Brian Bradley
NS&D Monitor
11/21/2014
Soon after Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel announced last week upcoming reforms to the under-resourced U.S. nuclear enterprise, Rep. Buck McKeon (R-Calif.), chair of the House Armed Services Committee, called for his Congressional peers to appropriate funding toward the aging nuclear arsenal, and urged President Obama to dump his “Global Zero” philosophy, equating the concept with unilateral disarmament. Among other initiatives, Hagel pledged to meet quarterly with top U.S. Strategic Command officials and to request billions of dollars for the nation’s nuclear deterrent for Fiscal Year 2016, in the wake of two studies—one internal and one external—that revealed a culture of micromanagement and decades-long negligence by officials within nuclear forces. “I hope the President will listen to his senior civilian and military national security leaders, take this as seriously as they do, and cast aside his Global Zero vision that is in reality unilateral disarmament,” McKeon said in a Nov. 14 statement. “We can work together to follow the blueprint established by Secretary Hagel and his review and show the leadership our men and women in uniform deserve.”
Two senators joined McKeon last week in calling for increased investments in the U.S. nuclear enterprise. In statements released Nov. 14, Sens. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.) and Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) both pushed for modernization of the U.S. nuclear deterrent. “I’m glad Secretary Hagel is acknowledging that we need to upgrade our nuclear deterrent—the problem, as in so many cases, is that the Obama Administration isn’t saying how to pay for it,” stated Alexander, the top Republican on the Senate Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee. “Secretary Hagel’s words are more evidence that the president and Congress need to restrain out-of-control entitlement spending and fix the nearly $18 trillion federal debt so there will be funding for urgent national security needs.”
The ‘Highest Priority Mission’
Fischer juxtaposed Hagel’s description of the nuclear enterprise as the Defense Department’s “highest priority mission” with the content of two reports detailing low morale of personnel and long-term neglect within the nuclear triad. “Secretary Hagel’s announcement today confirms the need to modernize and invest in our entire nuclear enterprise—something I have often discussed,” said Fischer, the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities. “Our nuclear deterrent is the ultimate safeguard for our national security; Secretary Hagel described it as the highest priority mission in the Department of Defense. However, as the Department’s reviews indicate, it has not received appropriate attention or resources, and the decades of neglect are beginning to catch up with us. It’s clear we need to make the necessary investments in personnel, facilities and equipment to ensure our nuclear deterrent is up-to-date and viable into the future. I look forward to working with the Secretary on this issue and appreciate his attention to this critically important topic.”
State of Nuclear Deterrent ‘Sobering’
After revelations detailing widespread cheating among Malmstrom AFB missileers surfaced in January, Hagel commissioned two reports on the nation’s nuclear weapons enterprise. A copy of the external report was released Nov. 14, along with a summary of the internal report. Former Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Larry Welch and former commander of U.S. Fleet Forces Command Adm. John Harvey led the independent review, completed in June. Former Pentagon official and current National Nuclear Security Administration Principal Deputy Administrator Madelyn Creedon led the internal review. During a Nov. 14 press conference at the Pentagon, Hagel said DoD plans to request $10 billion in additional funding for the nation’s nuclear enterprise over the next five-year Future Years Defense Program.
McKeon applauded Hagel’s prioritization of nuclear enterprise funding, but reflected on the “sobering” state of the U.S. nuclear force. “The Nuclear Enterprise has suffered from neglect for too long. Insufficient resources, indifferent leadership, and poor morale have taken their toll,” McKeon said. “I commend the Secretary for his leadership and for prioritizing the resources necessary to make sure our deterrent remains safe, secure and reliable. The Department of Energy must also re-prioritize its nuclear mission, correct for years of underfunding, and restore morale.”
Administration Talks about Congressional Response to Modernization
Brian McKeon, principal deputy under secretary of defense for policy, told attendees of a Nov. 14 speech at the Washington Foreign Press Center, that Hagel on Nov. 13 briefed members of the Senate and House Armed Services committees about his next-day Pentagon address, during which he said DoD would request billions dollars be put into the Fiscal Year 2016 budget for the nuclear enterprise, in addition to the $15-16 billion the enterprise currently draws. Brian McKeon said the briefings were “well received” by committee members. “That doesn’t tell us we’ll get the money, but I can tell you at least there was a good reception,” he said. The deputy under secretary added that DoD could be looking at an extended hiring timeline. “To find the skilled tradesmen and train them and get them up to standard, that will take some time. I would hesitate to put a number on it. It’s certainly going to be several years, but I don’t know whether I could say five or eight or 10.”
