My Most Recent Interview on "Securing America" Hosted by Frank Gaffney on America's Real Voice TV Network

I discussed Russia's and China's massive nuclear buildup with the former Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense and what we must do to protect America against nuclear, EMP & cyber attack

On November 1st, I was interviewed again by former Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense Frank Gaffney, who currently serves as Chairman of the Boad of Directors of the Center for Security Policy, on his “Securing America” program on America’s Real Voice TV network. Click here to watch Part 1 of the interview. Click here to watch Part 2. During the interview, we discussed the 350 ten-warhead DF-41 ICBM silos which China has been building at a furious pace since 2020. Admiral Richard who commands US Strategic Command is estimating that the Chinese nuclear buildup will be substantially completed in the next eighteen months. Meanwhile, U.S. intelligence is warning President Xi Jinping who was elected President for life at last month’s 20th National Party Congress of the Communist Party of China has ordered the PLA to retake Taiwan by force if necessary by the end of next year.  Next, we talked about the increasing risks of Russian nuclear escalation stemming from Biden’s undeclared war against Russia in Ukraine and the U.S. sending $70 billion in aid to Ukraine.

Russian Nuclear Superweapons

We then discussed a number of Russian nuclear superweapons. U.S. leaders should not underestimate Russia's capability for achieving technological breakthroughs in terms of Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) weapons, hypersonic missiles and all types of nuclear superweapon technology. At this point, six of the nuclear superweapons Putin ordered back in the late 1990's when he was serving as Secretary of the Russian Security Council and which he publicly announced in 2018 for which the US has no equivalent, three are operational, (Kinzhal hypersonic ALBM, Zircon hypersonic SLCM and Avanguard hypersonic glide vehicle)  one will likely be operational later this month (Sarmat)  and a fifth is being tested and may soon be operational (Poseidon).

Rebekah Koffler, a former senior DIA officer in charge of Russia analysis and author of the excellent book “Putin’s Playbook—Russia’s Secret Plan to Defeat America,” has revealed that Russia's Skyfall nuclear powered hypersonic cruise missile is also reportedly on the verge of being tested again according to satellite imagery. She assesses the current risk of Russian nuclear escalation over what Putin views to be Russia’s war against “the collective West” in Ukraine to be at least thirty percent. Reports also indicate that US intelligence have become aware of top Russian military officials discussing the employment of Russian nuclear weapons to win the war in Ukraine. The Biden administration is reportedly so concerned by the risks of Russian nuclear escalation that they had U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan contact his Russian counterpart and top Putin ally, Nikolai Patrushev, head of Russia's security council to warn Russia against using nuclear weapons in Ukraine.

Our late Executive Director of the Task Force on National & Homeland Security and one of America’s greatest unsung heroes, Dr. Peter Pry, whom I considered a dear friend and mentor, stated that the Russians are thirty years ahead of the US in terms of nuclear weapons technology. Russia has also deployed at least four to five strategic nuclear delivery systems since Bush implemented his unilateral strategic nuclear procurement holiday thirty years ago. According to a recent report written by Dr. Mark Schneider, one of America’s top experts on the Russian nuclear weapons, Russia's current strategic nuclear arsenal capable of carrying 7,500 strategic nuclear weapons (nearly five times more than the US has deployed today) with no way for the US to verify that Russia hasn’t already uploaded their nuclear missiles to their maximum warhead capacity. Given the high stakes for U.S. national security and Russian nuclear and EMP supremacy over us, it would be far better to de-escalate and give Putin a diplomatic face saving exit to the war in Ukraine as JFK did for Khrushchev in 1962 than fight a nuclear/EMP war against three allied nuclear powers with such terrible odds for the U.S.

A recent news report indicated that Russia’s newly deployed Belgorod submarine deployed to the Arctic Ocean a month ago. From there, it could launch one or more Poseidon nuclear UUV's in the Barents Sea and they could reach King's Bay, GA within two to three days as they travel at an estimated speed of 200 kilometers per hour, which is over three times faster than the submarine itself. Some reports I have seen indicate that the Poseidon UUV’s have already been test launched by the Russian Navy and that this may in fact be their first operational deployment.

