With two nuclear-armed peer competitors — Russia and China — and with both advancing their nuclear capability, the U.S. now, more than ever, must move at full speed to modernize its nuclear deterrence capability. That effort is not just for U.S. national security, but as well for partners who depend on the U.S.

“The security environment we face today is unprecedented,” said Melissa Dalton, undersecretary of the Air Force. “We face for the first time in our nation’s history, two strategic competitors that are nuclear states with large and growing nuclear arsenals. When we look at the and its breathtaking modernization over the last two decades, we see today they have over 500 operational nuclear warheads, far exceeding prior projections.”

Speaking Wednesday at the Air & Space Forces Association’s 2024 Air, Space & Cyber Conference just outside of Washington, Dalton said that in coming years, the U.S. expects China’s warheads to exceed 1,000. At the same time, she said, Russia also remains a challenge.

“We see Russia brandishing its nuclear weapons in the context of the Ukraine conflict and also possessing novel nuclear capabilities that are designed to challenge our escalation calculus,” she said. “The stakes are incredibly high.”

During the Cold War, the U.S. maintained top-notch nuclear deterrence, and the domestic defense industry stood ready to provide whatever was needed. But since the fall of the Soviet Union, and with the U.S. focused on other parts of the world for the past 20-plus years, the U.S. must now up its game.

“We mortgaged our nuclear modernization for 30 years, and for a lot of understandable reasons,” Dalton said. “We had the post-Cold War…