Mark Esper, President Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of defense, held strictly to nuclear orthodoxy in his Senate confirmation hearing Tuesday, boosting the Department of Energy’s stockpile stewardship program and urging continued funding for long-term modernization and maintenance of the nuclear arsenal.
Esper, a former Raytheon lobbyist and current secretary of the Army, said in written testimony the 30-year, $1-trillion nuclear modernization and maintenance program started by the Barack Obama administration was “sufficient to support the full modernization of the nuclear triad.”
The ongoing modernization regime was conceived as the U.S. and Russia enacted the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) that capped their deployed strategic warheads at 1,550 each. New START will expire in February 2021, if the U.S. and Russian presidents do not agree before then to a five-year extension.
The Trump administration has criticized New START because it does not constrain China’s nuclear arsenal, or limit Russia’s ability to develop nonstrategic nuclear weapons, or prohibit Moscow from deploying so-called exotic nuclear weapons that do not closely resemble the missiles, bombs, submarines, and aircraft covered by the existing treaty.
Esper agreed with the White House’s concerns in his confirmation hearing, although he said in his written testimony that “New START Treaty extension could potentially fit into a new arms control framework provided the net result improves the security of the United States and of our allies and partners.”
Esper also praised the stockpile stewardship program that DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) uses to certify, without nuclear explosive tests, that aging U.S. nuclear weapons have maintained their designed destructive power.
The United States, which ceased nuclear explosive testing in the 1990s, “would only consider a return to nuclear explosive testing if there is a severe technical or geopolitical challenge that cannot be addressed through other means,” Esper said.
Senate Armed Services Chairman James Inhofe (R-Okla.) told media after the hearing the committee could vote on Esper’s confirmation by Thursday, paving the way for a floor vote ahead of Congress’ annual August recess.
