Early Wednesday, lawmakers approved an amendment to study use of a Nunn-McCurdy-type oversight process for the National Nuclear Security Administration.
In an uncontroversial en bloc amendment package to the 2025 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), Rep. John Garamendi (R-Ca.) proposed that the Nunn-McCurdy Act requirement to keep Congress appraised of major spikes in project costs be applied to the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) the way it is at the Department of Defense.
Garamendi’s amendment, proposed as part of the Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee’s markup of the NDAA, says that the Government Accountability Office must provide a briefing by the end of this year to the full Committee on recommendations for applying this process for the NNSA.
Garamendi also got a couple amendments about the Sentinel missile into the NDAA, which passed the committee just after 1015 p.m. Eastern time. Sentinel is having it sown Nunn-McCurdy review busting its cost and schedule estimates.
One of the Sentinel amendments requires the Government Accountability Office to submit a report to Congress by December 2024 assessing if the Pentagon conducted a “full and thorough assessment” throughout the Nunn-McCurdy review, to include whether a “range of alternatives was considered” and if “the program clearly identified cost tradeoffs.”
The second amendment from Garamendi requires that Sentinel-related NDAA report language, non-binding language accompanying the bill, factors in whether an analysis was done on “life extending one or more wings of the [current] Minuteman III [intercontinental ballistic missile] and deploying a mixed fleet of Sentinel and life-extended Minuteman III ICBMs for a period of time.”
Sentinel was supposed to replace Minuteman III around 2030.
Exchange Monitor affiliate publication Defense Daily contributed to this story from Washington.
