Todd Jacobson and Brian Bradley
NS&D Monitor
3/27/2015
Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) reintroduced parallel legislation this week in the House and Senate that would cut $100 billion in nuclear weapons spending over the next decade. The lawmakers have previously authored bills similar to the “Smarter Approach to Nuclear Expenditures (SANE) Act” since Markey first drafted the legislation in 2012, but the bills have been largely symbolic reflections of efforts to reduce the nation’s nuclear deterrent. “We are robbing America’s future to pay for unneeded weapons of the past,” Markey said in a statement. “The SANE Act cuts the nuclear weapons and delivery systems that we don’t need and will never use so we can invest in the people and programs that will make America safe and prosperous in the future.”
The SANE Act would reduce the B61-12 and cancel the Long-Range Standoff weapon programs, which the lawmakers said would save $7 billion. It would also defer the development of new ICBMs and cut warhead life extension programs, saving $16 billion; and save another $21 billion by canceling the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility, the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement-Nuclear Facility and the Uranium Processing Facility. It also would reduce the number of nuclear ballistic missile submarines from 14 to eight and cut the number of planned replacement Ohio Class submarines from 12 to eight, saving $21 billion, the lawmakers said.
Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), and Al Franken (D-Minn.) are co-sponsors of the Senate bill. “Instead of spending this year’s budget debate focused solely on repealing defense spending caps, or stuffing excess Pentagon spending into the Overseas Contingency Operations account, Congress should instead be focusing on ways to extract more value and greater savings from existing programs,” Blumenauer said in a statement. “The SANE Act would do exactly that by aligning our nuclear weapons spending with what the Pentagon has said is necessary to maintain a strong and credible deterrent, which is a one-third reduction in deployed nuclear weapons, not a complete $1 trillion rebuild above and beyond existing capacity.”
Haney Underscores Importance of Stable Funding for Nuclear Enterprise
Adm. Cecil Haney, commander of U.S. Strategic Command, underscored the importance of “stable, predictable funding” in sustaining the nuclear triad in a press briefing this week. “Stability in the budget is important for defense at large and security for our nation. For my business, no different,” Haney said March 24. “Being able to look at it year to year is very problematic, because when you look at these programs [it takes] awhile in order to get them built and in operation, even though they last a long time. I mean, the B-52 we’re operating today, built in ‘62, will be out there all the way to 2040.”
Haney called for a long-term view of defense spending, aligning with sentiments expressed by Maj. Gen. Garrett Harencak March 23 during the Carnegie Nuclear Policy Conference. Harencak said the quick hit of sequestration can prevent the Air Force from prudent budget planning. “Intellectually, we understand defense budgets are decreasing,” Harencak said. But sequestration “doesn’t allow us to plan the way we need to plan. My best military advice I would give somebody is if you … allowed us to know what that glide slope is going down, which allows us to make the right decision in recapitalization or modernization or how much money we put in this particular year into readiness, and maybe the next year, we can move a little bit more. You don’t know that with sequestration.”
Harencak used a pilot analogy to illustrate sequestration’s potentially damaging effects. “You might believe [sequestration is] an effective way to get through government,” he said. “You can believe that. You’d be wrong, but you can believe it. And if you believe that, then I want you to do something. When you leave here, wherever you fly back home to, I want you to tell the pilot that, ‘Hey, when you come in to land, don’t use a glide slope. Approach the arrival end of the runway at 5,000 feet and land from there.’ And you see what happens to the aircraft.”
Haney: Not Modernizing Could be Costly
While the U.S. is maintaining its nuclear capabilities, other countries are modernizing, Haney said. The Air Force is asking for a $5.6 billion plus-up over the Future Years’ Defense Program (FYDP) for its two legs of the nuclear enterprise, and the Navy has programmed $5 billion in research and development funding and another $5 billion in advanced procurement for the Ohio-class Replacement over the FYDP. Within the Air Force’s FYDP portfolio is approximately $945 million for the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent, the Minuteman 3 follow-on, and $1.8 billion for the Long-Range Standoff Weapon.
Haney defended STRATCOM’s modernization plans. “Today, we sustain on something less than 3 percent in the capability and the national insurance policy we have and associated with an existential threat to the United States of America and our allies,” he said. “When we look at this modernization, we’re talking about … instead of 2.6 or so percent of Defense spending, to be on the order of 5 percent to 6 percent. And I would say as we look at that, we may want to flip it around a little bit and think about it in terms of it [being] part of the national policy that is an insurance policy for deterrence well into the future. And it’s something that the cost of not doing it can be more of a problem than the cost of doing it would be.”
