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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).

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.

26 Senators sign letter to Obama administration urging increased nuclear security funding

Earlier today (August 18) Senators Jeff Merkley (D-OR) and Feinstein (D-CA) released a bipartisan letter calling on the Obama administration to support increased funding for vital programs at the Department of Energy to keep nuclear and radiological materials out of the hands of terrorists. The full text of the letter is pasted below the jump. You can read the Merkley and Feinstein press release announcing the letter here.

26 Senators signed the letter, including 22 Democrats, 2 Independents, and 2 Republicans.

The Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation and Council for a Livable World strongly support the letter’s message and urge the White House to act on this bipartisan call for increased funding to prevent nuclear and radiological terrorism.

The Obama administration’s recent budget requests have not reflected the rhetorical emphasis it has rightly placed on combatting nuclear terrorism. The FY 2015 budget request for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) reduces funding for the Global Threat Reduction Initiative (GTRI) and the International Nuclear Materials Protection Program (IMPC) by 25% and 27%, respectively, signaling a major retreat in the Obama administration’s effort to secure nuclear and radiological materials at an accelerated rate. This is the third year in a row of budget cuts to these core nonproliferation programs. The proposed budget cuts to these programs are difficult to understand since the danger of nuclear and radiological materials falling into the hands of terrorists remains a serious threat.

Reducing funding for these programs increases the amount of time it will take to secure or eliminate dangerous materials that could be used by terrorists in an improvised nuclear explosive device or a dirty bomb. This is an unacceptable risk to U.S. national security. Important nuclear security efforts should not be slowed by lack of funds.

Fortunately, both the Senate Armed Services Committee and the Senate Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee significantly increased funding above the budget request for NNSA’s core material security and nonproliferation programs. However, it remains to be seen if these higher funding levels will survive and whatever final authorization and appropriations bill is passed by Congress for FY 2015.

For more information on the budget cuts, see our handy fact sheet. For a more detailed discussion of the Obama administration’s nuclear security request and the harmful impacts of budget cuts, see this excellent recent report by Harvard’s Managing the Atom Project co-authored by Nukes of Hazard alum Nickolas Roth.

August 13.2014

Mr. Shaun Donovan
Director
Oftice of Management and Budget
725 I th St NW
Washington, DC 20503

Dear Director Donovan,

We write to request the Administration, in its next budget request, seek increased funding for vital nuclear material security and nonproliferation programs. We have been concerned that the President has proposed cuts to these programs over the last several years. We believe that unsecured nuclear material poses an unacceptable risk to U.S. national security and hope future budgets will reflect the importance of nuclear security efforts.

The President has said that nuclear terrorism is the most immediate and extreme threat to global security.” He followed these words by hosting the first Nuclear Security Summit in 2010. While we applaud the President’s leadership in spearheading an accelerated international effort to enhance the security of nuclear and radiological materials, we remain concerned about what the future would look like if we slow these programs. For example, through programs such as the Global Threat Reduction Initiative (GTRI), thirteen countries eliminated all the highly enriched uranium (HEU) or separated plutonium on their soil since 2009, including all HEU from Ukraine. I applaud those efforts been slowed by anemic funding, it is possible that the United States would face the threat of weapons-grade nuclear material in the hands of Ukrainian separatists.

Despite these noteworthy achievements, significant work remains to be done. There are still
hundreds of sites spread across 30 countries that have weapons-usable nuclear material. Many of these locations have very modest or insufficient security measures. For these reasons and others. the FY 201 5 Senate Energy and Water bill increased funding for these programs above the President’s budget request by $136 million for the GTRI, $33 million for research and development, and $50 million for the International Nuclear Materials Protection and Cooperation program.

Reducing budgets for agencies and programs that help keep nuclear and radiological materials out of the hands of terrorists is out of sync with the high priority that President has rightly placed on nuclear and radiological material security and signals a major retreat in the effort to lock down these materials at an accelerated rate. The recent spate of terrorism in Iraq, Pakistan, and Kenya is a harrowing reminder of the importance of ensuring that terrorist groups and rogue states cannot get their hands on the world’s most dangerous weapons and materials.

Given current world events, now is not the time to pull back on nonproliferation, a major U.S.
policy objective. Going forward, we urge you to work with us to ensure that critical nuclear
material security and nonproliferation programs have the resources they need. We seek your
support for a FY 2016 budget that builds on the Senate Energy and Water proposed FY 2015 funding levels to further accelerate the pace at which nuclear and radio logical materials are secured and permanently disposed.

Sincerely-

Senate Appropriators Defy Administration On Nukes

Kingston Reif and I have a new analysis on the Center website of the FY 2015 Senate Energy and Water Appropriations bill. Here is an excerpt:

A new Senate bill released in late July contains a number of small but critically important victories, most notably in the realm of funding nuclear material security and nonproliferation.

As a budget battle between the President and Congress rages on, there is a conspicuous difference in the level of funding requested by the White House versus that approved by Senate Appropriators for programs that make us safer from the threat of nuclear weapons and nuclear terrorism. It is hard to understand why the Obama administration, whose stated priorities make nuclear nonproliferation a top priority, has for the past three years cut the budget for these very activities. Luckily, the Senate continues to restore the funding, as evidenced by its recent action. However, in past years the higher Senate funding levels have not survived in the final spending bills passed by Congress.

The contradiction between the President’s words about preventing nuclear terrorism and the dwindling resources he has requested in his budget submissions is concerning because it represents an unsustainable punt to Congress at a time when lawmakers are mandating significant reductions in government spending. Despite the Senate’s best efforts, Congress has not restored funding to sufficient levels in its final spending bills. What’s more, even the Senate’s current prioritization of nonproliferation programs could evaporate if the Senate changes hands next year.

Read the full analysis here