The Defense Department might need $18 billion added to its budget to keep it afloat once the bow wave of nuclear modernization programs crashes ashore in 2021 and beyond, according to the Pentagon’s director of cost assessment and program evaluation (CAPE).
The Defense Department is planning for a substantial increase in its top-line budget in parallel with a major ramp up in platform production beginning in fiscal 2021 when it will be producing nuclear submarines, a new bomber and replacing its aging ICBMs, said Jamie Morin, who served in several senior management positions with the Air Force before becoming CAPE in 2014.
“This year’s future year’s defense plan is the first one in which the real bulk of the nuclear bow wave is within the planning horizon,” Morin said Monday at a conference hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.
Photo: U.S. Navy
The final year of the five-year future years defense plan (FYDP) being ironed out alongside the fiscal years 2017 budget will see “substantial bills” for building the first Ohio-replacement sub, replacements for the Minuteman III ICBM and the Long Range Strike Bomber, now designated the B-21.
“It’s on the order of $12-18 billion a year where we were in this last decade, which was a very low period for investment in the nuclear enterprise,” Morin said. “Investment for the department in the nuclear enterprise is cyclical.”
The nation’s nuclear triad was established after World War II. The weapons and platforms involved were modernized and upgraded under President Dwight Eisenhower’s administration in the 1950s and again under President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. Investment in the triad declines precipitously in the decade following modernization, Morin said. The 2020s will be a decade of growth, he added.
“Each of those modernizations in history has been aligned with a period of increasing topline for the Department of Defense,” Morin said. “What the FY ’21 projection in the future years defense plan lays out is really the start of a ramping back up.”
The question is where to find the extra cash when the Defense Department also will have to pay for a ramp-up in production of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and new aircraft carriers, not to mention modernized ground vehicle and equipment.
Morin said President Obama has allowed the Pentagon to plan future budgets to spending targets that incorporate the necessary nuclear modernization programs.
“That was the product of a very serious and deliberate discussion between the leadership of the Department of Defense and the senior staff at the White House all the way up to the president about this upcoming nuclear modernization bow wave,” Morin said.
“It doesn’t represent the whole bow wave,” he added. “That…will grow significantly by the time we get to the mid-2020s and the late 2020s when the Ohio-replacement submarine is in serial production, one a year.”
However, the decision as to whether and how to modernize the nuclear triad will fall to the next administration and perhaps the one after that, Morin pointed out. Defense Department Comptroller Mike McCord said nuclear modernization can be paid for only partially by shuffling funds within the Defense Department’s budget.
“There certainly is a DoD-specific aspect of trades within the defense budget, but it’s really a larger national question of how much are we willing to pay for defense when we get to that era and that’s something that cannot be limited to just us [the Defense Department].”
Robert Scher, assistant secretary of defense for strategy, plans and capabilities, said the 2017 budget begins a strategic shift from funding a military laser-focused on counterinsurgency and counterterrorism to one capable also of taking on near-peer competitors.
“While we had 15 years of dealing with, and almost singularly focused on, the very important role of forces in harm’s way in conflict doing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, this budget…continues a trend more directly and more consciously on understanding that we have to look at new ways of doing things to deal with great-power adversaries.”