US nuclear forces chief says Ukraine ‘just the warmup’ for larger crisis - ‘The big one is coming, and it isn't going to be very long before we're going to get tested in ways that we haven't been tested a long time’ he said.
Mr Richard said US forces’ “level of deterrence” against China – a major competitor and adversary – is “slowly sinking” because the Chinese have been able to build and deploy more “capability in the field” at a faster rate than their American counterparts.
“As those curves keep going, it isn't going to matter how good our [operating plan] is or how good our commanders are, or how good our horses are – we're not going to have enough of them. And that is a very near-term problem,” he said, though he added that the US submarine force remains “maybe the only true asymmetric advantage we still have against our opponents”.