InsideDefense.com (subscription only) reports that it will cost $339 million to make the new Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) capable of carrying nuclear weapons, according to U.S. Air Force officials.  

Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Turkey continue to host an estimated 200 B61-3 and -4 gravity bombs for delivery by various U.S. and NATO aircraft, including the “dual-capable” F-16 fighter-bomber that the JSF is slated to replace. Like the 2001 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) before it, the 2010 NPR punted on the question of U.S. tacnukes in Europe, concluding that “Any changes in NATO’s nuclear posture should only be taken after a thorough review within – and decision by – the Alliance.”

Yet the $339 million price tag to wire-up the B61 and JSF does not represent the full cost of maintaining nuclear-capable U.S. aircraft in Europe. As Malcolm Chalmers wrote recently:

The US is obliged to maintain a special infrastructure for the purpose [of maintaining nuclear-capable aircraft in Europe], together with the posting of around 1,500 of its service personnel (250 in each of six [US Munitions Support Squadrons] bases) in expensive foreign security postings. Ongoing threats from terrorism further add to the risks against which these bases must guard themselves.

Because of these costs, the U.S. military has long questioned the usefulness of continuing to deploy U.S. tacnukes in Europe. Chalmers noted:

As early as the 1970s, there was a fierce internal Pentagon dispute as to whether the increased weight and complexity required to wire the USAF’s F-16s for the nuclear role, together with the training required to provide a useable capability, justified the costs in reduced conventional capability.

Those questions have not disappeared. As one senior leader of USEUCOM put it to the Secretary of Defense Task Force on DOD Nuclear Weapons Management, “We pay a king’s ransom for these things [nuclear weapons in Europe] and…they have no military value.” The Task Force of course disagreed with this assessment, arguing that such an attitude ignores the political and psychological value that tacnukes possess as a concrete U.S. commitment to NATO security.

But are tacnukes really the best way to address squishy concerns like politics and psychology, particularly when the U.S. strategic nuclear arsenal already provides a credible “over the horizon” deterrent? Not every problem needs to have a (redundant) military solution, after all, particularly when enormous budgetary pressures confront the U.S. military in the years ahead. If the Soviets probably aren’t coming through the Fulda Gap anytime soon, then maybe it’s time to do something totally unprecedented in U.S. defense planning—make a tough choice!—and reallocate resources toward the most serious and most likely threats confronting the United States in the 21st century.

Anyway, here are the key excerpts from the InsideDefense.com article…

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Nukes on a Blog, Posture Review, FY 2011 Budget Request, B61, Air Force, tactical nuclear weapons, Extended Deterrence, F-35 (all tags)

Can Secretary Gates fire Belgian Ministry of Defense officials too?  Via the Federation of American Scientists, it appears that last week some peace activists with a video-camera managed to infiltrate Kleine Brogel Air Base, which happens to house 10-20 U.S. B61 non-strategic gravity bombs.

Watch the incredible video here. Apparently they even managed to stroll by the aircraft shelters beneath which are believed to be the vaults that house our nukes before they were apprehended by base security.

The incident reminded me of something Jeffrey highlighted at the Carnegie Endowment last September:

And if I think there’s – the dominant – the dominant character I would say of the existence of those weapons in Europe is that we don’t talk about them. I think NATO countries have been incredibly reluctant to make the public case about why they need U.S. nuclear weapons on their soil. And as a result, because there is no public case, I think you see a corresponding lack of funding for security at the sites at which the European allies provide security, and you see a corresponding lack of investment in dual-capable aircraft. And NATO’s aircraft are getting quite old, and we’re coming up to a series of decision points.

...

[B]ecause there is no support, I worry very much about a singularity, an event. It could be a security event. Our friends from Peace Action, Belgium, could get in the wire with a cell phone and take a picture of a [sic] vault. It could be a very ugly public debate about certifying a particular new aircraft for nuclear weapons. It could be a debate about deploying refurbished B-61s on airbases.

I do worry that something could happen that will deny NATO its preferred option of not talking about this, and then force the participants into a very ugly public debate in which the result would be the rapid, disorganized, uncoordinated withdrawal of the weapons amidst recriminations. And to me that would be much worse than beginning the dialogue about what the optimal posture is and whether that includes weapons.[emphasis mine.]

Well, they didn't get pictures of the vault per se, but close enough! It will be interesting to see what, if any, impact this incident has on the debate about U.S. nuclear weapons in Europe, extended deterrence, and the future of the B61.

UPDATE 2/4: Jeffrey has some more thoughts on the incident here.

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Nukes on a Blog, B61, tactical nuclear weapons, extended deterrence (all tags)

While the results of the Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) have yet to be released, we can be sure that at least one decision has already been made: Full steam ahead on a major refurbishment study for the B61 gravity bomb.  

