Last week the LA Times ran a piece by Ralph Vartabedian on the W76 life extension program and the numerous problems NNSA and the Navy have had in implementing it.

Apparently NNSA has yet to deliver a single refurbished warhead to the Navy, despite the fact that in February NNSA announced that the “first refurbished W76 nuclear warhead had been accepted into the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile by the Navy.”

The now well-known difficulties encountered in reproducing a key, classified material known as FOGBANK figures prominently in the story, as does this March 2009 GAO report on the B61 and W76 life extension programs.  The report concluded that “NNSA and DOD have not effectively managed cost, schedule, and technical risks for either the B61 or W76 life extension program.”

Overall I thought the article did not accurately characterize the reasons for the schedule delays and cost overruns.  Vartabedian draws conclusions about the technical health of the U.S. nuclear infrastructure that are not supported by the evidence.

According to Vartabedian:

The delay in retrofitting the warheads appears to validate long-standing concerns about an erosion of technical expertise at the Energy Department, as Cold War-era scientists and engineers retire and take with them detailed knowledge about the bombs.

However, what the GAO report referred to above actually demonstrates is that the W76 and B61 life extension programs were terribly mismanaged, not that they were bound to fail or that technical expertise was lacking.  To quote the report:

Regarding the W76 warhead, NNSA did not effectively manage one of the highest risks of the program—the manufacture of a key material known as Fogbank—resulting in $69 million in cost overruns and a schedule delay of at least 1 year that presented significant logistical challenges for the Navy….If NNSA had effectively implemented its risk management strategy, schedule delays and cost increases might have been avoided. Compounding these problems, NNSA did not have a consistent approach for developing a cost baseline for the W76 life extension program.

It’s not until later in the piece that Vartabedian notes that “Not everybody agrees that the fogbank problem raises broad concerns about a loss of expertise.”  We also get this zinger from the Project on Government Oversight’s Danielle Brian: “NNSA gets away with producing shoddy work…and even lying to the public….Our confidence in the stockpile cannot depend on lies.”  

Clearly the U.S. nuclear weapons complex must attract and retain a highly qualified workforce of scientists, engineers, and managers to carry out the business of maintaining the deterrent.  Yet as we debate how best to maintain the safety, security, and reliability of the U.S. nuclear stockpile, it is important not to mistake poor planning and managerial incompetence for the erosion of technical expertise.  

Greg Thielmann has produced an excellent Threat Assessment Brief on strategic (i.e.  long-range) missile defense. Thielmann recently joined the Arms Control Association as a Senior Fellow and heads its new “Realistic Threat Assessments and Respo…

Today’s New York Times includes an Op-Ed by John Bolton.  I know.  I get it.  I shouldn’t waste my time.  But this piece is littered with so many distortions (even by Bolton’s standards) that a brief response is absolutely necessary.  Frankly, the Times should be ashamed for printing it.

Bolton couldn’t even complete a full sentence before inking his first howler: “President Obama has called for a world without nuclear weapons, not as a distant goal, but as something imminently achievable.”  As The New Republic’s Peter Scoblic noted this morning, this is, well, an egregious lie.  Here’s what Obama actually said in his speech in Prague in April: “So today, I state clearly and with conviction America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.  I’m not naive. This goal will not be reached quickly–perhaps not in my lifetime.”

Bolton’s second fabrication arrives a mere two sentences later: “Hurrying to negotiate a successor to the second Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty by year’s end, which Secretary Clinton has committed to, reflects a “zeal for the deal” approach that benefits only Russia.”  Let’s see.  START I entered into force on December 5, 1994.  However, START II never entered into force.  And START III only existed on paper.  The Obama administration is in fact trying to negotiate a successor to START I.  So what is Bolton talking about?

A third outright whopper appears near the end of the piece: “Unhappily, the administration is pushing Israel to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty as a “non-nuclear-weapons state,” meaning Israel would have to eliminate its nuclear arsenal.”  

Bolton is most likely taking his cue here from U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Rose Goettemoeller’s recent appearance at the NPT PrepCom, where she stated: “Universal adherence to the NPT itself—including by India, Israel, Pakistan and North Korea—also remains a fundamental objective of the United States.”  Naturally, what Bolton fails to point out is that this has been the policy of every U.S. president since the NPT entered into force in 1970.

Here’s to hoping the Times’ fact-checkers don’t take too many more days off.

Yesterday the EastWest Institute (EWI) released a U.S.-Russia joint threat assessment on Iran’s nuclear and missile potential.  

The report was produced by a team of Russian and American scientists and experts.  The American participants included Philip Coyle, Senior Advisor, Center for Defense Information; Richard Garwin, IBM Fellow Emeritus, Thomas Watson Research Center; Ambassador James Goodby, Nonresident Senior Fellow, the Brookings Institution; Siegfried S. Hecker, Co-Director of CISAC and Professor (Research), Department of Management Science and Engineering, Stanford University; David Holloway, Raymond A. Spruance Professor of International History, Stanford University; Theodore A. Postol, Professor of Science, Technology, and National Security Policy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The report’s central conclusion:

…there is at present no IRBM/ICBM threat from Iran and that such a threat, even if it were to emerge, is not imminent. Moreover, if such a threat were forthcoming, the proposed European missile defenses would not provide a dependable defense against it. It does not make sense, therefore, to proceed with deployment of the European missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic.

But of course you already knew that.  

As I hinted at yesterday, Gen. Chilton’s performance at last week’s Defense Writers Group Breakfast was not only noteworthy for his outlandish statements on the relevance of nuclear weapons to deterring cyber attacks.   In response to a question …