A joint Navy-Air Force ballistic missile?

Tomorrow’s lean defense budgets may force the military services to do something once unthinkable, the Navy’s top strategic weapons planner said Thursday: Cooperate on designing a new nuclear missile.

Rear Adm. Terry Benedict, head of the Navy’s strategic systems programs, told attendees at the Naval Submarine League conference outside Washington that U.S. strategic forces eventually will need new nuclear ballistic missiles.

The Navy and Air Force can sustain their current fleets of Tridents and Minutemen for the next few decades of the 21st century, but they won’t last forever.

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