Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation

Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation

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Get to know our new fall interns!

The Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation is pleased to welcome Katie McCarthy and Sarah Tully as our newest interns this fall. They both come to the Center with impressive backgrounds and unique skills.

Katie McCarthy is a fall intern at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. After receiving her Bachelor’s degree from Connecticut College in 2011, she graduated this May with a Master’s degree in Nonproliferation and Terrorism from the Monterey Institute of International Studies. At the Monterey Institute she served as a graduate research assistant at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies supporting the Nuclear Threat Initiative. Ms. McCarthy interned last summer at Lawrence Livermore National Lab and this summer at Brookhaven National Laboratory’s Nonproliferation and National Security department. There she focused on international nuclear safeguards program development and management. She is thrilled to be working at the CACNP this fall, where she hopes to focus on Iran, former Soviet Union States, nuclear nonproliferation and security and nuclear energy spending.

Sarah Tully is also an intern at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. She recently finished her master’s degree in Middle East, Caucasus and Central Asian Security Studies at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. Sarah graduated with honors from Barnard College of Columbia University in 2013. She has previously interned at Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, and West Sands Advisory Limited, a political risk consultancy. She is also proficient in Arabic. At the Center, Sarah is particularly interested in focusing on Iraq, Afghanistan, and nuclear terrorism.

Time to Change U.S. Missile Defense Culture

By Philip Coyle

As a taxpayer, you might be disappointed to learn that the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) and its contractors haven’t been following standard and essential quality control procedures when it comes to the design, development, and production of a key missile defense system. If not, you should be.

The September 8, 2014, report of the Department of Defense (DoD) Inspector General (IG), “Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle [EKV] Quality Assurance and Reliability Assessment, Part A,” criticizes the sloppy work finding 48 “nonconformances” with good practice.  Twenty-two of those are “major,” meaning “nonfulfillment of a requirement that is likely to result in the failure of the quality management system or reduce its ability to ensure controlled processes or compliant products/services.”  

For those of you who don’t speak wonk, this means the Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system deployed in Alaska and California and designed to protect the U.S. homeland against a potential North Korean or Iranian missile attack isn’t dependable. The EKV, which is intended to collide with and destroy an incoming missile high above the Earth’s atmosphere, is a small but very critical part of the GMD system. If the EKV doesn’t work, neither will the GMD system. To date, GMD has cost taxpayers roughly $40 billion.

Part B of the DoD IG report analyzes the reliability of the EKVs now deployed in the field in Alaska and California, but that report will be classified so taxpayers won’t see the bottom line.

Of course, we already know that the GMD system is defective from the poor record of performance of the EKV in past flight intercept tests.  The DoD IG reports that “Three of these intercept tests resulted in failures attributable to the EKV.”  A fourth failure in a test a year ago last July is still being studied by MDA.  But the IG truncated its analysis.  If it had included all of the failures attributable to the EKV going back to January 2000, it would have reported six failures attributable to the EKV, not three.  And once the analysis of last year’ test are in, the count likely will be seven failures attributable to the EKV, not three. What’s more, given MDA’s problems with quality control, even a successful test of the system, such as the one that occurred in June, doesn’t demonstrate system reliability.

The complexity of the EKV effort is apparent from this summary in the DoD IG report: “With more than 1,800 unique parts, 10,000 pages of work instructions, and 130,000 process steps for the current configuration, EKV repairs and refurbishments are considered by the program to be costly and problematic and make the EKV susceptible to quality assurance failures.”

At the heart of these problems is a culture at MDA and its contractors with roots that go back to January 2, 2002, when the Secretary of Defense exempted MDA from following the Pentagon’s normal rules for acquiring a weapons system.  Little wonder, then, that the DoD IG found that MDA and its contractors didn’t follow the rules; they think they don’t have to!  

According to the DOD IG, “Therefore, the EKV did not go through the milestone decision review process and the product development phase (Engineering and Manufacturing Development).”  Why is this important? The DoD IG explains: “The purpose of the milestone decision review is to carefully assess a program’s readiness to proceed to the next acquisition phase and to make a sound investment decision committing the DoD’s financial resources. For the product development phase, the program is assessed to ensure that the product design is stable, manufacturing processes are controlled, and the product can perform in the intended operational environment.”

As a result, The DoD IG concludes, “the EKV prototype was forced into operational capability” before it was ready.  “A combination of cost constraints and failure-driven program restructures has kept the program in a state of change. Schedule and cost priorities drove a culture of ‘use-as-is’ leaving the EKV as a manufacturing challenge,”

This history would be troubling enough if it were only history.  Unfortunately MDA and its contractors have never recovered from the culture that resulted when they first were exempted from the rules.  They see those rules as not applying to them.  They see themselves as not having to answer to those rules, and this drives program interactions at all levels where oversight is concerned in the Pentagon and the Congress.

This has implications for future missile defense development efforts. For example, MDA is in the early stages of designing a new EKV to replace the current fleet. Without a change in the default culture, the nation is unlikely to have a more dependable product than the existing, flawed, kill vehicles. Ominously, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has already begun to raise concerns about the acquisition plan for the new EKV.

Can the Director of the MDA, Admiral James D. Syring, put us on a more responsible path?  Indications are the Admiral Syring cares deeply about not repeating past mistakes. And he certainly knows the best culture of the U.S. Navy.  For example, the Navy’s offensive strategic missile systems have a long history of quality, distinction, and excellence.  The people who work in those programs maintain the highest standards and hold themselves accountable to them.  When it comes to defending the United States, our missile defense programs deserve no less.

