The following interview with Maj. Gen. Garrett Harencak, the Air Force Assistant Chief of Staff for Strategic Deterrence and Nuclear Integration (A10), was conducted by Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor Reporter Brian Bradley.
NS&D Monitor
8/29/2014
There’s been a lot of attention focused on the cheating scandal in the Air Force missileer ranks and recovering from a severe morale problem. A lot of time and money is being spent to fix this, but how is what’s happening now different than the response to what happened in ’07-’08 at Minot Air Force Base and Barksdale Air Force Base with the unauthorized transfer of nuclear weapons aboard a bomber?
What’s different is the focus. Not that we weren’t focused. We were focusing at fixing structural and procedural problems that caused the unauthorized transfer. We were looking at organizational things, we were looking at processes, we were looking at a host of things. If you’re asked, well, what’s the difference in addressing what recently happened at Malmstrom, the difference is a different focus. We did a lot of things as a nation, as a Department of Defense, as an Air Force, to respond to the particular issue. Whether it be the Minot incident or the unauthorized transfer, or the Taiwan incident, we did a lot of things that fundamentally helped focus our nuclear deterrent ops.
We got to a lot of things. We reorganized our Air Force based on that. We established Global Strike Command. This particular job that I’m in, A10, is a result of all the things that we did to respond to those previous incidents. But when you’re dealing with an issue like this or anything in any large organization, it’s all about continuous improvement. We didn’t see this particular cheating scandal coming.
We did a lot of good things based on what happened in 2007 and 2008, and things are better. We’ve got stronger nuclear deterrent ops. Obviously, organizationally now you’ve got a single command that’s focused on it. Obviously, there was more work to be done.
So a lot of things are different. We take great pride, and we should, in all the things we’ve done over the past 10 years to address particular deficiencies and issues that were in the nuclear deterrent ops. And we didn’t get to absolutely everything. We came up with this particular issue, and we’ve addressed it. And that’s when the Force Improvement Program came.
We already made a lot of improvements. Now this came and this gave us an opportunity to continuously improve our nuclear deterrent ops and we went and we said, OK, how can we do it? I get the gist of your question: what’s different from that? Well, everything is different. What particularly happened is different. How it happened is different.
The issues were different, and we addressed those. Then we found out we had another particular problem and that we were going to address specifically about the one subset and their particular challenges and issues and some of the other particular underlying causes of what happened, and so now we’re addressing those.
When there’s an aircraft mishap, you address what caused that and the underlying cause and then you move forward. It’d be kind of unfair to say, “How come you have another aircraft mishap halfway around the world four years later?” Well, because that’s what happened. There were other issues that caused that. So to say that, because we fixed some things in 2007, we shouldn’t have to ever address a problem or fix something that happened in 2014—no, these are different issues. They were caused by different realities. That’s where we are. I think we have a continuous improvement process.
We’re constantly looking at the things we did to fix things in 2007, 2008, 2009. Here in A10, we have what’s called the “Flight Plan for the Air Force Nuclear Enterprise,” dated 26 June 2013, and the flight plan does that. It goes back and it asks: Did we address those issues? Do we still have some lingering issues? Did the fixes we put in actually work? How can we adjust those?
It’s going to be the same process with the Force Improvement Program. We don’t have it 100 percent right, but we’re going to have 100 percent focus on it to make sure that we did fix the underlying causes of what caused that, whether they be morale problems, whether they be material concerns, whether it was because we were under-resourced. We’re going to look back and two or three years from now and we might find that particular Force Improvement Program fix didn’t actually fix that.
So how can we adjust it to see if that worked? I get the spirit and intent of your question, but the underlying assumption is that, if you have anything broke and you fix it, then nothing should ever break again because you just fixed that thing that was broken. Well that doesn’t work in life, now does it? Why would we expect it to work in the United States Air Force or in the United States military?
We do the best we can. We take responsibility for what we did and what we were able to fix and what we weren’t able to fix, but when another issue comes up, we go and we address that issue, all with the idea that the focus on our nuclear deterrent ops remains constant, remains visible, and is as responsive as we possibly can, so we have the most safe, secure, and effective stockpile that we can.
As part of the fixes to the morale concerns, the Air Force recently announced it is in the process of filling staff to 100 percent in eight key positions at five nuclear bases across the country. How is that going to help morale?
When we see things like the cheating issue, we look at it and we go, “OK, what could have caused this? How could we as an institution respond to this?” And we looked at it. In my view, we take this the same way as if there’s an aircraft accident. The first thing you do is you go in and you see if everything is safe, secure, and effective. And of course it was. Our nuclear deterrent operations were all safe, secure, and effective. Everything was good there.
