4. Department of Defense · Notable · Needs Congress
Develop new theater-level nuclear capabilities against nuclear coercion
Printed page 95 4. Department of Defense
“Develop a nuclear arsenal with the size, sophistication, and tailoring—including new capabilities at the theater level—to ensure that there is no circumstance in which America is exposed to serious nuclear coercion.”
What has happened
- Partially done
The FY2026 NDAA sec. 1633 keeps SLCM-N on schedule, and sec. 3113 creates a statutory NNSA "rapid capabilities program" to "develop new nuclear weapons or modified nuclear weapons that meet military requirements," aiming at a first production unit within five years of project initiation. A pipeline for new weapons now exists in law; no new theater-level capability has been fielded.
- Partially done
Public Law 119-21 sec. 20008 funds nuclear-forces modernization, including the Sea-Launched Cruise Missile-Nuclear — a theater-range nuclear weapon and the clearest instance of the "new capabilities at the theater level" the Quote asks for. Money for a program, not an arsenal sized and tailored against nuclear coercion.
Research log
What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence
Research notes
Shares its instruments with #255 (Sea-Launched Cruise Missile-Nuclear, partial) and #140 (expand and modernize the nuclear force, partial). SLCM-N is the theater-level capability at issue; the FY2026 NDAA adds a second route to new theater weapons through NNSA.
One negative search covered this item and its cluster of neighboring asks.
- Action
- create
- Object
- theater-level nuclear capabilities
- ID
- 141