Trump’s talk of secret new weapon fits a pattern of puzzles

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump is expanding his arsenal of spectacular, but hard to explain, claims about U.S. military might.

First, there were invisible airplanes . Then, a “super duper” missile .

And now, a secret nuclear weapon.

“I have built a nuclear, a weapon, I have built a weapon system that nobody’s ever had in this country before,” Trump said in an interview with journalist Bob Woodward for his book published this week.

“We have stuff that you haven’t even seen or heard about. We have stuff that Putin and Xi have never heard about before,” Trump said, referring to Presidents Vladimir Putin of Russia and Xi Jinping of China. “There’s nobody. What we have is incredible.”

Weapons experts are puzzling over Trump’s words. Some think he may have been talking about a nuclear warhead that was modified to reduce its explosive power. Known as the W76-2 , this weapon certainly is unknown to the general public — not because of secrecy or mystery but because of its obscurity.

Asked by a reporter to clarify his comment, Trump on Thursday said he’d rather not.

“There are systems that nobody knows about, including you, and we have some systems that nobody knows about. And, frankly, I think I’m better off keeping it that way,” he said.

James Acton, a nuclear expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said in an interview Friday that Trump may have been referring to the W76-2 warhead. Although its existence was not a secret, the timing of its first deployment was. The warhead is on the business end of a Trident II D-5 missile carried aboard Navy ballistic missile submarines.

“The timing matches up,” Acton said.

The Woodward interview was Dec. 5, around the time of the first W76-2 deployment, which was not announced publicly until Feb. 4. The weapon itself is not revolutionary. It’s not even the only low-yield warhead in the U.S. arsenal. It is, however, the first major addition to the strategic nuclear force in recent decades and is a departure from the Obama administration’s policy of lessening dependence on nuclear weapons in pursuit of a nuclear-free world. Joe Biden, Trump’s rival for the White House, has said the new weapon is overkill, suggesting he might shelve it if he wins in November.

Acton says Trump may well have been making a garbled reference to some other weapon.

“It’s clear that the president likes boasting about military capabilities and doesn’t always have the tightest grasp on the details,” he said.

President Donald Trump speaks during a rally at MBS International Airport, Thursday, Sept. 10, 2020, in Freeland, Mich. (Jose Juarez/AP)

It cannot be ruled out that the U.S. is developing a new nuclear weapon in complete secrecy. This seems unlikely, however, for two reasons — the cost would be too much for the classified, nonpublic portion of the budget, and too many people would be involved in the project for it to stay secret for long.

It’s also possible that Trump had a non-nuclear weapon in mind when he spoke, although he used the word “nuclear.”

The president has previously made extravagant claims about U.S. weapons, sometimes straying beyond reality or exaggerating their importance. He has asserted, for example, that the F-35 fighter jet, built with low-observable technologies generally referred to as stealth, is all but invisible.

“You can’t see it,” Trump said in October 2017. “You literally can’t see it. It’s hard to fight a plane you can’t see.”

Just last month he said of the F-35: “Stealth. Total stealth. You can’t see it.”

The F-35, like other stealth aircraft such as the B-2 bomber and the F-22 fighter, are designed to be harder to detect on radar than conventional planes. But they are not invisible, nor does the military claim they are.

Trump occasionally mentions his interest in hypersonic weapons, sometimes without using the term. Details of these weapons' planned capabilities are mostly classified. In February, Trump said: “We have the super-fast missiles — tremendous number of the super-fast. We call them ‘super-fast,’ where they’re four, five, six and even seven times faster than an ordinary missile. We need that because, again, Russia has some.”

And in May, he said: “We have no choice, we have to do it, with the adversaries we have out there,” mentioning China and Russia. He added, “I call it the super-duper missile.” He said he “heard” it travels 17 times faster than any other U.S. missile.

A hypersonic weapon is one that flies at speeds in excess of Mach 5, or five times the speed of sound. Most American missiles, such as those launched from aircraft to hit other aircraft or ground targets, travel between Mach 1 and Mach 5, although the Minuteman 3 intercontinental ballistic missile, which has operated for decades, can reach hypersonic speeds.