As Dr. Peter Pry stated Russian media reports that the Poseidon, which is reportedly armed with the largest nuclear warhead ever built with an explosive power equivalent to 100 Megatons of TNT, is designed to destroy the Atlantic seaboard are likely disinformation designed to deceive the West as to its true purpose. He speculated that the most likely mission of the Belgorod submarine’s Poseidon 100 MT nuclear powered Unmanned Underwater Vehicle (UUV)’s are to trail and destroy US nuclear missile submarines from port and destroy them from up to 50 KM without being detected. It’s possible that this test launch may result in the first Poseidon nuclear drone, or up to six drones if the Belgorod is equipped with its full payload, being deployed to America’s nuclear missile submarine base at King's Bay, GA for operational duty, but it is unclear at this point.

This test launch serves the dual-purpose of nuclear signaling to Biden that Putin will keep escalating up the nuclear escalation ladder if necessary to show Biden that Putin will do anything, including risking a full strategic nuclear exchange with the US, which Russia would win given Russian escalation dominance, and Sino-Russian strategic nuclear, theater nuclear and super-EMP supremacy over us not to mention the fact that they have over 225 times more land-based ABMs than we have, to ensure total victory over Ukraine on Russian terms. Russia has announced it will deploy 50 Sarmat super heavy ICBMs later this year which can carry 20-50 warheads each, has been mass producing Zircon nuclear hypersonic submarine launched missiles since August which Putin threatened in February to use to nuke the US capital of Washington, DC from a 200-mile distance with less than five minutes warning to kill Biden before he could escape on Air Force One. Meanwhile, reports indicate Russia is deploying nuclear Islander-M Short Range Ballistic Missiles (SRBM)s to Russia's newly annexed Kherson oblast perhaps to use in a nuclear demonstration attack over Kyiv to shock the Ukrainian government into surrendering, knowing Biden will most likely do nothing militarily in response. 

In response to Russian nuclear signaling, the U.S. has engaged in some nuclear signaling of its own with two US nuclear missile submarine making public appearances—the first one surfacing in the Arabian Sea and the second one making a port call near Gibraltar. This is unprecedented as the US has only four nuclear missile submarines at sea at any given time and there are no other US Navy ships have been equipped with nuclear weapons since 1991 as part of a unilateral nuclear disarmament executive order implemented by then President George HW Bush months prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Exposing the locations of fifty percent of America’s deployed nuclear missile submarine fleet in such a short time is a little unnerving. as making their locations known makes them sitting ducks for a potential Russian nuclear first strike.

Why Negotiating an End to the War in Ukraine and Making Peace with Russia Would be the Best Way to Deter China from Invading Ukraine

The recent trip of German Chancellor Olaf Shulz to Beijing to request China’s help in negotiating an end to the Russo-Ukrainian War suggests that Germany, unlike Ukraine, understands at least on some level it is a minor power (since it has no nuclear weapons) that must accommodate opposing nuclear superpowers in order to survive but absolutely nothing will come of it unless Germany leads a coalition of EU countries to suspend all military assistance to Ukraine. Contrary to mainstream media reports, Chinese President Xi Jinping has fully supported Putin’s invasion of Ukraine behind the scenes as China's has been Russia’s prime benefactor as well as the primary beneficiary of the war and likely will remain so. Xi’s main concern is not that Russia invaded Ukraine but rather that Chinese prestige not be sullied by a perceived Russian military defeat so he told Putin to escalate the war to ensure Russian victory at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization conference in mid-September and Putin dutifully followed orders two days after returning by issuing his ‘no limits’ full military mobilization order. The Russian government claimed that only 300,000 reservists were being mobilized under this order but has since stated that these mobilization numbers were realized last month and that Russian military mobilization will continue uninterrupted until Putin issues an order to stop it.

