*Note: This post has been updated.

How much does the U.S. spend (and plan to spend) on nuclear weapons?  This important question is finally receiving the public scrutiny that it deserves.

On October 11, Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) held a press conference to highlight a letter he sent to the Congressional Supercommittee urging them to reduce nuclear weapons spending and use the resulting savings to invest in higher priority programs.  In the letter, which was signed by 65 Members, Markey argued that the U.S. will spend an estimated $700 billion on nuclear weapons and related programs over the next ten years.

Later that day, Rep. Michael Turner (R-OH), Chairman of the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, disputed Markey’s $700 billion cost-estimate, calling it “not factual.”  According to Turner, “The President submitted to Congress and pledged to fund nuclear modernization programs at $212 billion over ten years, or approximately $21.2 billion a year.”

The debate between Markey and Turner resurfaced at a November 2 Strategic Forces Subcommittee hearing on the current status and future direction for U.S. nuclear weapons policy.  Turner asked the witness panel consisting of administration officials responsible for U.S. nuclear weapons about the accuracy of Rep. Markey’s estimate of nuclear weapons spending.    

In response, Dr. James Miller, Principal Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Policy said:

“I've had an opportunity to look at some of the materials that were referenced in those cost estimates just before coming over here and I- without giving this more time than it deserves - suffice it to say there was double counting and some rather curious arithmetic involved.”

Miller went on to state that

“the Section 1251 Report that was submitted by the administration included our best estimate of the total costs [of] the amount of a nuclear enterprise and the delivery systems from FY12 through FY21….was $125.8 billion for the delivery systems and about $88 billion for the NNSA related costs. And my math suggests that that is…a little over $200 billion over that period, close to $214 billion.”

So who’s right?  How much does the U.S. plan to spend on nuclear weapons over the next decade?  It appears that Turner and the administration may only count a portion of the projected cost.

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Nukes on a Blog, triad, Congress, modernization (all tags)

STRATCOM Commander General Robert Kehler spoke to the Defense Writers Group yesterday and according to GSN's Elaine Grossman, raised some interesting albeit vague questions about the future of the triad.  He also repeated an oft-heard argument about the likely impact of further reductions below New START levels on the triad:

Kehler said a key concern about maintaining a triad at lower numbers is that remaining weapons could become "hollow" -- a situation in which forces might appear robust on paper but fail to reflect a diminished capability out in the field.

...

"We need to be very careful," Kehler told reporters. One worry, he said, is that "you can have a hollow nuclear force in the industrial complex that supports the weapons. I think you [also] can have a hollow nuclear force in the force itself."

...

"But I think there will be some very tough decisions to make here at certain [nuclear force] levels, and whether or not you can then sustain a leg of the triad without it becoming hollow," Kehler said. "Can you have enough expertise? Can you have enough sustainment horsepower, if you will, behind it to really make it a viable leg? Those are all great questions and those are questions we're going to have to address."

 In a September interview with Arms Control Today, White House coordinator for arms control and weapons of mass destruction terrorism Gary Samore stated that "we’ve reached the level in our forces where further reductions will raise questions about whether we retain the triad or whether we go to a system that only is a dyad."  He didn't elaborate as to why he believes this to be the case.

Is the conventional wisdom correct?  

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Nukes on a Blog, triad, modernization (all tags)

Many years ago, during a debate on whether to build new bombers to carry nuclear weapons, a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee, former Representative Charlie Bennett of Florida, made a pointed declaration:

THE TRIAD IS NOT THE TRINITY!

By that wise pronouncement, Bennett was saying that the Pentagon’s nuclear weapons policy adopted early in the Cold War to spread the United States’ nuclear force among three legs or components was not the gospel, but rather a policy that no longer served its purpose.

The United States nuclear force is composed of three components that are described as synergistic:

• On land, with intercontinental ballistic missiles
• At sea, with nuclear-powered submarines
• In the air, with long-range nuclear bombers

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Nukes on a Blog, military budget, triad (all tags)

The deal reached between the White House and Congressional leadership to raise the debt limit could include major cuts to defense (perhaps as large as $950 billion over the next decade).