华盛顿——唐纳德·特朗普总统正在扩大他关于美国军事实力的惊人但难以解释的说法库。

先是出现了隐形飞机，然后又出现了“超级无敌”导弹。

现在，又出现了一种秘密核武器。

“我制造了一种核武器，一种武器系统，这是这个国家以前从未有过的，”特朗普在接受记者鲍勃·伍德沃德采访时说道，采访内容收录于伍德沃德本周出版的新书中。

“我们掌握着你们从未见过或听说过的东西。我们掌握着普京和习近平都闻所未闻的东西，”特朗普说道，他指的是俄罗斯总统弗拉基米尔·普京和中国国家主席习近平。“没有人知道。我们掌握的东西令人难以置信。”

武器专家们对特朗普的言论感到困惑。一些人认为他可能指的是一种经过改装以降低爆炸威力的核弹头。这种名为W76-2的武器鲜为人知——并非因为其保密性或神秘性，而是因为它的默默无闻。

周四，当记者要求特朗普澄清他的言论时，特朗普表示他不想澄清。

“有些系统是无人知晓的，包括你也不知道，我们公司也有一些系统无人知晓。坦白说，我觉得最好还是保持现状，”他说。

卡内基国际和平基金会的核专家詹姆斯·阿克顿周五在接受采访时表示，特朗普可能指的是W76-2核弹头。虽然它的存在并非秘密，但其首次部署的时间却是保密的。这种核弹头安装在海军弹道导弹潜艇携带的“三叉戟II D-5”导弹的弹头部分。

“时间吻合，”阿克顿说。

伍德沃德的采访是在12月5日左右，大约在W76-2首次部署前后，而W76-2直到2月4日才正式对外公布。这种武器本身并非革命性的，它甚至不是美国武库中唯一的低当量核弹头。然而，它是近几十年来美国战略核力量的首次重大扩充，也与奥巴马政府为追求无核世界而减少对核武器依赖的政策背道而驰。特朗普的总统竞选对手乔·拜登曾表示，这种新型武器威力过大，暗示如果他在11月胜选，可能会搁置该武器。

阿克顿表示，特朗普很可能是在含糊不清地提及某种其他武器。

他说：“很明显，总统喜欢吹嘘军事能力，但对细节的掌握并不总是那么到位。”

2020年9月10日，星期四，美国总统唐纳德·特朗普在密歇根州弗里兰市MBS国际机场举行的集会上发表讲话。（Jose Juarez/AP）

不能排除美国正在秘密研发新型核武器的可能性。然而，这种可能性似乎不大，原因有二：一是研发成本过高，超出了预算中保密部分的承受范围；二是涉及的人员众多，难以长期保密。

也有可能特朗普在讲话时指的是非核武器，尽管他使用了“核武器”这个词。

总统此前曾多次就美国武器发表过夸张的言论，有时甚至脱离现实或夸大其重要性。例如，他曾断言，采用通常被称为隐形技术的低可探测性技术制造的F-35战斗机几乎完全隐形。

“你根本看不见它，”特朗普在2017年10月说。“你真的看不见它。你不可能击落一架你看不见的飞机。”

就在上个月，他还谈到F-35战斗机时说：“隐形。完全隐形。你根本看不到它。”

F-35 与其他隐形飞机（例如 B-2 轰炸机和 F-22 战斗机）一样，其设计目的是为了比传统飞机更难被雷达探测到。但它们并非完全隐形，军方也从未声称它们隐形。

特朗普偶尔会提及他对高超音速武器的兴趣，有时甚至不使用这个词。这些武器的计划性能细节大多属于机密。今年2月，特朗普曾表示：“我们拥有超高速导弹——数量惊人的超高速导弹。我们称它们为‘超高速’，因为它们的速度是普通导弹的四倍、五倍、六倍甚至七倍。我们需要这些导弹，因为俄罗斯也拥有一些。”

五月份，他曾表示：“我们别无选择，必须这么做，因为我们面临着中国和俄罗斯这两个对手。”他还补充道：“我称之为超级导弹。”他说他“听说”这枚导弹的飞行速度是其他任何美国导弹的17倍。

高超音速武器是指飞行速度超过5马赫（即音速的五倍）的武器。大多数美国导弹，例如从飞机上发射用于攻击其他飞机或地面目标的导弹，飞行速度介于1马赫到5马赫之间，但服役数十年的“民兵3”洲际弹道导弹可以达到高超音速。