Brian Bradley
NS&D Monitor
10/3/2014
The U.S. nuclear enterprise requires a fiscal “plus-up,” but military officials are still wrestling with where the necessary funding will come from, U.S. Strategic Command Vice Commander Lt. Gen. James Kowalski said last week. “We did a fair amount of investment in organizational changes and in focus of our nuclear enterprise over the last six or seven years,” he said in Sept. 25 speech at the Capitol Hill Club. “To some extent, our folks are still looking for that financial commitment beyond just the words. As Secretary of the Air Force [Deborah Lee] James has called it, it’s that gap between what we say and what we do.”
The massive amount of modernization work expected in the coming decades—Kowalski described the effort as a looming “bow wave”—comes at a time of severe budget authority, and Kowalski joined a chorus of military officials calling for the prioritization of the nuclear mission, which includes recapitalizing the ICBM force, nuclear submarine fleet, and nuclear-capable bombers at the same time as modernizing the weapons complex and nuclear arsenal. “We’re in uncharted waters with the submarine. We’re in uncharted waters with a lot of our other weapon systems: our air-launched cruise missile, our Minuteman 3, the Minuteman 3 launch facilities,” he said. “So there is a recapitalization that has to happen here. And it’s pretty clear that the rest of the world continues their modernization or recapitalization. And this threat and the need to have this nuclear deterrent is not going away anytime soon. And I don’t think it is contrary to say that we are on the path for a world without nuclear weapons, but at the same time we must have a force that is safe, secure and effective. To achieve that, we have to recapitalize this force.”
Kowalski: No Time for Delay
Recapitalization typically follows a 20-year cycle, but the most recent renewal of the nuclear enterprise happened in the early 1980s, Kowalski said. “And when you add another 20 years, then you’re talking about just after 9/11,” he said. “So the next recapitalization, of course, never happened. We delayed that recapitalization for almost another 20 years.” The bipartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that maintaining and modernizing the nuclear deterrent will cost $355 billion over the next 10 years, and while several Navy and Air Force officials have urged politicians to contemplate the high importance of modernization in budget discussions, Kowalski showed confidence that the nuclear mission will remain a priority.
When asked if he was concerned that other Air Force missions might crowd out nuclear recapitalization funding, Kowalski said he was more concerned that nuclear recapitalization needs could divert money from other military funding streams. “There is an array of threats, and they range from the conventional all the way up to the high end,” he said. “And what we have seen that is successful in the deterrence architecture is a deterrence architecture that is able to apply pressure on an adversary that creates uncertainty in their mind on every step in the escalation ladder. So if you can only dominate the high end, and you leave a gap there, then power fills the vacuum.” While Kowalski acknowledged there could be conventional force cuts to support nuclear funding, he declined to reveal any specific programs under consideration.
Kowalski Noncommittal on ‘Deterrence Funds,’ Says Top-Line Budget Relief Needed
The Navy and Air Force have both suggested specific funds to remove nuclear modernization items from competition with other conventional priorities, but Kowalski was noncommittal toward that approach. “I think I can understand the logic why the Navy and now the Air Force might try to look at another mechanism so that we can get some separation between these strategic weapons systems and the standard conventional things that our forces require and not put them in competition with each other,” he said. “And that way it can make it easier for the nation to have this discussion about nuclear forces and strategic and nuclear deterrence. But I don’t have an opinion on whether that’s the right way to do it or not. But I think it’s worth having the discussion about that bow wave that is coming of recapitalization.”
Kowalski: Underfunding Nuclear Deterrent Not a Risk Worth Taking
While the Air Force is diverting $500 million from its larger budget toward nuclear forces in the upcoming years, Kowalski said that if this nation’s nuclear enterprise does not get more top-line relief in the near future, it could impact mission effectiveness. But he expressed confidence that nuclear funding would increase. “When you look at defense spending—and particularly, spending on strategic weapons systems—we are at a historic low based on our GDP,” he said. “And when you look at it on the chart, and you’re able to look at how much of our GDP we were willing to spend as a nation on strategic deterrence in the early ‘60s, how much we spent in the early ‘80s and how much we spent in this bow wave that’s coming, you can’t even see the bow wave on the chart, it’s so small. But because we’ve put it into such a small container and we talk about it only within the Department of Defense, it becomes a larger part of it.”
He said strategic systems occupy about 5 percent of the Pentagon’s budget, and that will go up to about 7 or 8 percent at the peak of modernization efforts. “Even within the Department of Defense budget, it will drive some hard choices, but it does not appear, to me, to be unaffordable, and clearly, from the perspective of the nation—from the perspective of, what does strategic deterrence mean, and what risks are we willing to take—that is not an area that I’m willing to say that we ought to be taking,” he said.
Kowalski acknowledged that tight budgets compel efficient action, but often cramp the flexibility that is necessary for force effectiveness, adding that future tight budgets would require the Air Force to take more risk within its current strategy. “And at the end of the day, risk is a game of probabilities,” he said. “So if I’m going to take a risk in 20 or 30 different areas, then I have to rely on my ability to perfectly predict the future. [Defense Secretary Robert] Gates said, before he left office, the Department of Defense has a perfect record on predicting the future: We always get it wrong. So, at the end of the day, we are going to be taking more risk than, clearly, the military is comfortable with taking.”
