The United States’ ability to hold at risk adversary strategic nuclear forces has always been in flux, and the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) nuclear modernization further strains U.S. targeting objectives. The ability to limit the damage an adversary can inflict on the U.S. homeland by destroying its strategic forces has been a central objective of U.S. nuclear strategy since the early Cold War. By making clear that Washington can meaningfully limit the consequences of adversary escalation, damage limitation can offset adversary advantages in the balance of resolve and enhance the credibility of U.S. extended deterrence. As the PRC continues to expand its nuclear forces, however, the United States may eventually be unable to simultaneously hold at risk Russian and PRC strategic nuclear forces. With the expiration of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), the size of the United States’ deployed nuclear force is no longer constrained. To offset quantitative increases in adversary arsenals in a two-peer nuclear environment, U.S. policymakers should re-deploy multiple-independently targetable reentry vehicles (MIRVs) on the Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) as a near-term hedge to maintain counterforce requirements. The Cold War Rationale for MIRVs First deployed in 1970, the U.S. Navy initially conceived of MIRVed delivery vehicles to enhance U.S. counterforce capabilities. Throughout the 1960s, the Soviet Union expanded its silo-based ICBM force, which posed a challenge to U.S. targeting policy. According to then-Defense Research and Engineering Director Dr. John S. Foster, policymakers formulated the MIRV concept because “it was found that the total number of aim points exceeded the number of Minuteman missiles.” The Johnson administration concluded that a MIRVed missile carrying multiple lower-yield warheads could cover more targets than a missile carrying a single, high-yield warhead. In 1967, then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Nitze in a testimony to the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy presented a table of two hypothetical missile payloads–one containing a single ten-megaton warhead and the other containing ten 50-kiloton warheads–and showed that the MIRVed system was able to destroy 1.2–1.7 times the number of hard missile silos and ten times the number of airfields, despite total lower-yield. Additionally, MIRVing also helped to save costs during a period of budgetary constraints. A declassified 1976 Lawrence Livermore document found that MIRVs were the “cheapest way to keep up with the mission and threat requirements” in light of the decision to stabilize the number of delivery vehicles. Reflecting on the Nixon-Ford years, Melvin Laird further rationalized the development of MIRVs as a “relatively low-cost” means of short-term modernization with a Congress that was hostile to increased defense spending. MIRVs, Henry Kissinger argues in The White House Years, were a critical counterweight to the Soviet Union’s rapid ICBM expansion. While the MIRV’s original purpose was to enhance counterforce capabilities, the technology also helped counter Soviet anti-ballistic missile (ABM) developments. In a 1967 on-the-record interview published in Life Magazine, Secretary of Defense McNamara described the purpose of the MIRV as overcoming Soviet defenses. Secretary of Defense Schlesinger would later testify in 1974 that the only reason the United States needed MIRVs at the time was as a hedge against Soviet ABM systems should they choose to break or withdraw from the ABM treaty. The Contemporary Case for MIRVing Contemporary U.S. policymakers face a set of challenges similar to those of the 1960s for two reasons. First, the expansion of the PRC ICBM force risks degrading the United States’ ability to execute damage limitation missions against the PRC and Russia. Currently the United States deploys approximately 1,419 warheads on its strategic systems. The United States would need to target approximately 460 PRC ICBMs and 560 deployed and non-deployed Russian ICBMs to hold these adversaries’ strategic forces at risk, which is more difficult given that both adversaries maintain a mix of road-mobile and silo-based systems. These numbers do not account for other soft targets, including naval and airbases, command and control centers, or the nuclear forces of other adversaries like North Korea. Achieving high-confidence hard-target kills against hardened silos and destroying mobile systems often requires allocating multiple warheads per aim point, meaning the effective counterforce capacity of 1,419 deployed warheads is substantially smaller than the raw number implies against a combined Russian-PRC target set. Second, adversary advances in ballistic missile defenses further complicate U.S. damage limitation strategy. The PRC’s 2025 Victory Day parade showcased the HQ-29 as the first operational system capable of midcourse interception against long-range ballistic missiles. People’s Liberation Army officers at the PRC’s Naval Command College have also explored plans for deploying sea-based midcourse interception systems, similar to the U.S. Aegis Combat System. For its part, Russia maintains the A-135 system around Moscow to intercept ICBMs and plans to modernize the S-550 to enhance its ICBM interception capability. To address these challenges and maintain the United States’ ability to simultaneously hold Russian and PRC strategic nuclear forces at risk in the near term, U.S. policymakers should consider re-MIRVing the Minuteman III ICBMs. Due to delays with the Sentinel Program—which the Air Force aims to deliver by “the early 2030s”—the United States has few other options to expand its deployed force. Re-MIRVing the Minuteman can increase the number of available warheads for damage limitation objectives and hedge against adversary ballistic missile defense improvements. Although re-MIRVing Minuteman III ICBMs would be logistically and operationally complex, it would be relatively cheap and quick: a 2020 Congressional Budget Office report estimated that uploading warheads to Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty II limits would cost approximately $100 million in one-time costs and could be done “relatively quickly.” Strategic Risks and Necessity Some opponents criticize MIRVs as exacerbating first-strike instability. The 2010 Nuclear Posture Review, for instance, claims that de-MIRVing would “enhance the stability of the nuclear balance by reducing the incentives for either side to strike first.” Because MIRVs increase the individual value of a single ICBM, adversaries may be more tempted to target MIRVed ICBMs in a first strike. Given the central role of damage limitation in U.S. nuclear strategy, however, this concern must be weighed against the dangers of a counterforce imbalance. A widening imbalance, especially given the trajectory of the PRC’s nuclear build-up, could cast doubt on U.S. resolve to absorb the costs of nuclear escalation on behalf of its allies and undermine the credibility of U.S. extended deterrence. In a post-New START world, MIRVed ICBMs represent one low-cost step that the United States can take to maintain a damage limitation capability against Russia and the PRC. While policymakers should simultaneously explore other longer-term and more survivable options for expanding the U.S. force, procuring new delivery vehicles is both time- and capital-intensive. Increasing the number of warheads per vehicle is a near-to-medium-term option to increase the number of targets the United States can hold at risk before new systems come online.