FORMER STRATCOM CHIEFS VOICE SUPPORT FOR B61

By ExchangeMonitor

Cuts to the National Nuclear Security Administration’s B61 life extension program could imperil the airborne leg of the nation’s nuclear deterrent, four former leaders of U.S. Strategic Command (and its Air Force predecessor, Strategic Air Command) said in a letter last month to key leaders on the Senate Appropriations and Armed Services committees. The B61 will be the subject of a House Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee hearing today as lawmakers consider the massive price tag of the bomb refurbishment, but retired Air Force Gens. Larry Welch and Kevin Chilton and retired Navy Adms. Henry Chiles and Richard Mies suggested in their Sept. 10 letter to Sens. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.), Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and Richard Inhofe (R-Okla.) that the effort was well worth the cost. According to the most recent estimate from the NNSA the cost will be $8.1 billion, but a Department of Defense estimate set the price tag in excess of $10 billion.

The Administration requested $537 million in Fiscal Year 2014 for the refurbishment, but appropriators on the Senate Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee provided only $369 million in an effort to prod the Administration to narrow the scope of the project. Senate appropriators did include a provision that would free up the rest of the $168 million as long as the Secretaries of Energy and Defense certify that the life extension program will stay within its $8.2 billion cost estimate, though it’s unclear when—or if—the certification could be achieved, or where additional money would come from for such a reprogramming. The cuts “would impact the future of the airborne leg of the U.S. nuclear deterrent, it would imperil our commitment to the security of our NATO allies, and, it would preclude significant reductions in the large non-deployed nuclear weapons stockpile that the United States maintains to hedge against technical and geopolitical risk,” Welch, Chiles, Mies, and Chilton wrote.

Comments are closed.