Brian Bradley
NS&D Monitor
4/24/2015
The Nuclear Enterprise reviews completed last year showed that the triad is running at a $9 to $25 billion recapitalization and sustainment deficit—not including bombers and ballistic missile submarines—a shortfall that will take “years” to fix, a top National Nuclear Security Administration official told Senators April 22. “We did not evaluate any of the replacement programs themselves other than to note that it will be years before the new systems are fielded, and in the meantime, the existing systems must be maintained,” NNSA Principal Deputy Administrator Madelyn Creedon stated in written testimony to the Senate Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee. Creedon headed up a review while in a previous position at the Pentagon, and she added that the reviews did not include NNSA warhead life extension and sustainment efforts.
Not a ‘Blank Check’
During the hearing, subcommittee Chairman Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) said Congressional funding wouldn’t be a “blank check,” yet added that his subcommittee would closely examine the additional $5.6 billion the Air Force has programmed across the Future Years’ Defense Program for the Nuclear Enterprise. “We know you’ve been undercut and hadn’t had sufficient funding,” he said. “We’re going to have to find some more money, but doing it as smartly as possible will be good.” Creedon said much of the $5.6 billion plus-up would fund facilities, along with other supporting elements. “There are a lot of facilities that need to be replaced,” she said. “Some of it is new equipment. The Air Force needs new helicopters for their missile fields. It’s people. It’s parts. It’s a whole range of things. It’s a very large bill.” In written testimony, Lt. Gen. Stephen Wilson, commander of Air Force Global Strike Command, stated that the Air Force has programmed $521 million across the FYDP to replace all deficient buildings across the 1960s-era Weapon Storage Areas with a single “modern and secure” facility at each base. Creedon said one cultural flaw the reviews found was that security forces stationed at northern missile fields, where snow and ice often hits, were driving in front-wheel-drive SUVs.
Culture Changing?
Former Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel ordered one internal and one external review of the Nuclear Enterprise, after a separate drug investigation uncovered cheating among missileers at Malmstrom AFB on monthly proficiency tests that required a 100 percent grade to pass. The Air Force has since switched to a quarterly testing schedule where a score of 90 percent is the passing standard. The reviews uncovered deeply embedded morale and investment shortfalls, which took years to develop. Creedon said airmen felt “trapped” working in the nuclear enterprise, and one phrase she and co-reviewer Rear Adm. Pete Fanta, commander of Expeditionary Group Five, frequently heard during visits to air force bases was, “I’ve got the nuclear stink on me so I don’t have much of a future in the rest of the Air Force,” she said. Wilson told the subcommittee that the cheating discovery was an “un-ignorable moment,” adding that culture has started to change as a result of the Force Improvement Program, and more airmen are choosing to join nuclear forces. “Before, we’d see not a lot from the different accession sources who would volunteer to go to missiles,” he said. “Today we’re seeing a complete difference. This year alone [there were] 29 [who listed it as] first choice and all 174 coming in it was in the top six choices.”
New Procurement Process
In addition to addressing morale issues, officials have also vowed to streamline equipment improvement, including GBSD’s procurement process, improving upon previous acquisitions of intercontinental ballistic missiles. Lt. Gen. John Thompson, commander of Air Force Life Cycle Management Center, during a speech last month said the Air Force previously treated ICBM weapon subsystems—such as ground systems and missile sites—as disparate “eaches.” Creedon told the senators that the launch control centers (LCCs) and the 10 missile-containing launch facilities that each LCC covers were not considered an integrated weapon system. “So you have the missile itself, you have the silo that it’s in,” she said. “Then the silos are covered by launch control centers. And the launch control centers then talk within their missile field. That whole missile field was not considered as a weapons system.”
GBSD procurement will follow one linked procurement timeline for flight systems, command and control, and infrastructure, according to Air Force documents. Also, the service is collaborating with the Navy on commonalities between ICBMs and Trident 2s, especially on smaller components such as accelerometers and gyros. The service has budgeted $944 million for GBSD over the FYDP. “People ask me all the time, well how can we afford to do all this recapitalization and modernization? Well, one way we’re going to afford to do it is we’re going to do it in a new way,” Maj. Gen. Garrett Harencak, Air Force Assistant Chief of Staff for Strategic Deterrence and Nuclear Integration, told the subcommittee. “We’re not going to do it the same way we did it in the 1960s and the 1970s and the 1980s and the 1990s. We’re going to do it in a smarter, better, faster way. And that starts with making sure wherever we can leverage another service, or what the United States Navy has done or vice-versa, we’re going to do it.”
