it served as the preliminary eyes of an infantry company concealed by the surrounding mountains readying to reclaim a village held by the enemy as part of a live-fire exercise.

The Army is prioritizing the acquisition of small, adaptable and expendable drones as it continues to learn from drone use in the Ukraine and other ongoing wars.

The service was able to move quickly in selecting drones for the first tranche because both platforms are already on the Defense Innovation Unit’s Blue UAS list of technology approved for Defense Department use, the statement notes.

US Space Force is urged to flag emerging humanitarian crises on Earth

The U.S. Space Force should play a greater role in tracking factors related to human security, like food production, climate trends or energy distribution, for military decision-makers, according to a new report from RAND Corp., a federally funded research center.

That’s because the service’s access to communication, navigation and intelligence satellites provides a unique opportunity to monitor non-military factors that often lie at the heart of conflict on Earth, the authors argue.

The report from the public policy research firm highlights the military’s role in disaster prevention and crisis response, pointing to portions of the 2022 National Defense Strategy and National Security Strategy that link national security to humanitarian challenges like food insecurity, energy shortages, climate change and terrorism.

“Although several U.S. government agencies and commercial partners collect and monitor indicators that are potentially related to human security, the [Space Force’s] role as a military service makes it a natural nexus for embedding human security principles and perspectives in the security workforce,” RAND states.

The report comes as Space Force capabilities to track missiles, monitor bad behavior in orbit and support military operations on the ground are in high demand. Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall told Defense News this summer that to meet current demand and expand into new mission areas, the service’s $30 billion budget needs to double or triple.

That kind of budget growth is unlikely in the near future, and RAND acknowledges this challenge in its study, noting an increasing appetite for imagery and data collection, in particular.

“Such an expansion is likely difficult to justify, given that the Space Force’s capacity cannot meet current operational demand,” RAND states. “Although the [Space Force] can potentially play a leading role in the human security area, it will need to rely on partnerships, likely with both public and private organizations, to provide the needed capabilities and capacities.”

Growing capacity and acquiring new systems will require long-term investment, but for now the service should lean on its relationships with international allies, commercial industry and other government agencies “define metrics related to human security through security cooperation training efforts.”

The Space Force should also develop training for its workforce on how to factor human security into its data collection and analysis, injecting relevant scenarios into wargames and exercises, RAND says.

As a case study on the impact space capabilities could have in preventing or managing humanitarian crises, the report explores the famine in Somalia, where over one million people have been displaced due to drought.

Space capabilities could be used to track environmental indicators like land degradation, water level changes and weather conditions. Satellites could also observe changes in food production, identify whether resources were being hoarded and identify migration patterns and indications of political violence.

“By using space capabilities to monitor such human security indicators as those proposed in this paper, the [Space Force] can help identify human security challenges as they are emerging, thus opening the door to interventions — potentially involving both resources on the ground and in the broader international community,” RAND states. “Such interventions might help prevent the escalation of cascading challenges.”

The aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt is leaving the Middle East

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon’s rare move to keep two Navy aircraft carriers in the Middle East over the past several weeks has now finished, and the Theodore Roosevelt is heading home, according to U.S. officials.

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin had ordered the TR to extend its deployment for a short time and remain in the region as fellow carrier Abraham Lincoln was pushed to get to the area more quickly.

The Biden administration beefed up the U.S. military presence there last month to help defend Israel from possible attacks by Iran and its proxies and to safeguard U.S. troops.

U.S. commanders in the Middle East have long argued that the presence of a U.S. aircraft carrier and the warships accompanying it has been an effective deterrent in the region, particularly for Iran. Since the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip began last fall, there has been a persistent carrier presence in and around the region — and for short periods they have overlapped to have two of the carriers there at the same time.

Prior to last fall, however, it had been years since the U.S. had committed that much warship power to the region.

All the Houthi-US Navy incidents in the Middle East (that we know of)

The decision to bring the Roosevelt home comes as the war in Gaza has dragged on for 11 months, with tens of thousands of people dead, and international efforts to mediate a cease-fire between Israel and the Hamas militant group have repeatedly stalled as they accuse each other of making additional and unacceptable demands.

For a number of months earlier this year the carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower remained in the Red Sea, able both to respond to help Israel and to defend commercial and military ships from attacks by the Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen. The carrier, based in Norfolk, Virginia, returned home after a more than eight-month deployment in combat that the Navy said was the most intense since World War II.

U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss troop movements, said the San Diego-based Roosevelt and the destroyer Daniel Inouye are expected to be in the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command’s region on Thursday. The other destroyer in the strike group, the Russell, had already left the Middle East and has been operating in the South China Sea.

