As lawmakers on Capitol Hill sound alarms about the possibility of entering fiscal 2020 with a continuing resolution – or worse, sequestration – Air Force leadership said Thursday that $29 billion is at stake should the 2011 Budget Control Act spending cap levels return.
A return to sequestration levels would cause four times the amount of damage to the Air Force as in fiscal year 2013, Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson told the Senate Armed Services Committee.
It would mean cutting back on all of the service’s major procurement programs, including halting the nuclear-capable B-21 next-generation bomber program, Wilson said. It would also mean “no Ground-Gased Strategic Deterrent” (GBSD): the next-generation intercontinental ballistic missile that would carry the W87-1 nuclear warhead.
Multiple Republican Armed Services Committee members, including Chairman Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) and Sens. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and David Perdue (R-Ga.), expressed concern about the likelihood of a continuing resolution beginning the new fiscal year on Oct. 1.
Tillis said the Air Force’s 2020 budget request is “important to advocate for…but I believe it’s more or less going to be a paper exercise and that we’re going to be looking at a CR [continuing resolution].”
Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), ranking member of the Armed Services readiness and management support subcommittee, criticized his Republican colleagues for having “raised the specter of a CR.”
“I hear that from one side; I don’t know where that’s coming from,” he said. Democrats “don’t want a CR, we want an appropriations bill.”
The Air Force has requested $570 million for GBSD for fiscal 2020: more than 35 percent above the 2019 appropriation of $415 million, or so. For the B-21 bomber, the service seeks about $3 billion, which is more than 30 percent above the 2019 appropriation of roughly $2.3 billion.
Both programs are in the research and development stage, and the requested increases reflect expected cost hikes as the programs advance toward completion, according to the Air Force’s 2020 budget request.
The Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent will replace the 1970s-vintage Minuteman III silo-based intercontinental ballistic missiles made by Boeing. It would replace some 400 deployed Minuteman III missiles, on a one-for-one basis, starting in the 2020s. The Department of Energy’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) would furnish the missiles’ W87-1 warheads, the first of which would be produced in 2030, according to the agency’s 2019 Stockpile Stewardship and Management Plan.
Boeing, which designed the Minuteman III, and Northrop Grumman are maturing competing technical designs for GBSD under three-year Pentagon contracts awarded in 2017 and respectively worth about $350 million and $330 million. GBSD development costs are slated to peak years after those contracts end and the Pentagon selects one missile for further development. Peak development spending come in fiscal 2023 at about $70 million, according to the Air Force’s 2020 budget request for research, development, test, and evaluation.
The GBSD would cost more than $20 billion just to build, according to the Air Force’s 2020 budget request.
The B-21, meanwhile, would replace both the aged B-52H and B-2 bombers. The next-generation aircraft would carry the nuclear-tipped Long-Range Standoff cruise missile being developed by Lockheed Martin. The missile would be loaded with the W80-4 warhead, the first of which the NNSA now plans to produce in 2025. The B-21 will also carry the the B61-12 nuclear gravity bomb provided by the NNSA, the first of which the civilian agency plans to produce in September 2020.
For the Long-Range Standoff Weapon, the Air Force seeks almost $715 million in fiscal 2020, or roughly 7 percent more than the 2019 appropriation. That is the peak spending year for the missile, for which Raytheon and Lockheed Martin are maturing competing designs under four-and-a-half-year contracts awarded in 2017 and worth about $900 million each.
The B-52H will be the first U.S. aircraft to carry the new missile. The Donald Trump administration’s 2018 Nuclear Posture Reviews says the United States will for now maintain 46 nuclear-capable B-52H aircraft, which B-21 will eventually replace.
The Air Force has said it plans to buy around 1,000 LRSO missiles, which it will deploy beginning late next decade. The nonprofit Arms Control Association estimated the total LRSO program cost at about $10 billion. The W80-4 program would add another $10 billion of so to that cost, according to NNSA’s 2019 Stockpile Stewardship and Management Plan.
The B-21’s development schedule and total cost is classified.
This story first appeared in Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor affiliate publication Defense Daily. Dan Leone of Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor, contributed to this story from Washington.