So then the next thing you look at is accountability. Did the aviators do something they shouldn’t have done that caused the crash or whatever, right? This is the process we go through. And then we assign accountability for it. And we certainly did this in this case. We held those officers that did not meet our standards accountable and also people in the chain of command accountable. And it’s a matter of record for the number of people that were relieved of duties and all sorts of stuff.
Then you look at root-cause analysis. You go back and you say, “What are some of the lessons we could learn that we could garner that could help us to prevent this from ever happening again?” That’s what we do when there’s an aircraft accident. That’s what we do when we have a small number of officers or airmen that did something inappropriately.
So what we did is the Force Improvement Program. That’s where we looked and we went to everybody and we asked them, what are the pressures here? What are the things we as an Air Force could improve on, that would help you do your job better, but also improve morale and improve your work environment? Our airmen were incredibly helpful in it. They gave very honest feedback. And we undertook a series of things we’re going to do to address their concerns. One of them is the one you just asked, which is the 100 percent. Many felt that this is certainly one of the most important things we do in the Department of Defense: Maintaining a safe, secure, and effective stockpile. So how is it that we’re not manned 100 percent?
How is it that we have scheduling problems that drive people to work longer hours in very difficult situations in remote locations and all the things they have to do? They have a difficult job and they do an incredibly outstanding job of doing that job. But this was about addressing their needs and concerns. One of them is that there are many others as part of the Force Improvement Program. There’s a lot we’re still looking at.
In response to this particular incident that you mentioned and the Navy’s recent cheating scandal at their nuke power school, the Secretary of Defense, as you know, asked for an internal review and an external review. And the external review was by retired Air Force Gen. Larry Welch and Adm. John Harvey. The internal review was done by Ms. Madelyn Creedon and Adm. Peter Fanta.
Then Strategic Command did their own internal review. We put all their recommendations together and we’re working through how we could do some of these things and how their recommendations and their insights could feed into how we could help do a host of things to help our airmen as they do the nuclear deterrent.
Can you comment at all on those studies and the result?
No. We can’t talk about it now because right now we’re going through a process where we’re evaluating their recommendations, we’re seeing what we can do and what we can’t do, what recommendations we can do quickly or at all and all sort of stuff. That process is nowhere near done. So I can’t respond to that.
In your view, what are the biggest challenges facing the nuclear arm of the Air Force right now?
I think the biggest challenge by far is the fact that we need to recapitalize and we need to modernize. And we’re trying to do it at a time when we have sequestration looming. We have much smaller budgets. We don’t have to tell you guys how old our air delivery weapons are. We have to life-extend the B61.
We need a replacement for the air-launched cruise missile, which is long-range strike, and our Minuteman III is a 1970s weapons system that we need to modernize and sustain to 2030. So a lot of these things, quite frankly, probably should have been done decades ago. For lots of reasons—good people making tough decisions with resources—we didn’t procure some of these things. So what we’ve been doing is keeping these older weapon systems in the delivery vehicles they’re on.
We’ve kept them going, kept them going, kept them going. Now the time has come and all these bills are coming due.
Do you think most other folks across the Pentagon share that view that it’s time right now?
It just has to happen. What the debate will be is what we do first, if we do it all, how quickly we do it. What are the priorities? How is NNSA’s throughput going to take care of all these things that have to be done? And then, of course, how do we pay for it?
In reality, we’re suffering from a 35-year, almost 40-year procurement holiday, and now all the bills are coming due. That’s inconvenient, that’s unhappy, but the fact of the matter is, all of these things need to be done now in the next 10, 15, 20 years. So we’ve got to do all these things.
Are you concerned that modernization and recapitalization might get left off the table throughout the whole budget discussion as sequestration puts pressure on the entire defense budget?
No, I think everybody realizes we’ve got to do it. I think overall, the nuclear deterrent ops, especially in DoD, have fared pretty well. There is a consensus that we have to do these things. The United States Air Force is completely, absolutely committed as an institution to do it. We’ve just got to figure out how we get money.
And it’s not just this FYDP [Future Years Defense Program]. A lot of these systems aren’t going to get done in this FYDP, or you know, maybe not even the next. So we’re talking 10, 15, 20 years. We have to prioritize. We have to figure out timing. We’ve got to make sure NNSA could handle the work and get it done. Certainly they could handle it, but do they have the budget space to do all the things we need to do?
We have to, as a nation, decide how we’re going to recapitalize and modernize our nuclear deterrent ops. I like to say that when we took this 30 to 40-year procurement holiday, we also took an intellectual holiday where we didn’t really, really talk and debate the continued value and relevance of nuclear deterrent ops, the security of this nation, and how valuable it is.