Philip Coyle is the Senior Science Fellow at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. In 2010 and 2011 Mr. Coyle served as the Associate Director for National Security and International Affairs (NSIA) in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP).

Recognition is Not Endorsement

By Lt. Gen. Robert Gard (USA, ret.)

Dealing with other nations to reduce tensions and advance mutual interests is facilitated by establishing embassies and consulates in those countries to enhance communication and increase understanding. This is a long-established diplomatic practice that has been recognized through the ages as highly beneficial in inter-state relations.

Diplomatic recognition of another country and its government is nothing more than an acknowledgement of its de-facto existence as a nation state, not tantamount to approval of its political system or its policies. In fact, it is especially important to establish diplomatic relations with governments with which we have strong disagreements to prevent unintended escalation caused by misunderstandings.  

Yet the United States has failed to recognize some key nation states whose governments it finds objectionable. It took us 15 years to recognize the existence of the Soviet Union and establish diplomatic relations with it in 1933.  We clung to the myth that the Chinese Nationalist regime that fled to Taiwan represented mainland China for more than 23 years, from 1949 until 1972, when President Nixon visited the Peoples Republic; and we finally established diplomatic relations with Beijing in 1979.

We have found it beneficial to maintain diplomatic relations with both China and Russia despite some major conflicts of interest and even the imposition of economic sanctions on Russia in the wake of its aggression in Ukraine. The vital New START nuclear treaty with Russia continues to function effectively, as does our logistical passage through Russia to Afghanistan; and Russia continues to supply us with rocket engines we use to enhance our national security and to ferry our astronauts to the international space station. Our diplomatic relations with China have resulted in improvements in our economic relations with the world’s second largest economy, and agreement on military contacts and exchanges hedges against increased tensions that could result from disagreements between China and some of our allies in the region.  

With the recent military successes in Iraq of ISIS, the Islamic State, the United States finds itself with a vital interest in common with Iran, but without diplomatic relations that could facilitate cooperation and provide insights into the problems faced by the current Iranian administration with which we are trying to reach agreement on its nuclear program.

Why haven’t we learned the obvious lesson of the advantages to us of recognition of foreign governments and the establishment of diplomatic relations with them? We actually appear to be retrogressing in this regard. It took us 15 years to recognize the Soviet Union and 23 years to acknowledge that the Peoples Republic controlled mainland China. In Iran, the revolutionary movement solidified its control in 1979, 36 years ago; and we still have not accorded it the de-facto recognition that could lead to mutually beneficial diplomatic relations.      

Russian Arms Treaty Still Worth It

Yesterday the Wall Street Journal published a letter to the editor by yours truly in response to a recent op-ed by Keith Payne and Mark Scheinder’s alleging that Russia is a serial violator of arms control treaties and the Obama administration has been uniquely weak in calling out Russia’s bad behavior.  Here’s an excerpt:

In addition, the claim that Russia cheats on all treaties is overstated and overlooks the national security case for arms control. Overall, the implementation record of arms-control agreements with Russia has been highly successful—which is why both Republican and Democratic presidents have pursued such agreements. Without these efforts Russian forces would be unconstrained, our ability to verify what Russia is doing would be curtailed and we would have few options but to engage in a costly arms race.

 You can read the full letter here.

On the issue of arms racing, it’s certainly true that even if, for example, Russia wasn’t constrained by INF, the United States would still have powerful economic, political, and strategic reasons for not responding by building and deploying intermediate range nuclear forces. What’s more, the United States and Russia have a long history of reducing nuclear forces unilaterally without treaties. Furthermore, the current budget environment in the United States might require reductions in the US arsenal with or without Russia reciprocity.

But at the very least, the absence of constraints on Russia’s forces would increase the incentives and pressure to engage in costly worst case scenario planning that Washington would otherwise not engage in. It’s not clear what leverage we would have to reduce the Russian nuclear threat in the absence of say, INF. The United States and Russia have far more nuclear weapons than they need for their security. Negotiated limits on Russian nuclear forces can still play a role in reducing nuclear risks – especially at at a time of increased tensions between the two countries.

Two new nuclear weapons budget pieces

Since returning from paternity leave I’ve penned two new pieces on the issue of the costs of nuclear weapons. The first, published in RealClearDefense, assesses the conclusions of the recently released report of the National Defense Panel Review of the 2014 Quadrennial Defense Review on the costs of nuclear weapons. Here’s how I end the piece:

The NDP [National Defense Panel] recognizes that current resources don’t match requirements. The longer current nuclear spending plans remain on autopilot, the more likely it will be that the budget will force suboptimal tradeoffs between nuclear and other national security programs, as well as possible reductions in nuclear forces by financial default. Fortunately, the United States can guarantee its security and that of its allies in a more fiscally sustainable manner by continuing to pursue further reductions in U.S. nuclear forces and scaling back current modernization plans.

Read the whole thing here.

The second piece rebuts the oft-repeated claim by some Air Force nuclear leaders that the cost of the Air Force nuclear enterprise is relatively cheap. Here’s an excerpt:

While the current costs of the Air Force legs of the triad may be cheaper than some other Pentagon programs, these aren’t the only costs. For example, Harencak’s one-year tally ignores the large financial and opportunity costs of current plans to modernize and recapitalize all elements of the Air Force nuclear enterprise, the bulk of which have yet to (but will soon) hit the balance sheets. While the Air Force has been less than transparent about the extent of the bill, it has already acknowledged these costs will be substantial. So substantial, in fact, that the service leadership is looking for assistance from elsewhere in the Pentagon to help pick up the tab.

The entire piece is available here.