How will this impact current plans to modernize and replace U.S. nuclear delivery systems (i.e. missiles, submarines, and bombers) and U.S. nuclear warheads and their supporting infrastructure?

According to the White House, the first phase of debt reduction would cut $350 billion from the Pentagon's budget over the next decade, a figure similar to President Obama's April 2011 proposal to cut security spending by $400 billion over twelve years. The second phase of the deal includes a trigger mechanism that could cut an additional $500-$600 billion from the defense budget (also known as function 050, which includes NNSA's weapons activities account) if a congressional committee can't agree on an additional cut of at least $1.2 trillion to discretionary government spending later this year.

The Department of Energy's defense programs (i.e. the National Nuclear Security Administration) will be considered part of a "security spending" category for FY 2012 and FY 2013, when there would be separate caps ("firewalls") for security and non-security spending. Note that NNSA oversees U.S. nuclear warhead maintenance and modernization activities as well as vital nuclear terrorism prevention programs.

There is still a lot of uncertainty about both the extent of the cuts and how they will be allocated (get ready for some wild Congressional budget fights that will pit different defense constituencies against one another). The new reality, however, is that defense spending is likely to come down. There won't be any sacred cows. This raises serious questions about whether the huge budget increases for nuclear modernization we've seen the last two years as part of the so-called ten-year plan can be sustained - especially if the trigger goes into effect. Apparently the GOP cares more about protecting tax cuts for the wealthy than the Pentagon budget.

It's worth recapping what senior U.S. military leaders and a Republican U.S. Senator who did not vote for the New START treaty have said in recent months about the exploding costs of nuclear modernization and the impact of likely defense cuts:

All elements of the triad need to be modernized.  You may have to make some choices there.
Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, April 21, 2011

I would just repeat, in essence, what I said before on the budget issues.  If the political leadership of this country decides that it must reduce the investment in defense by hundreds of billions of dollars, then I don't think we can afford to have anything that's off the table.
Robert Gates, May 18, 2011

The challenge here is that we have to recapitalize all three legs and we don't have the money to do it.
Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. James Cartwright, July 14, 2011

Reduce Nuclear Weapons Force Structure ($79 billion)
Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK), July 18, 2011

We're not going to be able to go forward with weapon systems that cost what weapon systems cost today…. Case in point is Long-Range Strike. Case in point is the Trident replacement. ... The list goes on.
STRATCOM Commander Gen. Robert Kehler, July 26, 2011

*This post has been updated

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Nukes on a Blog, triad (all tags)

All elements of the triad need to be modernized.  You may have to make some choices there.

So I’m just trying -- I want to frame this so that it’s not a math exercise but so people understand the strategic and national security consequences of the decisions that they’re making.  And it’s up to us to do that, I think, in stark terms.

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, DoD News Briefing with Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General James Cartwright, April 21, 2011.  

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Nukes on a Blog, triad, quote of the day (all tags)

Global Security Newswire’s all-world reporter Elaine Grossman has done some marvelous work over the past year on DoD’s plans to modernize and replace U.S. nuclear delivery systems.  Her latest reporting (see here, here, and here) documents how the administration and the Air Force have been unable to tell a consistent story about what they plan to spend on preparatory analysis for a possible replacement for the Minuteman III ICBM.

The hook here of course is that given the commitment the administration made to modernize and replace our delivery systems in the Section 1251 report last year in order to secure Republican support for the New START treaty, the failure to identify funds for a new ICBM could be viewed as evidence of backsliding on this commitment.  Indeed, that’s how Sen. Lindsay Graham is viewing the situation.

Bureaucratic fumbling makes for interesting reading.  But I think the spotlight should be less on whether a few million dollars may or may not be available in FY 2012 to study a new ICBM, and more on the necessity and feasibility of developing and deploying a new ICBM, to say nothing about replacements for the other two legs of the triad…

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Nukes on a Blog, Triad (all tags)