You can make the case that 40 years ago we didn’t need to do that. People understood deterrence. They understood the value of it. You had a general, almost broad consensus that you have to spend a certain amount of treasure to make sure we have the best nuclear deterrent operations we can to defend America and their allies. That conversation didn’t happen enough, in my view, in the previous 20 years, 25 years.
So part of my job while I’m working to get the Air Force modernized in how we operate in nuclear deterrent ops, how we get these life extension programs done, how we get these things recapitalized, one of the things we do here in A10 is engage and advocate to explain to the American people why we have to do this.
We’ve got to modernize and we’ve got to recapitalize at a time of declining budgets. That’s tough enough. But we also have to have a parallel maybe flying out a little ahead of it, explaining to the American people, explaining to people on the Hill about the continued relevance of what we in the United States Air Force and what the United States Navy does to defend America against its only existential threat.
How can you engage other stakeholders with so many other priorities potentially crowding out the nuclear mission?
Every day we go out and we go and we enlist those people. We engage with everybody from the press to on the Hill, to think tanks, to having symposiums. But what were we doing? We were out there discussing the relevancy, debating, getting people to understand what STRATCOM’s position is, what the Air Force’s position is, what the Navy’s position is as on why it’s important that we do the things we say we’re going to do in nuclear deterrent ops, and what the continued relevance of a strong, safe, secure and effective deterrent is.
We’re going to work toward a nuclear-free world. OK, great. Absolutely. But the President said, until that day happens, we’ll maintain a safe, secure, and effective stockpile for us and our allies.
Much like the recent developments with the recent analysis of alternatives concerning the ground-based strategic deterrent, in the beginning of the Bush Administration there was also an analysis of alternatives completed. Is there a stronger desire now to actually follow through with recapitalization and/or modernization this time around than there was 10 years ago?
I really can’t comment on that, because I just wasn’t involved in the nuclear deterrent ops arena back then. I will tell you that this Administration and this Department of Defense currently here is 100 percent behind making sure that our nuclear deterrent operations are safe, secure and effective.
There is a broad consensus on this being our top priority; if not the top, then one of the very top priorities. Everything we’re doing right now is to make sure we have a safe, secure, and effective stockpile. I see disagreements, debate, maybe on how fast, what are the priorities. That is normal and healthy and that will always happen.
Who goes first, how much money is there for the Pentagon and certainly in the interagency? You see it in NNSA, you see it at the White House, and you see it everywhere else. So everybody is committed. The only problem is we’ve got to figure out how we’re going to pay for it and then we’re going to have to figure out what the priorities are going to be and then how things are sequenced. That’s the issue that we’re going to have to deal with as the Department of Defense, and quite frankly as a nation.
In your capacity, you integrate the organizing, training, and equipping of the Air Force’s nuclear mission engaged with joint interagency partners for nuclear enterprise solutions. How do you balance government, taxpayer and contractor interests in your capacity?
What I try to provide is best military advice to the decision-makers. And that is to give the safest, most secure and effective stockpile that we could have at the most affordable cost, and it’s my best military advice. And that’s what our taxpayers want. I’m a taxpayer, we’re all taxpayers. We want our military to give the best military advice to protect America against all threats across the spectrum. And we understand probably more so than most how difficult it is to pay for everything we need. So I provide that, of course.
We have requirements. How do we meet those requirements? How do we provide the safest, most secure, and effective stockpile at the most affordable cost for us and our taxpayers? Ultimately, I don’t get to make those decisions. I try to influence those decisions, though, in the best manner we can here in A10, and that’s to say, “Hey, listen, this is the most affordable way, working with our interagency partners at NNSA, cooperating with the United States Navy.” Our level of cooperation between the United States Navy and the United States Air Force is, I wouldn’t say unprecedented, but it’s certainly far beyond what it was decades ago.
We share in a lot of ways common adaptable stuff. We work together. Why is that? Well, because it’s the right thing to do, but it also enables both the United States Air Force and the United States Navy to deliver to the American public the most affordable options to defend America against its only existential threat, and across the entire spectrum of conflict. And that’s what this is all about. If there is a way we could work together with the Navy, we could work with interagency partners to reduce the cost while allowing us to provide in the quantities we need affordable, safe, secure and effective nuclear deterrent ops material and people, then that’s what it’s all about.
It’s not about balancing. There are no trade-offs when it comes to getting what our nation needs to defend itself at the best cost. I think that’s what the American taxpayers want. And our airmen and our sailors out there deserve to have the best equipment possible, to have the most modern and safe, secure and effective weapons that they can to defend America. And they deserve it. Now, the taxpayers deserve to get it at the lowest cost possible, and those really, really aren’t tradeoffs. That’s where we just work together to make sure that happens.
