In the wake of a Thursday Washington Free Beacon report, Sen. Steve Daines (R., Mont.) hammered the Biden administration for delaying efforts to upgrade America's nuclear arsenal.
Daines, who sits on the Senate Energy Committee, said in a letter obtained by the Free Beacon that the Biden administration's decision to slow the Pentagon's upgrades to American land missile systems runs afoul of military advice and makes America less safe.
"This policy reversal contradicts the advice of your own experts and duplicates research already conducted by the Air Force, all while weakening our national security posture," Daines said. "I urge you to rescind this misguided directive. … This latest development at the behest of far-left special interest groups is nothing more than a thinly-veiled attempt to scuttle the ground-based leg of the nuclear triad on ideological grounds."
Multiple sources told the Free Beacon that, after receiving a letter from left-wing Democrats led by Sens. Jeff Merkley (Ore.) and Elizabeth Warren (Mass.), the Biden administration caved to a request for an extended bureaucratic review of ground-based nuclear weapons, which critics say is nothing more than a delaying tactic.
That alleged delaying tactic comes after top military officials said the United States urgently needs to upgrade nuclear missiles in the face of growing threats from China and Russia. Commercial satellite images revealed two Chinese nuclear missile silos that could each hold more than 100 missiles, and reports indicate that the Chinese are constructing a third silo.
Admiral Charles Richard, the chief of the U.S. Strategic Command, told the 2021 Space Missile and Defense Symposium that China's expansion of its nuclear stockpile is beyond "breathtaking."
"China's explosive growth and modernization of its nuclear and conventional forces can only be what I describe as breathtaking. And that word, breathtaking, may not be enough," Richard said. "We are witnessing a strategic breakout."