Will Biden Show Urgency in Reviving Key US Nuke Cut by Obama?

An Obama-era decision to retire the nuclear Tomahawk cruise missile is resonating more than a decade later, as worldwide turmoil makes the missile relevant again – and whether or not officials show urgency in putting it back into production could have significant reverberations on America's ability to deter its rivals in the years to come.

For decades, the U.S. had maintained an array of nuclear capabilities as part of its diverse arsenal. One of the most important was short-range or "theater" nuclear weapons, which comprised much of the so-called "nuclear umbrella" – the U.S. guarantee as a nuclear power to protect American allies that did not possess atomic weapons.