Maybe those former Air Force officers were right about extraterrestrials tampering with our nukes. Via Marc Ambinder:President Obama was briefed this morning on a power failure at F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming that took 50 nuclear interco…
US Announces $60 Billion Arms Sale to Saudi Arabia
The Obama administration notified Congress today of a “a significant defense package that will promote regional security and enhance the defensive capabilities of an important Gulf partner with whom we have had a longstanding and close security relationship.” The deal with Saudi Arabia, worth up to $60 billion, will become one of the largest-ever single US arms deals.
The State Department and Pentagon informed lawmakers that the delivery of weapons would be spread over 15-20 years. Weapons systems include 84 new F-15 fighter jets, 70 upgrades of existing Saudi F-15s, 70 Apache attack helicopters, and 72 Black Hawk helicopters as well as a wide array of missiles, bombs, launchers and equipment.
Andrea Shalal-Esa notes that in these tough economic times, with increasing budgetary pressure on both the US and Europe, US defense firms have begun to look to the Middle East and Asia for continued weapons sales in the coming years. This particular deal might help to offset the UK’s decision to trade its planned buy of 138 F-35B short takeoff and vertical landing versions of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter for the F-35C carrier variant.
While Congress has 30 days to block the deal, it seems unlikely that they will. “Congress is a big place and there’s a lot of members, and there may be differing opinions about the sale,” said Assistant Secretary of State for Political Military Affairs Andrew Shapiro, “but we feel comfortable that we have done adequate pre-consultations with members of Congress that there will not be a barrier to completing this sale.”
And don’t expect any flack from Israel. While it has not been stated directly, the deal has been widely acknowledged as a move to counter the perceived threat of Iran to its neighbors. Israel has traditionally been wary of arms sales to nearby Arab countries, but in this moment of uncertainty, the rules have changed. Israeli strategists now predominantly consider Iran, rather than the Arab countries, to be the greatest external threat to Israel’s security. Some rumors have even speculated that Saudi Arabia has already granted Israel permission to use its airspace in the event of an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
On the question of “where these arms may be in 10 or 20 or 30 years’ time?” Shapiro remarked that after extensive review, the administration is, “comfortable that this sale will serve to enhance U.S. national security.”
Cartwright on New START Reductions
Regular readers of NoH know that I’ve been on a mini-crusade of sorts to push back against the argument that the launcher and deployed delivery vehicle limits in New START are based on a misguided ideological predilection for arms reduction rather than sound military and strategic analysis (see here, here, and here).
One of the arguments made by critics such as Keith Payne and Sen. John Thune (R-SD) is that New START requires a lower limit on deployed U.S. delivery vehicles than was suggested last summer by some Department of Defense officials. Specifically, Payne and Thune pointed to testimony from Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. James Cartwright in July 2009 that he would be “very concerned” if the number of strategic delivery vehicles dropped below 800 (note that the limit in New START is 700).
Thanks to the treasure trove of additional documents contained in the recently released Senate Foreign Relations Committee report on the New START treaty, we now know that in early September Gen. Cartwright clarified his position in a letter to the Senate Armed Services Committee. The text of the letter can be read here.
In sum, Gen. Cartwright concludes that “the treaty limitation of 700 deployed strategic delivery vehicles imposed by New START provides a sound framework for maintaining stability and allows us to maintain a strong and credible deterrent that ensures our national security while moving to lower levels of strategic nuclear forces.” Had he known the outcome of the New START negotiations at the time of his July 2009 statement, he would have sang a different tune.
P.S. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s report on New START is an incredibly valuable and exhaustive document that should be required reading for both experts and novices alike, despite a stupefying minority view from Senators Barrasso, Wicker, Inhofe, Risch, and DeMint.