A recent article in Imprimus suggested that with Ukraine’s recent battlefield successes now is the time to impose on Russia a favorable peace for Ukraine suggesting that in return for Russia returning to its pre-war positions, Ukraine could offer transit rights through its territory between Crimea and the rest of Russia. However, Putin didn’t invade Ukraine for access to Crimea at all. That was never an issue as he already had a landbridge to Crimea when he completed the Kerch Bridge in 2018. While US political leaders believe that Ukraine is winning the war, Russia has 25 million men it could conscript for military service if Putin decided to. Accordingly, we can be assured that Ukraine will run out of troops way before Russia does given Russia’s population is four times larger. As I have said, even if by some miracle Ukraine retook all of its lost territory including the Donbass and maybe even Crimea, Russia would nuke them and then annex all of Ukraine. The reason that Putin felt compelled to invade Ukraine is because Ukraine had become a de facto NATO member as even Zelensky recently admitted and since Biden adamantly refused to end Ukraine’s de facto NATO membership in January, Putin realized that only a Russian invasion could succeed in reversing this and restoring Ukraine to its pre-February 2014 status as a neutral buffer state protecting Russia from NATO expansion and potential aggression.

As President Biden recently stated, the risks of nuclear Armageddon have never been higher since the Cuban Missile Crisis. However, back then the chances of a full-scale nuclear exchange were actually lower because the US had nuclear supremacy over Russia. Today, Russia and China have nuclear supremacy over the US so they are likely much less reluctant to resort to nuclear war than the Soviets were sixty years ago knowing that in the event of a full-scale nuclear exchange they would survive but the US and its leaders would not. While the neoconservatives claim the US must encourage Ukraine to keep fighting Russia to the bitter end to the last Ukrainian so as not reward Russian aggression by allowing them to keep even a small amount of Ukrainian territory as that would incentivize China to invade Taiwan, the truth is the exact opposite. The fact that Biden is going all out to prolong the war in Ukraine unnecessarily is likely incentivizing President Xi to want to take advantage of this window of vulnerability with the US and its NATO allies putting so much of its military into Eastern Europe to blockade and retake Taiwan once and for all.

Dr. Peter Pry spent the last nine months of his life championing the idea to “Make Peace Not War with Russia” to transform the Russian Federation from a nuclear superpower adversary into a strategic partner to neutralize its military alliance with China. If the US were to end the war quickly with a compromise peace and particularly if we signed a mutual security agreement with Russia as Dr. Pry advocated, Xi would likely think twice about invading Taiwan knowing he would not have Russian support in doing so. Accordingly, such a diplomatic coup could have the effect of both neutralizing the Russian nuclear threat while reducing the Chinese nuclear threat to the US at the same time. This is the dream that visionary national security strategist, Dr. Peter Pry, fought for so valiantly in the last nine months of his life and that is what I have been fighting for as well at his urging and in furtherance of his legacy.

Will We See a Return to Sanity Anytime Soon?

Brigadier General. John Lubas, who serves as Deputy Commander of the 101st Airborne Division in Romania, which has been conducting military exercises a few miles from the Ukrainian border, recently stated his division was not there for a training event, but a “combat deployment,” adding that his troops “need to be ready to fight tonight, depending on how the situation escalates across the border” in Ukraine. Whether his statement suggests the 101st Airborne division, which has not been deployed to Europe for nearly eighty years, is positioned near the border to deter Russian escalation of its war in Ukraine or to serve as the vanguard for direct US military intervention which would reportedly include sending NATO forces into Western Ukraine and possibly to the port city of Odessa to serve as “a blocking force” to prevent Russians from cutting off Ukraine from the sea remains to be seen. However, without a doubt, it is a sign of the collective flight from sanity which has gripped the White House and the upper echelons of the U.S. national security establishment.

