U.S. nuclear modernization is nothing like Russian or Chinese nuclear modernization, Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.), chair of the subcommittee that writes the first draft of the annual military policy bill for defense-nuclear programs, said Tuesday in a hearing.
“When we use the term ‘modernization’ for our nuclear weapons, that leads to the possibility of false equivalency. Like we’re ‘modernizing,’ the Russians are ‘modernizing,’ but it’s a qualitative and quantitative difference of incredible magnitude,” Cooper said. “We, as the members know, are using life extension programs, which really is kind of the weakest form of modernization.”
Cooper likened the U.S. modernization regime to “putting our weapons on geritol and ensure, trying to let them eke out a few more years.”
Cooper spoke during a hearing titled “Near-Peer Advancements in Space and Nuclear Weapons,” one of the first hearings of the season to focus on nuclear weapons and an early look at the partisan battle lines being drawn ahead of a rumored flatline for defense spending in the Joe Biden administration’s first federal budget proposal.
Cooper neither pledged support for the nuclear-modernization status quo nor singled out any one nuclear program for scrutiny. His Republican counterpart, subcommittee ranking member Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio), said that “the modernization that we have undertaken is absolutely essential” to avoiding vulnerability to Russian or Chinese nuclear aggression.
Biden has yet to signal whether he will depart substantially from the 30-year, $1-trillion nuclear modernization program that his one-time boss, former President Barack Obama, approved in 2016 for both the National Nuclear Security Administration and the Department of Defense.
