The U.S. Defense Department is intent on fixing decades of underinvestment in the nation’s nuclear deterrent, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said Thursday.
The insufficient funding dates to the close of the Cold War, “when the United States believed it would be safe to allow funding for the nuclear enterprise to drop, and drop it did, dramatically,” the Pentagon chief said in Bellevue, Neb., at the change of command ceremony for U.S. Strategic Command.
“Over the last 25 years, we made only modest investments and basic sustainment and operations. But while we didn’t build anything new for 25 years and neither did our allies, others did – including Russia, North Korea, China, Pakistan, India and for a period of time, Iran,” Carter said. “So we can’t wait any longer and we also can’t operate under the mistaken assumption that our own recapitalization will stimulate others to invest – because the evidence is just the opposite – they have consistently invested in nuclear weapons during a quarter-century pause in U.S. investment.”
The Pentagon’s 2014 Nuclear Enterprise Reviews identified this vulnerability, Carter said, and DOD has now undertaken what is expected to be a $1 trillion, 30-year program to modernize the land, air, and sea legs of the U.S. nuclear triad by building new ICBMs, strategic bombers, and ballistic missile submarines, along with developing a replacement for the air-launched cruise missile.
The U.S. Air Force is taking bids on a major contract for its Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent, the replacement for the Minuteman III ICBM. The missile is scheduled to be deployed in the late 2020s and to remain in service through 2075. Bids on the request for proposals for the program’s technology maturation and risk reduction phase were due last month; the Air Force will award up to two contracts in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2017 for an estimated 36-month period of performance for the phase.
Reported cost estimates for the new missile have ranged from the Air Force’s initial forecast of $62.3 billion to upward of $85 billion to $100 billion, Defense News reported Friday.
Northrop Grumman has won the contract for the Air Force’s next-generation strategic bomber, the B-21. The Air Force has not released the total value of the contract, but has said the independent cost assessment associated with the winning bid was $23.5 billion, with each aircraft estimated to cost $556 million. Air Force Global Strike Command chief Gen. Robin Rand has said he expects the service to procure a minimum of 100 B-21s.
The U.S. Navy plans to build 12 ballistic missile submarines, now formally designated Columbia class, to replace 14 Ohio-class vessels. Prime contractor General Dynamics Electric Boat received a $1.85 billion research and development contract in December 2012, and expects to start building the first boat in 2021. The Navy in 2014 determined it would cost $17.4 billion to design the vessel and ready construction yards, and that each of the “follow” submarines – Nos. 2-12 – would on average cost $5.2 billion.
The Long-Range Standoff nuclear cruise missile is intended to replace the aging air-launched cruise missile. The Air Force expects by 2030 to field the missile, which will be carried on B-52, B-2, and B-21 aircraft. The program will cost an estimated $20 billion to $30 billion for roughly 1,000 missiles, which will be able to carry both conventional and nuclear warheads. The Air Force plans to award contracts to up to two prime contractors upon receiving industry proposals to a classified RFP released in July.
“Our recapitalization is about sustaining deterrence in a world very different from the world, the Cold War,” Carter said in his speech. “From ballistic missile submarines, to ICBMs, from bombers to air launch cruise missiles we’re replacing many aging nuclear weapons delivery systems because if we don’t, we’ll lose them which would mean losing confidence in our ability to deter – something we can never afford.”
The cost and necessity of the full modernization programs have been under intense scrutiny, with some observers arguing the United States could maintain a viable deterrent with far fewer weapons, and even dropping to a nuclear “dyad.”
“It’s clear that much of the DoD leadership and officials in charge of the nuclear missions have a status quo/don’t rock the boat mindset when it comes to further reducing the role of, number of, and spending on nuclear weapons,” Kingston Reif, director of disarmament and threat reduction policy at the Arms Control Association, told Business Insider following Carter’s comments. Rather than underinvesting, the Pentagon has spent hundreds of billions of dollars to sustain the arsenal over the past 25 years, Reif added.
The LRSO has proven particularly controversial on Capitol Hill and within the arms control community, where critics say having a dual-use weapon raises the risk of nuclear war because of potentially miscalculated responses by adversaries.
In his comments, Carter lauded the service of the personnel at STRATCOM, which is responsible for the U.S. nuclear command and control mission. On Thursday, Air Force Gen. John Hyten assumed command of STRATCOM from Navy Adm. Cecil Haney.
Modernization of the U.S. nuclear deterrent goes beyond the weapons themselves, Carter emphasized.
“They include investments in the nuclear command-and-control, communications and intelligence capabilities that support our nuclear enterprise. As many of you know, that includes satellites, radar systems, ground stations, command post, control nodes, communications links and more – which are critical to assuring nuclear command and control and providing us with integrated tactical warning and attack assessment,” he said. “And we’re investing, too, in many more parts of our nuclear enterprise, as well. We’re continuing to make vital investments in the people of our nuclear force – the men and women who operate, enable, maintain and secure America’s nuclear deterrent every day. We continue to support the Department of Energy and its national laboratories that play a critical role as DoD’s partners in the nuclear deterrent mission.”
In a separate press gaggle Thursday while traveling to Dayton, Ohio, Carter stressed the importance of the U.S. nuclear deterrent, but said it remains a relatively small slice of the Pentagon’s acquisitions and operations budgets. “So I’m confident these programs are affordable.”