One of America’s most renowned foreign policy theorists, former Assistant Secretary of Defense Graham Allison, has written a number of great articles of late calling on Biden to emulate the lessons of how JFK successfully resolved the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 and averted an unnecessary nuclear war with Russia. His most important recommendation is for the US to engage in robust diplomatic negotiations to end the conflict. Many, if not most, U.S. leaders and Americans who are the most militant in their hatred of Russia and their support for unlimited US military aid to Ukraine are the ones who seem to fear nuclear war the least. Interestingly, support for nuclear war with Russia has been greatest among liberal Democrats who were staunchly anti-war from the time of the Vietnam War until the illegal unprovoked US invasion of Iraq in 2003 but have since become much more militant as fighting the war against Russia in Ukraine has become a liberal cause célèbre.

That said, there have been some hopeful signs of late that support among the bipartisan warmongering elites, as well as the American electorate at large, for the Biden/neocon Republican policy of fighting a war without end with Russia in Ukraine may be beginning to fray. In a recent poll, 56% of Americans believe it would be better for America if Biden were removed from office than if Putin were removed as President of the Russian Federation, a point I have been making since the war began. In addition, 52% of those polled said it would be OK to let Ukraine lose its war against Russia. A majority of those polled also view Ukraine as one of Biden’s many failures given that he easily could have prevented the war by guaranteeing Ukraine would never join NATO back in January.

In what can only be described as a welcome move, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy recently declared that "there will be no blank check for military aid to Ukraine” when the GOP takes the House majority following its widely-expected victory in tomorrow night’s midterm elections. Hopefully, that means that the House GOP could act early next year to cut off military aid to Ukraine in order to incentivize it to negotiate a peace deal ending the war. In addition, former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard left the Democrat Party due to the fact that it had fallen “under the complete control of an elitist cabal of warmongers…dragging us ever closer to nuclear war." Since giving her speech announcing she was leaving the Democrat Party, she has been campaigning for America First conservative Republicans running for Congress across the country who oppose continuing US military support for Ukraine to incentivize it to negotiate a cease fire with Russia as I called for back in September.

Late last month, I attended an incredibly inspiring rally with Tulsi and Sen. Mike Lee which was held near Salt Lake City. I was very happy to see the attendees erupt in applause when she spoke about how Biden started the war in Ukraine by refusing to guarantee to Russia that Ukraine would never join NATO and when she talked about how we needed to put America's safety and security first by supporting a negotiated peace agreement ending the war in Ukraine to avert the increasingly likely threat of nuclear Armageddon. I was very happy to see Sen. Mike Lee appeared very comfortable and at ease with all of her anti-war sentiments and courageously echoed all of them highlighting the pressing need to check Biden's war powers in taking us to war without congressional oversight. Maybe there is hope the incoming Republican-led 118th Congress will save the US from nuclear annihilation after all! While President Joe Biden has unwisely refused to meet with Putin at the upcoming G-20 summit next week, Biden administration officials reportedly recently encouraged Ukraine to be open to a negotiated peace agreement ending the war with Russia, warning that he risked continued NATO support by his refusal to consider a diplomatic option to end the conflict.

Nuclear War Survivability

The risk of Russian nuclear escalation is very real. However, Russia is likely to shoot down US and NATO satellites and attack our critical infrastructure before a Russian nuclear escalation in Ukraine in order to paralyze not just the Ukrainian military but NATO military forces as well to blind us from further attacks and prevent us from conducting an effective military response. Most Americans, including U.S. political leaders, wrongly assume that any use of a nuclear weapon in war, no matter how small or whether it was employed against a population center or a military target would be an act of act of national suicide that would automatically escalate to a full nuclear exchange bringing about nuclear winter and the extinction of humanity. That assumption is wrong on all levels. A recent article in the Financial Times explained, "It is sometimes counter-argued that Putin would not use nuclear weapons so close to Russian territory, for fear of contaminating his own country. But senior US officials point out that the smallest tactical nuclear weapons might kill hundreds of people, rather than thousands — and devastate and irradiate just a few square miles."

