Opinion by Jack Cohen-Joppa
TUCSON, Ariz — In Tom Lehrer’s classic Cold War ditty, “So Long Mom,” a nuclear bomber pilot sings, “I’ll look for you when the war is over, an hour and a half from now.”
It’s darkly funny, because even though we don’t talk much about it, we all know it’s true. Planned or imagined, nuclear war scenarios rarely last longer.
But how much time have we got before then? How near is that threat of omnicide today?
The Doomsday Clock is a visual metaphor created by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists back in 1947 to illustrate how close we are to global calamity from nuclear weapons and other looming threats to civilization as we know it. Originally set at seven minutes to midnight, in 2023 it advanced to 90 seconds to midnight, largely due to nuclear threats from the war in Ukraine.
Now, with wars still raging in Ukraine and the Middle East, escalating climate chaos, and increasing biological and artificial intelligence threats, the clock has been pushed to just 89 seconds to midnight, the closest it’s been in history.
And Raytheon Corp. keeps pushing us closer.
In April 2020 — Raytheon, with more than 12,000 local employees and the bulk of its research, development, and production based in Tucson — was awarded a sole-source contract to produce about 1,000 new nuclear-armed, air-launched cruise missiles. Known by the bland acronym LRSO (Long Range Stand-Off), the missile is arguably both redundant and destabilizing in a time of disappearing nuclear diplomacy.
Not only that, but because of its work on both the LRSO and Tomahawk cruise missiles, Raytheon is now seen as the leading contender to produce even more nuclear weapons in the form of new sea-launched nuclear cruise missiles. This further escalation would represent a huge setback to hard-won nuclear arms control progress, when nuclear-armed Tomahawks were removed from submarines over 30 years ago.
Why aren’t we talking about it? Despite near-universal condemnation of nuclear weapons by leaders of the world’s religions, we could use more local political and religious leaders speaking out against this blasphemous enterprise in our backyard. It’s not as if it’s a military secret. The industry press has recently carried reports of LRSO flight tests, budget allocations, production schedules, and more. Yet local media have not kept up.
Raytheon also has nothing to say. Usually, southern Arizona’s largest employer and exporter is mighty boastful of the panoply of products in their military portfolio. Their website is filled with fulsome bragging and lurid photos of deadly hardware. But the baddest boy of the bunch is missing in action. The nuclear-armed LRSO only pops up in a handful of financial reports. Raytheon’s original press release heralding the multibillion-dollar contract was posted on its website and quoted by the Tucson media in April 2020. But now it’s gone, simply deleted from its media archive.
Perhaps management has realized that there is nothing to be gained by crowing about their only product that, if used as intended, would be the instrument of multiple war crimes and crimes against humanity (incomprehensible death and devastation, disproportionate civilian casualties, lasting contamination of land and water, etc.). Raytheon’s “products” are certainly nothing I’m proud of as a Tucsonan.
This is the same Raytheon/RTX that last November was fined nearly $1 billion for defrauding the government (i.e., the taxpayer) and paying multiple bribes to promote business with the government of Qatar.
Experts debate whether the LRSO is intended for a nuclear surprise attack, or just another layer of“deterrence.” But if it isn’t meant to be used first, that just makes it fit into plans for a full-scale nuclear war. All ninety minutes of it. Shouldn’t we all pay more attention, and demand that our elected leaders resist this insanity?
— Jack Cohen-Joppa is a husband and father and a Tucson resident since 1986. He is co-coordinator since 1980 of the Nuclear Resister, www.nuclearresister.org. This piece was written for the Arizona Daily Star January 31.
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