McKeon also correlated the pending nuclear personnel investments with modernization plans. “Part of this is we have plans, looking ahead, to modernize the triad in the middle of the next decade,” he said. “And so these investments are a bridge to get us to that, period.”
‘Fuel’ for Modernization
Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, told NS&D Monitor this week that lawmakers could seize the reviews’ findings as an opportunity to push modernization. “I can hear [lawmakers] clapping their hands from here. This is juice; this is fuel. This is all they need,” he said. Kristensen pointed back to shockwaves from the 1971 Schlesinger Report and the 2008 Air Force Blue Ribbon Nuclear Review, commissioned after six W80-1 warheads were mistakenly flown from Minot AFB to Barksdale AFB in 2007. “Much of that made its way right into the rhetoric that was used on the Hill and some of the legislation later on, and this is going to happen, too,” he said. “This is definitely going to help anyone who wants to make an easy case for modernization of nuclear forces.”
Airmen might have been unsure about their mission considering the uncertain nature of U.S. nuclear modernization plans, according to Michaela Dodge, policy analyst for defense and strategic policy at the Heritage Foundation. “The [review] panel said that the U.S. modernization plans are perceived as uncertain and judged rather unreliable,” she told NS&D Monitor during a Nov. 19 phone call. “And a lot of it probably has to do with uncertainty stemming from sequestration and from the DoD budget process. All the bills are coming due at the same time while we’re having sequestration and while we’re facing entitlement pressures in the federal budget and in the DoD budget.”
‘Jury’s Still Out’
Kristensen said he was skeptical about whether Hagel’s reforms would improve nuclear forces, again pointing to previous reports. “Based on the previous experience, we’re going to have another review in five, 10 years, and going to find similar things,” he said. The requested funding would ostensibly go toward hiring, miscellaneous hardware, personnel retainment and inspections, Kristensen said. “It’s just coming back to that issue of the bureaucratic pressure of the inspection and certification regime,” he said. “It’s trying to do things on a number of areas and frankly speaking, I think the jury’s still out on it. We’ll have to wait and see how this is going to be implemented and what the situation will be in a few years from now.”
Dodge said it was too early to decide whether the reforms would work, adding that deeper involvement in advanced nuclear education—which she said was underemphasized by the reviewers—among both nuclear-enterprise soldiers and the general public, would be key to ensuring the success of nuclear forces. “The awareness of what nuclear weapons contribute to U.S. security has gone down significantly,” she said. Courses offered by war colleges could assist college students in learning more about their work. “That awareness is slowly creeping in, but there is more to be done on that front, too.”
Hagel Visits Minot
After his Nov. 14 press conference, Hagel flew to Minot AFB’s 91st Missile Wing Operations Center, where he addressed airmen from the intercontinental ballistic missile and bomber legs of the nuclear triad, regarding the announced reforms, including cleaning of launch control centers and new testing procedures. “Some of the specific things that have come out of conversations that our reviewer had, with all of you and your colleagues from other of our nuclear facility bases and our Nuclear Enterprise headquarters—deep cleaning launch control centers, upgrading all our equipment, new equipment in every area—new vehicles—facility repairs,” Hagel said during his visit.
Hagel also called nuclear airmen and missileers “indispensable” for the U.S. security mission. “The quality of our people is the most critical element of our defense enterprise, our entire defense enterprise, as it is for any enterprise, whether it’s a business, nonprofit. Doesn’t make any difference. Quality people, leadership, commitment always make the difference. And I don’t want to lose that. I don’t want to preside over a time at the Pentagon, nor does [Air Force] Secretary [Deborah Lee] James and all of our leaders, that we allowed that to go down. The responsibility of leadership is to prepare for the future, prepare an institution for the future,” he said.
