In Separate Hearings, Haney, NNSA Officials Also Fear Impact of Sequestration’s Return
Todd Jacobson
NS&D Monitor
4/04/2014
Even in a tight budgetary environment, the United States can “ill afford” to not modernize its nuclear deterrent, the head of United States Strategic Command told the House Armed Services Committee this week. Adm. Cecil Haney made his first appearance before the panel after taking over as StratCom commander late last year, and argued that spending on modernizing the nation’s nuclear delivery vehicles, weapons complex and nuclear stockpile should double in the future as modernization efforts go into full swing. He noted that nuclear weapons spending is currently about 2.5 percent of the defense budget, but he suggested that it will need to double to make for needed work to maintain the nuclear deterrent. “It’s an investment, for my opinion, that we as a country can ill afford not to make, given the modernization that we see going on in other countries in the strategic environment today,” Haney said during the April 2 hearing.
Republicans have criticized the Obama Administration for not living up to the modernization promises it made during debate on the New START Treaty, complaining of delays to major warhead life extension programs and delivery vehicle modernization efforts, as well as the deferral of major weapons complex facilities like the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement-Nuclear Facility. Haney, however, said the Administration was on the right track to preserve the nuclear deterrent. “As we do reduce numbers to the New START treaty, you should know that those numbers support the war-fighting capability we need to have, the deterrent and assurance capability we need to have,” Haney said during an exchange with Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.). “And that has been looked at very, very hard. And having seen that process before when I was deputy commander and in other jobs in the Pentagon, to seeing where we are now, we’re on the right course, but that really makes every leg of the triad very important for the future.”
Questioning the Deterrent?
Franks said he worried about the impact the state of the deterrent might have on the perception of the U.S. around the world. “The deterrent is always in the mind of the enemy or the potential enemy,” Franks said. “And my concern is that at lower spending that they may begin to maybe question that deterrent more than they should, especially as we get that umbrella broadened out.” Haney said maintaining the nuclear deterrent will need a long-term commitment from the nation, including Congress. “We cannot just assume that that will continue without proper investments, modernizations, support for our laboratory infrastructure and what have you that supports that capability now and into the future. It will continue to require investment,” Haney said.
Sequestration Potentially ‘Devastating’
Haney was pressed by Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), the ranking member of the committee, on the impact sequestration might have on nuclear weapons budgets should it return in FY 2016. “If we continue on the journey of sequestration and have to make those kinds of choices, that would be detrimental to our national defense structure and I would make that my point first and foremost,” he said, later adding: “We will have to look at all things that cross our national-security apparatus in that view. And there will be, as we have already made and will continue to have to make, very hard choices going forward in that regard.” Smith was less diplomatic in his assessment of the potential impact of sequestration. “I think it would be devastating,” he said, noting that sequestration would make the Administration’s current modernization plans impossible. “It would require choices,” he added. “It would require us to go in a different direction. There may be a way out of it, a logical way, but I just want to make sure everyone understands that sequestration basically blows up that nuclear-deterrent strategy, based on the triad, given all of the things that have to happen over the course of the next couple of decades to fund it.”
Testifying separately before the House Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee April 3, National Nuclear Security Administration officials said the return of sequestration would have a massive impact on the ‘3+2’ plan to modernize the nation’s nuclear arsenal. “We’ve had to stretch out the strategy implementation of that strategy to meet budgetary caps, but the strategy remains intact,” acting NNSA Administrator Bruce Held said. Since unveiling the strategy, work on an interoperable warhead has been delayed for at least five years because of budget pressure and better than expected reports on the health of existing warheads. The completion schedule for a replacement warhead for the air-launched cruise missile has also been delayed by up to three years.
With Sequestration’s Return, ‘All Bets Are Off’
NNSA weapons program chief Don Cook called the ‘3+2’ plan a “bend but not break” strategy and suggested that sequestration could strike the final blow. “If sequestration hits again, all bets are off for every one of the weapons life extension programs,” Cook said. “And I would say even if there’s flexibility to move funds around, our concern about the infrastructure and its state is so severe that we would not take money from that and, therefore, we would just blow just about every schedule we have.”
The NNSA was able to move money around to ease the impact of sequestration last year, but Brig. Gen. James Dawkins, the NNSA’s Principal Assistant Deputy Administrator for Military Applications, said years of spending cutbacks have taken a toll. “Over the course of the last four or five years, we’ve cut some fat across government, you know, DoD, DOE,” he said. “Then we started getting into some muscle and sequestration will get into the bone. … It will be very difficult if we go into sequester again. And all these strategies that are well thought out, that people have asked us to develop as we go forward, again, will fall apart, they will break.”
