Brian Bradley
NS&D Monitor
6/12/2015
Mirroring a House counterpart, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) this week submitted an amendment to the Senate version of the Fiscal Year 2016 National Defense Authorization Act that would prohibit using Defense Department funds to reduce the alert levels of U.S. intercontinental ballistic missiles. The language would lift the prohibition for the purposes of ICBM maintenance and sustainment and for “ensuring the safety, security, or reliability” of the weapons. While Rubio’s amendment has been filed, he has not yet introduced it during Senate floor debate of the NDAA for FY 2016. During debate over the House version of the bill last month, lawmakers agreed by voice vote to an amendment offered by Rep. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) that proposes the same ban.
The amendments follow a Global Zero report, led in part by retired Gen. James Cartwright, former commander of U.S. Strategic Command, that proposed reducing the “hair-trigger” alert levels of U.S. ICBMs to avoid a nuclear accident. The April report’s release, and words spoken by Cartwright during a subsequent press conference, sent shockwaves through the nuclear and arms control communities and drew counter-assertions from current STRATCOM brass, including the command’s current chief Adm. Cecil Haney. While he voiced his respect for Cartwright, Haney said during a May symposium that he “fundamentally disagree[s] with” the former commander’s opinion, adding that his command works painstakingly to prevent spurious ICBM launches.
Haney said verifiability of other states’ de-alerting would be key for any arms control measure, implying that unilateral reductions would be ineffective for U.S. stability. He said: “We have to be further mindful of stepping away from that, and in terms of even coming up with a schema where more than one country would join that bandwagon, very similar to what the Four Horsemen said: ‘You have to be able to verify that piece,’ and if you can’t, it’s useless in my opinion.”
