“These contractual mistakes and screwups happen far too often,” Senator Levin said in an interview that addressed the [ground based midcourse defense] test failures and construction issues in Alaska. “Taxpayers are pissed off and we’re pissed off.“

Sen. Carl Levin, August 3, 2011.  Unfortunately the Bloomberg Government story from which the quote is taken is subscription only.  It’s a stellar read.    

UPDATE:: Check that here’s an open link, courtesy of Yousaf Butt.

There is a lot of confusion surrounding the debt deal and what it means for defense.  Things have gotten so complicated with the defense/non-defense security/non-security debate, that even the experts are uncertain.  

To be clear on at least the definitions, “security,” as defined in the deal, is defense and non-defense security, including the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security, Veterans Affairs, Intelligence, International Affairs and the National Nuclear Security Administration.  This definition applies to the first two years of the budget deal, and its relevant spending caps, only.

For the first two years, the bill is clear on this category of spending.  For Fiscal Year (FY) 2012, the bill sets a $684 billion ceiling for “security.”  This number is a $4.5 billion overall decrease in security spending from the FY 2011 level of $688.5 billion.  The FY 2013 security cap is $686 billion, still tracking below FY 2011 levels.  

While the cut is not large, it is significant, since previous cuts have taken reductions from the amount of increases, rather actually reducing the item from the previous year.

However, what we do not know is how these reductions would be allocated between the Pentagon and, say, foreign aid or the nuclear weapons complex.  Exact funding levels will be left up to Congress.

Then things get even more confusing.  If a longer-term deal is not reached, security spending is redefined as the traditional “050” budget category, meaning the Department of Defense and some defense-related funding within the Department of Energy, Department of Homeland Security, and FBI.

The category does not include foreign aid, homeland security, veterans and other categories of spending.

Of course, even with these definitions, we still do not actually know the extent of future defense cuts.  The White House claims that the deal will result in $350 billion in cuts from the 050 account over the next 10 years, but the claim is only an estimate.  The bill itself contains no language detailing the cuts over 10 years.  

The number proposed by the administration, $350 billion, tracks closely with the $400 billion reduction goal already set out by the President.  It does not add to the $400 billion number, but rather replaces it, with the assumption that the final two years, totaling 12, will see more savings.  

There is one possibility, however, that could result in large savings, specifically from defense (050).  The second part of the bill calls for a joint committee of House and Senate members to fashion a longer-term plan.  If the committee fails to come to an agreement or Congress rejects it, sequestration, or automatic cuts, kicks in.  In the case of sequestration, everything changes.  The plan requires that half of the cuts come from defense (050) and half from non-defense.

Proposed sequestration cuts are based on a formula that would reduce both discretionary and mandatory 050 spending by half of the needed $1.2 trillion in savings.  The cuts would be spread over nine years.  The administration estimates that a total $534 billion cut from the 050 account would result from sequestration over ten years.

The joint committee will have until Thanksgiving to come up with a deal.

So, what does this ambiguity add up to?

Defense hawks can complain that the cuts in defense are too deep.

Defense doves can complain that the cuts are insufficient.

The rest of the world will remain in the dark.

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:

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

Seoul and Washington began revising the 2012 Nuclear Security Summit draft Communiqué this week after participating states made their preliminary marks on it during the June Sous Sherpas (deputies) meeting in Seoul. Korea is the chair of the upcoming Summit and the U.S. was the 2010 Summit chair.

It is the second meeting of its kind following U.S. Sherpa Gary Samore’s (White House WMD policy coordinator) trip to Seoul in early May. (Click ‘Read More.’)

The general scope and details of the agenda are already laid out in the draft Communiqué circulated by Seoul in mid-June. The task now is to fine-tune them, engage in diplomacy to ensure that proper steps be taken to secure vulnerable nuclear materials around the world, and reach consensus before state leaders gather in Seoul next March.

It appears that world leaders will adopt one document, the Communiqué – unlike the previous Summit’s two documents (Communiqué and Work Plan) – that includes both general consensus agreements and goal-oriented actionable steps. Officials say the “logic” is to prevent the Work Plan from being regarded as an Annex, and to ensure that all pledges are given the political force and attention they deserve.

The challenge is to craft a Communiqué that not only deepens the 2010 Summit pledges but sets goals that are politically acceptable to all state leaders. Substance is most important, but wording is equally important in international agreements. It is a challenge because the objective is to stipulate specific goals and actions, some of which may hope to be time sensitive. An example of a possible political challenge could be agreeing on specific actionable steps regarding highly enriched uranium (HEU) minimization and guidelines.  This is why diplomacy will be key in persuading countries to throw in their support for specific measures that are vital to protecting people and the environment from nuclear and radiological terrorism. Diplomacy would also be important in persuading state leaders to support certain measures they may prefer to address in other international fora at the senior or working level.

