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This is CBS I On The World with John Bacheler. Here's John Bacheler.

I'm joined by my friend and colleague Gordon Chang at Gordon G Chang. And we go to the question of nuclear weapons and deterrence.

A new document published by a study group convened by the Center for Global Security Research at the Lawrence Livermore National Lab did its spring 23 current.

China's emergence as a second nuclear peer. Implications for US nuclear deterrence strategy. Gordon and I welcome our colleague Peter UC of the Hudson Institute to address the question of now and how.

Peter a very good even to as I read in this document. The US now is expecting the F 35 to have nuclear capability in 2024.

It has a new class of boomer, submarine carrying missiles on on the way or planned in future. It's upgrading or intense to upgrade its silo sites.

And there's the B 21 bomber that is either in production or about to be in production, all those weapon systems. The question now is, is it time for the deterrence to be reconsidered reconfigured because China is building a nuclear weapons arsenal of uncertain proportions?

Is it warranted now for us to change our posture? Good evening to you.

Good evening, John and Gordon and I appreciate being asked to come on your show. We are totally justified and it's critical to go forward with the current plan of bombers, ICBMs and submarines.

They will begin to come into the force at the end of the decade and the final submarine goes in the water 2042. The only other option is basically to disarm because our legacy systems are so old that they're going to go out of business in the over the next 10 or so years anyway and it's been very difficult, probably impossible to continue beyond that.

The question you ask and what the Lawrence Livermore lab study group did, I had the director come and speak at Hudson just last week. And there were some additional things we should do such as a Navy cruise missile, which would be nuclear armed, which gets around the question of where are we going to base it if it's in the ocean, our allies in Europe and our allies in Asia, like the extended deterrent, but they don't have to mess with the point it on their land.

We only have bombers in our basic fighter aircraft in Europe that have gravity bombs. Those are the only what are called feeder, nuclear weapons that we have, but let me emphasize our strategic systems, which you mentioned, they are also part of our extended deterrent. So yes, we need to go forward with what we have now in the on the books and where, as I said, construction is going on in all three elements.

And it'll take us until 2042 to complete that, but we need to add to that, which is the submarine cruise missile, plus there are a number of other things we might do in terms of expanding the force of submarines or ICBMs.

And I think instead of 100 bombers for conventional nuclear, we need 200. I'm not the only person that says that, but it's something we need to do.

Gordon, you have a question for Peter.

Peter, you've been talking about delivery systems, planes, subs, whatever. The United States has not actually detonated a nuclear device for about three decades.

We have not ratified the comprehensive ban test ban treaty, but we adhere to it.

Will our devices actually go off if we want them to?

Well, the assumption by the National Nuclear Security Administration, and they have to certify this under law, is that stockpile stewardship, which is what we started after we stopped testing works.

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