Efforts to slow modernization of the nuclear triad until the Defense Department completes a comprehensive study of the programs’ total cost largely failed to make it into the House version of the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act on July 13.
An amendment to the law that would limit spending on the Long-Range Standoff (LRSO) weapon and other nuclear modernization programs failed when the House considered some of 210 proposed changes to its version of the bill. Another measure that would expand the ongoing Nuclear Posture Review from a 10-year snapshot of modernization cost to 30 years also failed. Both amendments were offered by Democrats.
The amendment offered by Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) would have limited expenditure on the LRSO to $95 million and spending on modernization of the W80-4 nuclear warhead to $220 million until publication of the nuclear posture review.
However, an amendment offered by Alabama Republican Rep. Mike Rogers that would allow the Congressional Budget Office to include pertinent cost information beyond the 10-year study period passed.
House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) called the nuclear triad and its deterrent effect the “foundation upon which the rest of our defense efforts are built” during debate over the amendment on July 12.
“That foundation must remain credible,” Thornberry said. “It has to be rebuilt.”
Estimates show that at no point, will rebuilding the three legs of the triad – the Ohio-class submarine, the ground-based strategic deterrent and the B-21 bomber – require more than 7 percent of a single year’s defense budget, Thornberry said.
“We have drastically fewer nuclear weapons now than we had during the Cold War. I think a lot of people do not realize how significantly fewer weapons and delivery systems we have now then we had all during the ‘50s, ‘60s, ‘70s and the ‘80s,” Thornberry said. “But these are still machines. They do not live forever. Whether you are talking about the weapon itself or the delivery systems, they age and as they age there’s chemical reactions. Parts wear out. Things change. And so they have to be modernized if our deterrent is to remain credible.”
HASC ranking member Adam Smith (D-Wash.) defended the prudence of stepping back from a headlong commitment to modernizing all three legs of the nuclear triad at once, which will eventually require billions of dollars per year once the multiple programs enter production. Defense Department officials have warned of hitting a “bow wave” of modernization once the LRSO, bomber, submarine and ballistic missile programs all get off the ground.
“We support a strong and robust nuclear deterrence and are not advocating unilateral disarmament by any stretch of the imagination,” Smith said. “We are simply asking, in a budget challenged environment that we have, is this the best use of our money to totally rebuild our entire nuclear weapons system?”
“As we look at modernizing our nuclear weapons system we will consider the cost and effectiveness of doing that,” he said.
The NDAA as passed by HASC in a 60-1 vote recognizes that DoD’s “plans to recapitalize these major systems concurrently are tightly scheduled and closely coupled to plans to sustain and maintain the readiness of the current systems until the new systems are fully operational.”
The bill would direct the Comptroller General of the United States to assess the readiness of U.S. nuclear forces and provide a report to both HASC and SASC March 1, 2018.
“The Department of Defense is embarked on a large, complex, and interdependent effort to sustain and modernize U.S. nuclear forces,” the report on the House version of the NDAA states. “Current delivery systems, infrastructure, and nuclear command, control, and communications (NC3) systems are all aging, with many systems now deployed well beyond their intended service lives.”
The report should include the historical and current status of nuclear force readiness, the Pentagon’s plans for maintaining the readiness of legacy delivery systems until modern replacement systems are operational and a strategy for maintaining nuclear force readiness and meeting combatant commander requirements during the transition from legacy systems.
The House was continuing to debate and vote on amendments to its version of the NDAA at our deadline on July 12.