Washington had set up the Nuclear Security Summit to be a consensus-based initiative to avoid intrusive measures while respecting each nation’s sovereignty. U.S. officials have heralded it as an effective way to bring countries on board. This is why the 2010 Communiqué includes ambiguous phrases such as “…subject to respective national laws and procedures” and “…as appropriate.”  Diplomacy is still integral in garnering support and consensus, even for ambiguously-worded clauses.

A universal awareness of the nuclear threat is the foundation and starting point for designing and implementing nuclear security measures. However, due to differing threat perceptions, such universality – or the degree in which all states agree on the threat – is a challenge but one that still needs to be pursued.

Another challenge is narrowing the gap between the “haves” and “have nots” as well as between those who desire more specific nuclear security measures and those who are satisfied with the level of agreement reached in 2010.

Click here for my Working Paper on the Nuclear Security Summit.

Senator Richard Shelby’s (R-AL) defense aide(s) appear to have some explaining to do.

At a June 15 Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittee hearing on the Fiscal Year (FY) 2012 defense budget, Sen. Shelby alleged that an ongoing Defense Science Board report concludes that the Missile Defense Agency’s (MDA) “plans to achieve an early intercept capability as part of the phase-adaptive approach are simply not credible.”

The Defense Science Board is now completing a review on Science and Technology Issues of Early Intercept (EI) Ballistic Missile Defense Feasibility as a concept to enhance missile defense.  Early intercept refers to hitting a ballistic missile before it releases its payload.  Boost phase intercept refers to hitting a missile soon after it is launched while its boosters are burning.  

The fourth phase of the phased adaptive approach is slated to have an early intercept capability against limited ICBM threats such as those posed by Iran.

According to Shelby the Defense Science Board report “is disturbing…since the MDA’s promise [sic] to develop by 2020 an early intercept capability for the SM-3 Block IIB was the central justification…to cancel the third site in Europe and to kill the KEI boost phase defense program. Now it looks like the nation may be left…with an inadequate defense in Europe and no boost phase intercept capability.”

Washington Times reporter Bill Gertz pointed to Sen. Shelby’s disclosure of the report to question the Obama administration’s competence on missile defense policy – something he has done with increasing regularity as of late.

Shelby and Gertz have their facts mixed up.  In a July 6 letter to the Washington Times, report co-chairman Admiral William Fallon, report co-chairman and Defense Science Board vice chairman General Lester Lyles, and Defense Science Board chairman Paul Kaminski stated that the Defense Science Board did not conclude that the phased adaptive approach or the SM-3 family of interceptors were flawed.

Either Sen. Shelby and his staff misunderstood the contents of the report, or they deliberately twisted it in an effort to score political points…

UPDATE 1/25/2012: Turns out I may have been too harsh on Sen. Shelby. Having read the Defense Science Board’s final report, there are some real questions about the credibility of early intercept in defeating enemy missiles before they release decoys or countermeasures, though the report claims that the success of the phased adaptive approach in defending Europe and the benefits to homeland defense provided by interceptors forward deployed in Europe hinges less on the success of EI per se and more on critical enablers such as fast interceptors and the ability to discriminate. For more see here. I still think Sen. Shelby is wrong about the rationale for the cancellation of the Bush administration’s plans for missile defense in Europe.

Senator Shelby’s assessment of the Defense Science Board report seemed suspicious even before Fallon, Lyles, and Kaminski weighed in to set the record straight. For example, Sen. Shelby conflated the concept of early intercept with boost phase missile defense.  As noted above, they’re not the same thing.  

As Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen noted at the hearing, “the whole issue of boost-phase intercept is an extraordinarily difficult technical challenge. And at least if someone’s broken through on that, I haven’t seen that.”

In theory, early intercept is easier than boost phase missile defense because there is more time to engage an enemy ballistic missile.

Moreover, Shelby’s claim that the development of an early intercept capability for the fourth phase of the phased adaptive report was the central rationale for abandoning the third site in Europe does not stand up to close scrutiny.

In reality, the main justification for the phased adaptive approach is that it shifted the focus of U.S. missile defense efforts in Europe away from the threat posed by Iranian long-range ballistic missiles (which do not exist) to the threat posed by Iranian short and medium range ballistic missiles (of which there are many).

And as former Secretary of Defense Bob Gates reminded the Subcommittee, “let’s be blunt: The third site in Europe was not going to happen, because the Czech government wouldn’t approve the radar.”

The Fallon, Lyles, and Kaminski letter reveals that Shelby and Gertz utterly misconstrued the contents of the Defense Science Board report.  According to the letter:

While the jury is still out on whether the phased adaptive approach can provide an effective capability against long-range (or even shorter-range) missiles, it’s clear that the Defense Science Board did not conclude what Sen. Shelby and Gertz claimed.