March 17, 2014

GOP SENATOR PLEASED WITH NUCLEAR WEAPONS BUDGET REQUEST

By ExchangeMonitor

The Obama Administration’s Fiscal Year 2015 budget request includes $8.3 billion for the National Nuclear Security Administration’s weapons program, and plans to modernize the nation’s nuclear deterrent are beginning to win over one of the staunchest critics of nuclear funding lapses. Speaking at a Senate Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee hearing yesterday, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), the ranking member of the panel, credited the Administration for a budget that is “pretty close to where we need to go.” Sessions has opposed the President’s push for a world free of nuclear weapons and has criticized the Administration in years passed for not living up to its New START Treaty modernization commitments. “This is a right step, in my view,” he said. “Particularly in this time of the Ukraine and China’s aggressiveness, we don’t need to be sending any signal that somehow we’re not willing to modernize or utilize even, God forbid, the weapons that we have.”

He suggested that raising and sustaining nuclear weapons spending at 5 percent of the Pentagon budget, up from around 3 percent, he said, is necessary as modernization of the nation’s arsenal, weapons complex and nuclear delivery vehicles gets in full swing in the coming decades. “If we need to accelerate some of this, it’s a relatively small part of the budget overall and I think we have to do it,” Sessions said. “And at a time where the will of the United States is being questioned, I think it may be even more significant that we stay on track to leave no doubt that we are going to have an arsenal, we’re going to use it only, only, only if we have to, but we have the will to defend ourselves if need be, and you don’t want to launch a nuclear attack on us because that would be a grave mistake.”

Delays on many modernization projects, however, remained a worry, Sessions said, citing slips in the timelines for the Ohio class replacement submarine, a follow-on ICBM as well as the air launched cruise missile warhead, the B61 and the interoperable warhead, which has been deferred for at least five years. “I’d give you an ‘A’ but it’s delaying things,” Sessions said. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear and Missile Defense Policy Elaine Bunn defended the modernization plan. “I think we have a good path that we’re on for modernization. And while we’ve had a few slips because of budget concerns, we are on the path,” Bunn said. “And I think the key question is: Are we on the path to get where we need to be in the time we need to be there? And I believe the answer is yes.”

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