Brian Bradley
NS&D Monitor
2/27/2015
Weeks after the Obama Administration requested hefty funding increases to fuel the acceleration of cruise missile warhead procurement from Fiscal Year 2027 to 2025, a former Democratic staffer on the Senate Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee thinks the project could be in danger. “Whether you believe the cruise missile is needed or not, appropriators are going to have a hard time accelerating the program in terms of what’s wrong with a FPU [First Production Unit] date of 2027?” former Senate Appropriations staffer Leland Cogliani, currently a senior lobbyist with Lewis-Burke Associates, said last week during the annual Nuclear Deterrence Summit. “The missile’s good until at least 2030—why do we need to speed it up and bring it on, especially when there are other budget priorities?”
The Obama Administration requested $195 million for W80-4 warhead refurbishment in Fiscal Year 2016, a $185.6 million increase over last year’s request. Additionally, the White House is asking for $36.6 million in FY 2016 for research and development of the long-range standoff weapon, a $33.2 million increase over the FY 2015-enacted level. In its FY 2015 budget request, the Administration delayed the completion of a FPU on the refurbished warhead from 2024 to 2027. The Administration’s FY 2016 request would offset that, accelerating the FPU’s development to 2025. The level of Congressional funding support for nuclear programs remains unclear as appropriators and authorizers once again face a tight funding environment.
Could NNSA R&D See Cuts?
Despite a $1.2 billion increase in the National Nuclear Security Administration’s overall FY 2016 budget request over FY 2015-enacted funding, NNSA did not request money for increases in the science and technology base for nuclear weapons modernization, Cogliani said, which could be an indication of future cuts in NNSA research and development. “I don’t see Congress really having an appetite to restore funding, specifically for science, engineering, inertial confinement fusion,” he said. “That’s a part of the budget they don’t understand well. It’s less concrete than hardware like a bomb or a missile.”
Sequestration Relief Act Introduced
To address sequestration’s prospective implications on the Defense Department, Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Aaron Schatz (D-Hawaii) on Feb. 12 introduced the Sequestration Relief Act of 2015 to Congress, which would raise DoD’s discretionary spending limit from about $499 billion to $561 billion in FY 2016, and increase the cap to $573 billion in FY 2017. The Pentagon has requested about $534 billion for discretionary spending in FY 2016. While Cogliani acknowledged that some lawmakers have shown some willingness to raise DoD Budget Control Act caps, he doubts Congress members will settle, he said.
Where Can Savings Be Found?
Tim Morrison, a Republican staffer on the House Armed Services Committee, speaking at the Summit noted strong bipartisan support for nuclear forces, yet said he expects Congress to categorize planned defense programs as must-haves, wants and luxuries in the tough funding environment. He also made a case that DoD officials have stated the nuclear enterprise as the Pentagon’s top priority, citing the words of Frank Kendall, Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics, and NNSA Principal Deputy Administrator Madelyn Creedon, who highlighted the preeminence of the nuclear mission within DoD and the low budget percentage of the mission, respectively. “Without the cost of an aircraft carrier, DoD carries on a mission that protects the US from nuclear attack, aggression and coercion from our adversaries, contributes to strategic stability with Russia and China, and assures allies in Europe and Asia that would be otherwise be vulnerable to nuclear threats or be enticed to develop their own nuclear capabilities,” Morrison cited Creedon as saying.
The Center for Nonproliferation Studies in January 2014 released a report that estimated the cost of nuclear weapons at $1 trillion over 30 years, which taken as a proportion of total projected defense costs across that timeframe would equal 5 percent, according to Morrison, who estimated the percentage at closer to 4 percent. “Do you look for savings in the 5 percent, or do you look for savings in the 95 percent?” he said. “I think that’s the key that I would caution my members—be wary of budget savings proposals that are really wolves in sheep’s clothing, that are really recycling the same Global Zero, the same nuclear freeze, unilateral disarmament that we’ve heard for years and years and years, that are really trying to take advantage of the budget situation to establish long-held policy goals.”
Has U.S. Had Its Reckoning with Nuclear Costs?
The Arms Control Association (ACA) and Ploughshares Fund Policy Director Tom Collina authored an October-released report suggesting the U.S. scale back modernization plans, including new nuclear-capable bombers, the Ohio-class Replacement Program, ICBM modernization, B61 life extension work, and the long-range standoff weapon, which the authors say could save $70 billion. Speaking at the Summit, ACA Executive Director Daryl Kimball asserted the U.S. has not reconciled projected nuclear weapons costs with federal budget realities.
Among the report’s proposals that Kimball highlighted was reducing the planned posture of next-generation ballistic missile submarines from 12 to eight, which the study estimates would save the U.S. $16 billion. Morrison questioned whether arms control advocates’ proposals would actually cut costs or merely exemplify a policy objective. “If you want to look at cost cutting, you can look at how to do projects more cheaply, how to streamline federal oversight at NNSA, for example,” Morrison said. “You could find a lot of savings there. If we’re talking about arbitrarily throwing four SSBNs overboard, that’s not cost savings. That’s disarmament.”
Kimball countered that ACA’s report does not propose unilateral warhead reductions, and said he would support a methodical Congressional discussion of priorities and cuts in nuclear forces. He said much of the savings found through SSBN posture cuts would be realized long term. “Many of the savings would occur over time, when in the 2030s and 2040s, the ninth, 10th, 11th, 12th boat are not bought,” he said. “There are some savings in the short term.” The Navy plans to procure 12 Ohio-class Replacements from 2021 to 2042, with the first delivery slated for 2031. The submarines are estimated to cost $100 billion. “What I think we all need to confront is that there are fiscal constraints, there are cost-effective options that can be designed and pursued, that make sense, and then there’s the possibility that budget cuts are going to be made and we’re going to be left with a nuclear force and programs that are the leftovers of a rather messy, not very thoughtful approach,” Kimball said.
Are BCA Caps Handicapping the Nuclear Enterprise?
Also speaking at the Summit, Peter Huessy, President of defense consulting firm GeoStrategic Analysis, highlighted the U.S. has reduced annual nuclear triad funding by 67 percent, from $57-67 billion at the height of the Cold War to under $25 billion today. As a percentage of DoD spending, nuclear enterprise funding has also plummeted from 25 percent of DoD’s budget at the height of the Cold War to 4-5 percent now, Huessy said, adding that the resulting national security benefits are a “bargain” considering proportional costs.
He said a Congressional deal with the Office of Strategic Deterrence and Nuclear Integration is necessary to sustain U.S. nuclear requirements and called the BCA caps an “artificial budget restraint” that dilutes deterrence strategy. “It’s as if someone said, ‘You have to run a 100-yard dash, and I won’t make you run it in record time, but how’s 15 seconds? OK, which leg which would you like me to cut off before you start running?’” Huessy said. “That’s what we’re asking our military to do with this budget cap. The budget cap has nothing to do with strategy, nothing to do with what our strategy needs, and nothing to do with protecting our national security. And it would be to me the height of folly if we let that drive our strategy as opposed to the other way around.”