This is an important point which many Americans do not seem to understand. Russia’s 2,500 advanced sub-kiloton battlefield nukes are designed to create zero radioactive fallout and in terms of their limited effects are in many ways more similar to large conventional explosive detonations than Hiroshima-size 20 kil0ton atomic bombs. Accordingly, Russia could use a significant number of them against Ukraine, both ground and air bursts for EMP effect, without having to worry about any significant negative effects against their own country. Of course, if Biden were to respond to Russian nuclear escalation in Ukraine with direct US military strikes on Russian forces it would quickly escalate to a Russian nuclear/EMP/cyber attack on the U.S. that would likely destroy our great country.

Do U.S. leaders honestly believe that whose flag flies over the four newly Russian-annexed Ukrainian provinces with an estimated five million inhabitants is worth the destruction of the US and NATO and the deaths of up to 280 million Americans? The fact that we are doing so with full neoconservative Republican support is complete and utter insanity since, as Dr. Pry noted, the US has no national interests at stake in Ukraine, other than to avert a nuclear war with Russia. Ukraine has never been a US ally and we have no security agreement to defend it. May we join together in praying that Biden abandons his policy of national suicide in which the destruction of our great country will be the most likely result and call for an immediate cease fire to end the war as the PRC is on the verge of invading Taiwan between November and the end of next year. Dr. Pry warned against the U.S. stumbling into an unnecessary nuclear war with Russia and that is exactly what we appear to be on the verge of doing. If and when the US is destroyed by our enemies, the inscription on America's tombstone should read that it died by suicide by our feckless and foolish Democrat and Republican leaders.

In the event of a worse case scenario in which there is a full-scale nuclear exchange between the U.S. and Russia and/or the PRC, Dr. Pry estimated that less than 3% of Americans would perish from the direct effects from a full nuclear exchange with Russia and/or China including radioactive fallout. This is due to the fact that they do not target US population centers but would rather engage in a counterforce and decapitation nuclear first strike hitting mostly rural areas. It is the second and third order effects that he believed would cause the deaths of up to 90% of our people just as would be the case with a comprehensive super-EMP attack on the US homeland. This is pretty much what I've been estimating since the late 1980s as well though my estimates were that 95% of Americans who prepare to survive a nuclear war could do so.

What We must Do to Save America

We concluded the interview by discussing the immediate and extremely pressing need to rebuild our increasingly obsolescent and badly undersized strategic nuclear triad by re-activating our 2,000 partially-dismantled strategic warheads in reserve in order to restore the credibility of our nuclear deterrent and counter the increasing threat of Sino-Russian nuclear supremacy. U.S. leaders should also take immediate action to deploy a comprehensive national missile defense system consisting of at least 5,000 ABM interceptors, including space based elements, and harden our critical infrastructure against the existential threats of EMP, including super solar storms, and cyber attack. Another important measure would be for the U.S. to extend the life of five of our fourteen Ohio nuclear missile submarines as there is a very high chance our Ohio nuclear missile submarines will age out before they are replaced by the Columbia class nuclear missile submarines which have begun construction but will not be ready until the end of the decade, which would create a huge window of vulnerability exposing us to a Sino-Russian nuclear first strike. These actions would likely prove far more effective in deterring aggression by our adversaries than forward deploying a large number of conventional military forces where they would be vulnerable to Sino-Russian nuclear/Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Pearl Harbor-type surprise attacks. Encouraging Japan to develop its own nuclear deterrent might also be helpful.

© David T. Pyne 2022

David T. Pyne, Esq. is a former U.S. Army combat arms and Headquarters staff officer, who was in charge of armaments cooperation with the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Africa and the Americas from 2000-2003, with an M.A. in National Security Studies from Georgetown University. He currently serves as Deputy Director of National Operations for the Task Force on National and Homeland Security and is a contributor to Dr. Peter Pry’s book “Blackout Warfare” as well as the upcoming book “Will America Be Protected?” which is due to be released later this year. He also serves as the Editor of “The Real War” newsletter at dpyne.substack.com and as a contributor to “The National Interest”. He may be reached at emptaskforce.ut@gmail.com.