P.P.S.: Another noteworthy nugget from the report is a letter from Vice Presdient Biden to the Committee dated September 15 (the day before the Committee voted on the treaty) promising to update the administration’s 1251 report, which already provides for $80 billion dollars over ten years to sustain our weapons and their supporting infrastructure. Writes Biden:
Out-year budgets are, by definition, projections built on assumptions. NNSA has used the time since the Spring to – when the NPR and New START were concluded – to work on updating initial assumptions. We now have a more complete understanding of stockpile requirments, including the life extension program needs. Similarly, the designs of key facilities such as the Uranium Processing Facility and the Chemical and Mettalurgy Research Replacement Facility have progressed. Based on information learned since the submission of the President’s FY2011 budget and the report under Section 1251 of the National Defense Authorization Act for FY 2010, we expect that funding requirements will increase in future budget years.
Later this fall, the administration will provide the Congress with information that updates the Section 1251 report. At that time, and in our future budgets, we will address any deficiencies in the Future Years Nuclear Security Program. We are also prepared to brief the oversight committies and interested Senators as these programs progress, so that Congress can have full visibility into the program and confidence into our processes.
In other words, even more money looks to be on the way; waaaaay more than enough money. Stay tuned. Clearly the administration’s commitment to maintaining our nuclear weapons isn’t in doubt. Unfortunately the same can’t yet be said of the GOP’s commitment to New START.
WV Candidate Channels Dr. Evil
West Virginia’s Republican nominee for Senate, John Raese, recommended Tuesday that the US put 1,000 lasers into space.
We shall call it the “Alan Parsons Project”…
But seriously – according to Raese, “We are sitting with the only technology in the world that works and it’s laser technology. We need 1,000 laser systems put in the sky and we need it right now. That is [of] paramount importance.”
The only logical explanation anyone can come up with for Raese’s claim is that he could be talking about a program that is decades from development and a few major treaties down the road… and we all know how easy those are to get passed, right?
Riki Ellison, the chairman of the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance, said that Raese appeared to be referring to DPALs (diode pumped alkali lasers), which have shown great promise in the field of missile defense but – at least at current funding levels for the development of such programs – could take two decades to develop. He said that the development of DPAL technology would be accelerated by Raese’s proposed budget infusion (the Obama administration recently reduced funding for the Missile Defense Agency). But, he added, deploying that technology in space would require the negotiation of a treaty among world powers.
“That’s a significant policy challenge,” Ellison said.
The idea of space based missile defense is nothing new, but Raese’s understanding of the subject seems to be a little lacking – particularly his very specific pronouncement that the program he speaks of would cost only $20 billion. With this project so far from completion, nobody can know what price tag a system like DPALs could eventually rack up.
Speaking of DPALs, George Herbert Walker Bush promulgated a close relative of this program called GPALS, or Global Protection Against Limited Strikes. It never was deployed.
Maybe Raese is confused with Bush the father’s 1,000 points of light program (don’t ask).
T-Sharp on Fiscal Mayhem
The mess that is the appropriations process in Congress right now has already been a topic of conversation here at NoH. Bill Matthews has a nice summary of the situation and what it means in the Oct. 11 edition of Defense News. I flag this piece for you because Travis makes an all-star appearance:
The same may be true if Republicans could win control of one or both houses of Congress. They may decide not to let legislation that the Democrats drafted pass this year because they will be in a position to rewrite in when the next Congress begins work in January, said Travis Sharp, a defense budget analyst at the Center for a New American Security.
In that case, the current continuing resolution would likely be extended.
Even if the Democrats retain control of the House and Senate, the Republicans have little incentive to yield to them on the defense bills.
“Presidential campaigning for 2012 begins in November, literally as soon as midterm elections are over,” Sharp said.
Republicans will be looking for issues they can use in the campaign, among them, maintaining the ban on gays in the military and blocking immigration reform.
Perhaps the most optimistic outcome would be “a more closely divided House and Senate,” Sharp said. “The impact for defense legislation is that you would see much cleaner authorization and appropriations bills.”
The reason: Members in both houses generally support the military and are generous about spending money on it. But the defense bills attract controversial and not necessarily germane amendments because the bills are considered “must pass” legislation. So measures that can’t pass on their own sometimes slip through as amendments to defense bills.
With more equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans, particularly in the Senate, there would be less chance of getting enough votes to pass controversial amendments, so fewer would be attached to the defense bills, Sharp said.
