The Pentagon and military services are not adequately moving to shore up the strength of the industrial base that supplies solid rocket motors critical to the maintaining the country’s future nuclear capabilities, a top admiral said Wednesday.
Vice Adm. Terry Benedict, the Navy’s director for strategic systems programs, said his service has been shouldering the burden of keeping the industrial base stable through contracts for about 12 solid rocket motors annually. Purchases by the Air Force and NASA have significantly declined, he added.
Benedict said the work inside the Pentagon to address the issue is not moving fast enough. The Air Force, Navy, Congress and senior defense officials need to come together to address the problem and develop a long-term plan to stabilize the solid rocket motor industrial base to preserve a “vital asset,” he said.
“I am very concerned that this effort is not proceeding quickly enough,” Benedict said at an annual symposium on nuclear deterrence. “Efforts to generate a national plan of action in my opinion are falling short of anything that is actionable.”
Benedict said the Navy over the long run cannot alone sustain the cost of support the industrial base.
“Not only does this decline result in higher cost for the Navy, since we are practically the sole source customer, but it also puts an entire specialized industry at risk for extinction,” he told the gathering. “This is not something that we as a nation should risk.”
“The Navy cannot afford to solely carry this cost, nor can this nation afford to lose this capability over the long term,” he said.
The Navy oversees the submarine-based fleet of ballistic nuclear missiles, while the Air Force is responsible for the ground- and air-based arsenals.