The National Nuclear Security Administration’s FY 2011 budget, released yesterday, includes $251.6 million for the B61 Phase 6.2/6.2A design definition and cost study, an increase of nearly $220 million over what Congress appropriated for FY 2010.  As I had suspected, last year’s request of $60 million and Congressional appropriation of $32.5 million for a non-nuclear refurbishment study turned out to be a mere placeholder that paved the way for a much larger request (and likely appropriation) for a full nuclear and non-nuclear study this year.  NNSA describes the purpose of the study as follows:

In FY 2011, funding supports a life extension study of the nuclear and non-nuclear components scope, including implementation of enhanced surety, extended service life and modification consolidation. This life extension study in coordination with the B61 Project Officers Group will publish a Phase 6.2A Report and Weapons Design and Cost Report. This report will document the conceptual designs, program costs and schedules associated with the nuclear and non-nuclear refurbishment scope, including development of concepts and costs to replace arming and fuzing components (e.g., neutron generator, power supplies, radars and programmer) to address near term end-of-life and sustainment concerns on the B61 bomb family. The study will evaluate options for improving safety and use control features and ensures compatibility and integration with modern aircraft such as the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.

Completion of the study will also provide options and a path forward to enable LANL and SNL participation in development of detailed designs to extend the life of the nuclear explosive package which may include an extension of the B61 nuclear primary’s life (reusing the existing B61 nuclear pit), potential implementation of multipoint safety, and reuse or remanufacture of the canned subassembly (CSA) and for a complete life extension of the B61 -3, -4, -7, and -10, if directed by the Nuclear Weapons Council.

A few things stand out here…

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Nukes on a Blog, B61, FY2011 Budget Request, tactical nuclear weapons (all tags)

Pavel Podvig flags a quote from a Russian Ministry of Defense source that the RS-24, a multiple-warhead version of the single warhead SS-27, could begin to be deployed in 2011, after one or two more flight tests.  Russia had originally planned to deploy the missile in December 2009 to coincide with the expiration of START.  Are development/testing problems slowing things down?  It wouldn’t be the first time.  Another theory is that the delay might have something to do with the New START negotiations.  In a recent article published on the Center for Nonproliferation Studies’ website (and written before the Ministry of Defense source announced the delay),  Dr. Alexander A. Pikayev, Director of the Department for Disarmament and Conflict Resolution at the Institute of World Economy and International Relations (IMEMO) in Moscow opined that:

[W]hen in November 2009 the Ministry of Defense disclosed new deployments of the Topol M, it did not mention the RS-24. Nor did the ministry announce any plans to deploy them in 2010.

The decision could be explained by various reasons, from economic to purely technical. But it might also be possible that the inaction reflects the Kremlin's desire not to complicate the situation further at a time that the self-imposed deadline for completing the new [START] agreement had already been missed. If this supposition is accurate, it would demonstrate Moscow's continuing interest in concluding a follow-on treaty.

Continuing on the topic of delays, Global Security Newswire’s Elaine Grossman reports that further refurbishment of the B-61 air-delivered gravity bomb is being delayed by Congress, at least for the time-being.  NoH was all over this back in October when the conference report on the FY2010 Energy and Water Appropriations Bill was completed.  Recall that NNSA's initial funding request last February was only enough to study a non-nuclear refurbishment of the B61.  However, if Gen. Chilton’s now (in)famous briefing slides on the B61 are any indication, STRATCOM definitely wants to tinker around with the weapon’s nuclear explosive package, specifically to enhance Surety.  If the Nuclear Posture Review rules in favor of the B61, we can probably expect funding to be requested and approved to look at the explosive package.

Finally, a couple of duck hunters caused quite a stir last Friday as they tried to set up some decoys on a piece of land near the Pantex Plant, which assembles and disassembles our nuclear weapons.  On a sorta related note, Duck Hunt is hands down the greatest Nintendo game of all time.              

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Nukes on a Blog, Table Scraps, RS-24, B61 (all tags)

Remember when Gen. Chilton brought an old-school vacuum tube to a meeting with the Wall Street Journal and reportedly suggested that this technology cannot be replaced without building new nuclear warheads?  Remember when Jeffrey Lewis and I argued that vacuum tubes have nothing to do with the RRW debate?  Remember when Gen. Chilton told Global Security Newswire’s Elaine Grossman that we were “confused, frankly” (i.e. we didn’t know what we were talking about)?  Remember when John Harvey, the former head of NNSA’s policy planning staff, and the Washington Times’ Bill Gertz revealed that it was Gen. Chilton who was in fact confused?  Of course you do!  Well, the saga continues.  

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Nukes on a Blog, vacuum tubes, B61 (all tags)

Yesterday the Senate and House Committees on Appropriations released their conference report on the FY2010 Energy and Water Appropriations Bill.  The bill summary can be found here and the complete bill text here.  

