US hypersonic missile test fails 0:28
(CNN) -
China's test of a nuclear-capable hypersonic missile has given new impetus to critics of President Joe Biden's ambitious agenda to reduce America's nuclear arsenal, with intelligence and defense officials warning that the launch China marked a major technological leap that could threaten the United States in ways unknown until now.
News of the launch comes out as the administration nears the end of its review of the United States' nuclear posture.
Biden's national security team has worked for a policy of greater containment and more limited spending on nuclear modernization and production.
The president is also weighing a "no first use or NFU" policy for America's nuclear weapons, according to people familiar with the discussions.
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However, others within the administration warn of possible dangers. Intelligence officials told the Senate Intelligence Committee in private briefings that China's test - which they closely followed as it was conducted - marked a substantial advance in China's ability to launch a first strategic strike against the United States, according to people familiar with the briefings.
While it doesn't necessarily give China an advantage over the United States, insiders said, there were certain elements of the missile's capabilities and its operation that took officials by surprise.
China also successfully built and tested the technology faster than the US predicted it might be capable, according to a former arms control official who worked until January.
Meanwhile, a hypersonic test carried out by the Pentagon on Thursday failed, becoming the second failed test since April.
America's latest hypersonic military test fails
China's test also demonstrated the potential ability to launch an attack from the South Pole, a trajectory that has long troubled the United States due to the lack of systems designed to provide early warning of such an attack, defense officials said.
"This is a first strike capability and underscores the need for us to continue our modernization program apace," said a senior Republican congressional official, referring to ongoing efforts at the Pentagon and the National Nuclear Security Administration. to review the American nuclear arsenal.
"So it goes against the narrative that we can reduce the role of nuclear weapons when Russia and China are running at full speed."
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Other officials and experts are not as concerned about the missile test, claiming that although it was intended to provoke, the technology does not give Beijing an advantage and is therefore not destabilizing.
"My advice today is not to go overboard with the system," said Jeffrey Lewis, a professor and nuclear weapons expert at the Middlebury Institute for International Studies.
"China already has 100 nuclear weapons that can target the United States and I can live with that fact. That is nuclear deterrence."
He added that "I am not so alarmed by this particular step as the fact that it is one of a series of steps in what is becoming an arms race."
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When Biden was questioned about the launch on the CNN forum on Thursday, Biden said that Americans should not worry about whether China and Russia will eventually have a more powerful military than the United States.
The real concern, he suggested, is an unintended escalation that gets out of control.
"What should be concerned is whether they are going to carry out activities that put them in a position where they can make a serious mistake," he said.
Yet at the same time, Biden went further than previous presidents in suggesting that the United States would be prepared to take on China militarily in the event of an attack on Taiwan.
"We are committed to doing so," he said.
The White House later tried to retract that comment.
A senior administration official told CNN that "Biden's position on proliferation has not changed," but said the nuclear posture review will take into account the current security environment.
"The Biden-Harris administration is committed to renewing US leadership on non-proliferation and addressing the existential threat posed by nuclear weapons," the official said. "The United States began its Nuclear Posture Review earlier this year to examine these issues. The review will take into account the current security environment and assess the strategy, posture and policy of the United States. We will continue to maintain a secure strategic deterrence and effective, while trying to address the existential threat posed by nuclear weapons. "
However, the success of China's launch has also influenced the administration's overhaul of missile defense, and Congress is now demanding that it explain how it is working to detect and defend against hypersonic missiles.
Last month, the House Armed Services Commission added an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) expressing concern "about the inability of current radar systems to detect, track, attack and defeat emerging threats from hypersonic weapons, "Defense News reported at the time.
"As the National Defense Strategy identifies, the Department of Defense has an immediate need to reinforce efforts to counter these weapons."
The commission had reviewed information about China's missile test when it added that amendment, congressional staff members told CNN.
"We just don't know how we can defend ourselves against that kind of technology," US disarmament ambassador Robert Wood told reporters this week in Geneva.
Pressure on Biden to maintain the status quo
The nuclear posture review has been the subject of much internal debate and intense political activity even before China tested the new missile, according to sources.
Biden has long been in favor of curbing the US nuclear arsenal, and he and his national security team have been weighing whether a "no first use" policy would help reduce nuclear tensions with their adversaries.
"We're trying to say, 'We're not going to attack you with a nuclear weapon unless you attack us with a nuclear weapon,'" Bonnie Jenkins, Biden's Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security, said in January.
Jenkins, who served in the State Department under former President Barack Obama, said the United States "took a few steps back on that" under former President Donald Trump.
"We have added all these conditions where we can actually use a nuclear weapon. We have regressed," he said.
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However, there has been some internal opposition to the more progressive members of Biden's team.
The top scorer for Biden's nuclear policy at the Pentagon, Leonor Tomero, was ousted last month in what the Defense Department insisted was just a shakeup.
But Tomero's allies saw the move as an attempt to influence the direction of the nuclear posture review, which she was overseeing.
"She is more progressive on these issues, and some in the Pentagon were concerned about what she might do," said Lewis, who is a friend of Tomero.
"It wasn't that he was going against the president. It was just that the building was very conservative."
Mallory Stewart, another progressive-minded civil servant who was nominated by Biden to the post of undersecretary of state for gun control, verification and compliance, is also meeting opposition on Capitol Hill.
Senator Jim Risch, an Idaho Republican who is the highest-ranking member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has said he opposes Stewart's nomination because of objections from U.S. allies about the consideration of the administration of a no-first-use policy.
Stewart has participated in the nuclear posture review in his capacity as head of nuclear policy and arms control on the National Security Council.
"I definitely agree that there are certain concerns about what is possibly in the consideration process," Stewart said when asked about the allies' objections during his confirmation hearing earlier this month.
"But I think the effort that we're putting into engaging with them is to really understand what those concerns are and to hopefully address them through part of the engagement process."
"We are deeply concerned"
The reluctance to invest too much money in nuclear modernization, and the possibility of a shift towards a no-first-use policy, makes some allies, including Germany, the United Kingdom and France, nervous, who are deeply concerned about the threat it poses. Russia, the sources said. The government has consulted with more than two dozen allies for their views in the course of the nuclear posture review, the sources added.
"The most important thing" the allies will want to see from the review is a "commitment by the US to renew its own nuclear forces," said a former senior British defense official who was involved in the discussions before leaving the government in July.
Especially important for the UK is the development of the W93 nuclear warhead, which would be the first newly designed warhead added to the US arsenal in decades.
But a possible change in US doctrine specifying the conditions under which a nuclear weapon would be used, as opposed to the deliberately ambiguous policy that has been in place for some time, "deeply worries us," the former official said.
"The concern is that it will be interpreted by the Russians as a weakening of the US commitment to simply not allow nuclear coercion from Europe," he said.
"Russia seems more threatening now than at any time since the 1980s. So, for Europeans, it seems like a really strange time to question a pillar of NATO policy that has worked so far."
Oren Libermann contributed to this report.
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