Overturning the nuclear triad concept and reducing funding significantly for the U.S. Navy’s Columbia-class ballistic missile submarines and the U.S. Air Force B-21 Raider stealth bomber and Sentinel next-generation ICBM is an unlikely proposition in Congress, yet Rep. John Garamendi (D-Calif.) and Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.), the co-chairs of the congressional Nuclear Weapons and Arms Control Working Group, pledged on June 4 to continue oversight, including a working group hearing on cost overruns of nuclear modernization programs on July 24.
General Dynamics‘ [GD] Electric Boat is the prime contractor for the Columbia-class. Northrop Grumman [NOC] is developing the Sentinel and B-21.
Garamendi, Beyer, Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass), and Rep. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) spoke to reporters on June 4 on Capitol Hill about nuclear weapons oversight just ahead of the June 7 annual meeting of the Arms Control Association in Washington, D.C.
Garamendi has been one of the few lawmakers in his party who believe the U.S. nuclear modernization program, started by President Barack Obama’s (D) administration in 2016, should be slowed down (Defense Daily, May 23).
Garamendi, a member of the House Armed Services Committee’s strategic forces subcommittee and the ranking member of the HASC readiness panel, said on June 4 that he and Beyer would send a letter to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on their concerns that DoD is not performing its due diligence on alternatives to Sentinel after the Air Force disclosed a 37 percent Nunn-McCurdy cost breach to Congress in January (Defense Daily, Jan. 24).
“We are in line to spend over $1.2 trillion on rebuilding our entire nuclear arsenal,” Garamendi said on June 4.
Addressing the Sentinel program, Garamendi said that “the Nunn-McCurdy law requires that there be a full review by the Department of Defense, as to why the cost overrun has occurred, what can be done about it, what alternatives there are to achieve the same outcome. What has not happened is the engagement of Congress.”
Garamendi said that the DoD office of Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation (CAPE) is to finish its Sentinel review this month and that Austin “will take up this issue” in July.