Even a broken clock is right twice a day. Earlier this week, Grover Norquist, the head of Americans for Tax Reform, came out against Paul Ryan’s views on defense, saying they were fiscally irresponsible.
Whither the anti-terrorism budget?
I wrote my July Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists column on the Obama administration’s disappointing budget request for nuclear terrorism prevention programs at the National Nuclear Security Administration. Here’s an excerpt Despite the reductions to c…
Quote of the Day: Major Cost Discovery Edition
A senior Pentagon official describes the reaction of Pentagon analysts upon discovering that the cost of the B61 Life Extension Program could be $10 billion, $4 billion more than the National Nuclear Security Administration’s latest estimate.
What a Difference a Year Makes: Nuclear Bomb Refurbishment Will Now Cost $10 billion
Last year at this time, I was reading a National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) estimate stating that the Life Extension Program (LEP) for the B61 nuclear bomb would cost $3.9 billion, already making it the most expensive nuclear warhead upgrade in U.S. history. By May, 2012 that estimate had ballooned to $6 billion. At today’s Senate Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee hearing, Senator Feinstein revealed that, according to the Pentagon’s Office of Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation, the Life Extension Program for the B61 warhead will cost $10 billion dollars. Amazingly enough, this plan for the B61 LEP was actually supposed to be a moderate compromise. NNSA had originally wanted to do a much more extensive and more expensive refurbishment of the B61.
Industry Execs Say Sequestration is bad but Not the End of the World
The Budget Control Act, passed last summer by both parties as a mechanism to force compromise on debt reduction, is now being used by politicians and the defense industry for political gain. Mitt Romney’s campaign has said that sequestration will “saddle the military with a trillion dollars in cuts, severely shrink our force structure, and impair our ability to meet and deter threats.” He places the blame for these cuts on the Obama administration, conveniently forgetting that Republicans voted for sequestration and ignoring the fact that sequestration would be avoidable if the GOP would be willing to compromise on revenue increases.
