I spent last week at the U.S. Air Force Academy. Just past the United States Olympic & Paralympic Museum and the ProRodeo Hall of Fame in Colorado Springs, the 18,500-acre facility is nestled among the foothills of the Rockies. Visiting can be a head-spinning experience: Outside, schoolkids gambol across sports fields while deer graze along the side of roads; hawks and other raptors scream across the sky. Inside, we discussed nuclear Armageddon.

The conference organizers convened a veritable murderers’ row of nuclear experts — strategists and practitioners, people who have prowled the Pentagon, conducted arms negotiations and written the documents that guide those weapons’ deployments and use, academics and even a regional specialist — to help guide the incredibly smart, earnest and motivated cadets through the nuclear thicket.

We gave them a lot to ponder. One focus was the considerable, if not transformative, change that has occurred and continues to take place throughout the battlespace. Weapons have been modernized, exhibiting both greater sophistication and simplicity. Inventories now include hundred-thousand-dollar missiles and hundred-dollar drones. New domains — space and cyber — have been added to the strategic calculus.

© The Japan Times