The Lincoln, which is now in the Gulf of Oman with several other warships, arrived in the Middle East about three weeks ago, allowing it to overlap with the Roosevelt until now.

There also are a number of U.S. ships in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, and two destroyers and the guided missile submarine Georgia are in the Red Sea.

What if Russia resumes nuclear tests?

Vladimir Putin’s Russia is again rattling its nuclear sabre. On Sept. 1, it warned of a new nuclear doctrine to counter Western “escalation” in Ukraine. Putin has hinted that Russia might, as one option, resume nuclear testing. The U.S. and NATO must carefully consider their nuclear responses.

I was the last U.S. nuclear testing negotiator with the USSR before it collapsed in 1991. My opposite, a top Soviet nuclear figure, did not hide his fury at Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, for ending testing in 1990.

Today, Russia is increasing its reliance on nuclear arms in threatening Ukraine. Recently, Moscow hosted a nuclear exercise near Ukraine and another in Belarus. Russia may also have moved “several dozen” tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus. A resumption of nuclear testing would further escalate this nuclear intimidation.

Efforts to end nuclear tests date to 1962, when the United States and the Soviet Union signed the Limited Test Ban Treaty, forcing nuclear tests underground. In 1974, the two countries signed the Threshold Test Ban Treaty, limiting test yields to 150 kilotons of TNT, or 10 times the Hiroshima blast.

International negotiations in the 1990s produced a draft Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). But the U.S. Senate refused to consent to the Treaty in 1999and it has not entered into force. Opponents faulted the CTBT for being unverifiable and risking the viability of the U.S. deterrent. Proponents said the pact would lock in U.S. design superiority and help deter the spread of nuclear weapons.

Both Russia and the U.S. say they have not conducted tests that would undermine the CTBT. But the U.S. has charged Russia with undertaking secret “supercritical” tests (producing a self-sustaining fission chain reaction).

Since ending nuclear testing in 1992, the U.S. has assessed the performance of its nuclear arms through research and modeling, testing electrical components, and sub-critical nuclear testing. Russia lacks the best supercomputers, but its weapons may have greater tolerances and be easier to assess. Some Russian specialists likely favor new nuclear testing to improve warhead designs or address aging or corrosion.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said in June that “if necessary, we will conduct” nuclear tests, but there was no need yet. If Russia does test, it is likely to abide by the limits prescribed by the Limited Test Ban and the Threshold Test Ban agreements—but not allow U.S. on-site monitoring.

A  “demonstrative” blast, suggested by a Putin ally, might be aimed at pressuring the West to cease military support for Ukraine. But the West would surely refuse.

The U.S. has warned of “catastrophic consequences” if Russia were to strike Ukraine with nuclear arms. But despite Moscow’s heightened nuclear threats, NATO officials say no changes are needed in the alliance’s nuclear posture.

A Russian resumption of nuclear testing could change this calculus. The Kremlin could view the lack of a U.S. or NATO nuclear response to its intimidation as a sign of weakness. But a U.S. or NATO nuclear military response might be the only way to induce Russia to pull back from its irresponsible nuclear behavior.

One such response could be for the U.S. to resume nuclear testing. This would show determination, and perhaps bring some technical benefit. But testing would be costly if it’s not needed for technical reasons, it may draw strong international criticism, and it could provide political cover for proliferators to test. This seems like an unattractive option.

Another option could be for the U.S. to deploy new nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missiles (SLCM-Ns), which Congress is already funding.  The U.S. Navy is reluctant to encumber warships that already have conventional missions. But SLCM-N deployments could enhance NATO’s theater nuclear posture and raise the military cost to Russia of its nuclear threats.

Third, the U.S. and NATO could put nuclear forces in Poland if it were interested. The U.S. would have to provide Poland with dual-capable F-35 aircraft to deliver nuclear bombs. (Warsaw is already buying another F-35 variant.) This option could respond directly to Russia’s movement of nuclear arms into Belarus, and it could enhance NATO’s theater nuclear posture.

A 1997 NATO-Russia accord states that the alliance has “no intention, no plan, and no reason” to put nuclear arms in new member states. But Russia’s aggression in Ukraine and nuclear intimidation would seem to render this pledge obsolete.

A U.S. or NATO nuclear military response might be the only way to induce Russia to pull back from its irresponsible nuclear behavior.

William Courtney, an adjunct senior fellow at RAND, was U.S. Commissioner in negotiations with the USSR to implement the Threshold Test Ban Treaty, and subsequently ambassador to Kazakhstan and Georgia.