Of particular interest is the Conference Committee's action on the proposed refurbishment of the B61 gravity bomb.  NNSA initially requested $65 million to complete the Phase 6.2/6.2A Refurbishment Study authorized by the Nuclear Weapons Council (NWC) to address "end of life components, aging and reliability."  Though the request did not explicitly say so, the $65 million was only enough to study a non-nuclear refurbishment of the B61.  

In July the House Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee zeroed out the request for the 6.2A study.  The bill summary stated that "Until the Administration finalizes its plans for the nation’s nuclear strategy, stockpile, and complex plans, the Committee does not support the effort to develop what is essentially a new nuclear weapon."  In contrast, the Senate Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee fully funded the B61 request.

Apparently Gen. Chilton's shiny briefing slides weren't enough to convince the members of the Conference Committee to fully fund the proposed refurbishment (at least for now)...  

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Nukes on a Blog, Congress, B61 (all tags)

By Travis Sharp and Kingston Reif

Yesterday GSN’s Elaine Grossman had a huge scoop on the ongoing debate within the Obama administration about what is required to maintain a safe, secure, and reliable nuclear deterrent.  According to Grossman’s sources, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, with the support of Vice-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff James Cartwright and Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, tried to revive the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) program at a National Security Council Principals’ Meeting in early June.  Vice President Joe Biden was the only voice of opposition, arguing that designing and building new warheads would undermine the ambitious nonproliferation agenda laid out by the President in Prague.

As Grossman notes, this is hardly “the final word on the warhead-replacement matter.”  The issue is clearly being hotly debated in the context of the Nuclear Posture Review (NPR).  According to one senior Defense Department official consulted by Grossman, “It’s not clear where we’re going to go [on the warhead issue]….We need an effective stockpile [but] we haven’t got a consensus within the administration on what that means. And so I can’t say that, forever, this ‘replacement’ idea is verboten.”

The article is long, but a must read.  Below are some of our reactions.

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Nukes on a Blog, Joe Biden, vacuum tubes, B61 (all tags)

As I hinted at yesterday, Gen. Chilton's performance at last week's Defense Writers Group Breakfast was not only noteworthy for his outlandish statements on the relevance of nuclear weapons to deterring cyber attacks.  

In response to a question from Global Security Newswire's Elaine Grossman, Gen. Chilton pushed back against the article Jeffrey Lewis and I penned in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists on how vacuum tubes are irrelevant to the RRW/modernization debate.  Yet in lieu of refuting any of the specific points we made in the piece, Gen. Chilton changed the subject:

...the strategic commander said Lewis and Reif had misconstrued his point, which he insisted was to call for a broad overhaul in the nuclear stockpile and the complex that maintains the weapons.

"A life-extension program is what we have [had] to do for the last 15 years, and I think it's been successful to this point," Chilton told reporters at a May 7 Defense Writers Group breakfast. However, he said, "I don't think that gets you to where you want to be 20 years from now."

Rather, steps must be taken to "modernize" the arsenal, giving the weapons increased reliability, safety, security and maintainability, he said.

I won't summarize our entire response here but we pushed back pretty hard.  However, I do want to briefly note that what I found really bizarre about Gen. Chilton's remarks (other than fact that he clearly did not read our piece) is that his central point seems to be that vacuum tubes aren't the issue.  Funny, since that's central to our argument as well.  While I certainly disagree with Chilton about how best to maintain the safety, security, and reliability of our arsenal, that's exactly the debate we need to be having.  Based on his most recent remarks Chilton seems to agree that vacuum tubes should have no part in that debate. As Jeffrey notes, if that's the case, then, Gen. Chilton needs to correct the ridiculous claims he fed to the Wall Street Journal.  If that's not the case, then he needs to refute the specific points we made in our article.

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Nukes on a Blog, B61, vacuum tubes (all tags)

Ever wonder why there is the perception that NNSA and STRATCOM have about as much credibility on stockpile maintenance and modernization issues as a screen door on a submarine?  As Jeffrey Lewis and I explain in a recent piece published in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, one reason is vacuum tubes.  

Last fall, STRATCOM commander General Kevin Chilton sat down with The Wall Street Journal, one of the nation’s most reliable suppliers of nuclear misinformation.  The goal of his visit: to convince the paper’s Editors that U.S. nuclear weapons have more in common with ’57 Chevys than they do with, well, nuclear weapons.  Chilton pulled out a vacuum tube to illustrate is point.

According to Chilton, “This is the technology that we have . . . today.” He then took out a microchip, explaining to the credulous editorial board that, by withholding funding for the RRW Program, Congress has prevented the nuclear weapons complex from replacing outdated vacuum tubes with modern solid-state electronics.

While few would deny that our nuclear arsenal is aging, Chilton's account is complete nonsense.

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Nukes on a Blog, B61, vacuum tubes (all tags)