Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation

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The Unaffordable Arsenal

 Top government officials are in agreement that current plans to rebuild our nuclear arsenal (to the price tag of at least $355 billion over the next decade and up to $1 trillion over the next 30 years) are overly ambitious and likely unaffordable. Add in a defense budget that’s already stretched thin, always-looming budget caps and sequestration, new international security challenges like Russian expansion in Ukraine, terrorist expansion in Iraq and Syria, and the Ebola virus in Africa, and it’s safe to say the US budget is burning its ‘defense candle’ at both ends.  

The Arms Control Association (ACA) has released a report on just this issue, urging the “executive branch, Congress, and the American public to rethink current plans to rebuild U.S. nuclear forces in the years ahead.”  The nuclear shopping list is a long one: new ballistic submarines, new nuclear-capable bombers, land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles, a new air-launched cruise missile, and an upgrade to five nuclear warhead types. By paring down that list, ACA has highlighted some commonsense solutions to save roughly $70 billion dollars in the next decade. A summary of ACA’s recommendations follows.

Strategic Submarines – SSBN(X): Save $16 billion/10 years
A 2013 report by the CBO analyzed the option of reducing the SSBN(X) force to 8 boats. Under this scenario, the Navy would still have a robust deterrent and be able to deploy the maximum number of warheads at sea, consistent with the New START treaty.

Long-Range Bombers – LRSB: Save $32 billion/10 years
Because the current US bomber fleet will operate into the 2040s-50s, there is no urgency for a renovation. By delaying the LRSB until the mid-2020s, the USAF can free up $32 billion dollars for other projects that have more urgent funding needs.

Air-Launched Cruise Missile – ALCM: Save $3 billion/10 years  
The recently rebuilt gravity bomb (B61-12) gives our current bombing fleet the capability to drop nuclear weapons, drawing the need for a new air-launched cruise missile into question. Not only is this weapon unnecessary, as our submarines are capable of launching a nuclear ballistic missile, but it would serve as an effective bargaining chip on the international stage. Discontinuing our ALCMs as part of a global ban on nuclear-armed cruise missiles would eliminate the growing threat of a Chinese or Pakistani cruise missile while simultaneously saving at least $3 billion dollars in development and procurement costs.  

B61 Life Extension Program – LEP: Save $4 billion/10 years
The B61 Life Extension Program is designed to extend the lives of 400 gravity bombs for tactical (front lines) and strategic (reserves) purposes. The two most costly portions of the program are a consolidation plan of four versions of the bomb into one and the refurbishment of some of the nuclear components. This program has faced budget pressures in Congress and would be better served by scaling back the program to update our strategic reserve bombs while allowing our tactical bombs in Europe to age out gracefully.  This or other reductions to the program, such as discontinuing the 4-in-1 modification plans for the bomb, will allow for cost savings up to 4 billion dollars over the next decade.  

Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles – ICBMS: $16 billion/10 years
The Air Force’s 450 ICBMs are scheduled for maintenance to ensure their reliability through 2030. The Air Force is expected to decide by 2016 whether they will employ incremental modernization of the missiles, or scrap the current design and create new ones. A 2014 RAND study sponsored by the Air Force to analyze options for the ICBM determined that incremental modernization would both meet the US’s nuclear deterrent needs and be the most cost-effective. The USAF would save at least $16 billion dollars by forgoing a new missile and an additional $84-$219 billion (not included in above projections) by forgoing potential mobile-basing options which have been considered ineffective since the 1980’s.

These options illustrate ways to safely trim the bloated nuclear budget while maintaining our nuclear deterrent. This creates a win-win scenario for the Department of Defense, which will preserve the nuclear arsenal from uncontrolled cuts as a result of an overly ambitious budget and secure funding for its conventional forces. In a world where nuclear exchanges are most commonly associated with global destruction, these nuclear exchanges to the budget are both sensible and necessary.

Greg Terryn is a Scoville Fellow at the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation.

Obama’s Mixed Bag on Nuclear Weapons

By Angela Canterbury and Sarah Tully

President Obama has long talked the talk of reducing the dangers of nuclear weapons, but the administration has been slow to walk the walk in terms of nuclear weapons reductions in recent years.

A recent study by Federation of American Scientists pointed out that in terms of number of stockpiled warheads and percentage of reduction, Obama has done less than all other post-cold war presidents.

President George W. Bush reduced the U.S. nuclear stockpile by 50% during his tenure in office, surprisingly, qualifying him for the prize of greatest nuclear disarmer by percentage since 1945. President Bush senior claims second prize with 41% reduction. President Eisenhower had the greatest escalation of all time with an increase of 2,117%, although the times were certainly different back then and the United States was starting from a small stockpile. Meanwhile, President Obama has retired 507 warheads or a 10% reduction of the total stockpile.

However, it’s important to put these numbers into context.

Throughout his presidency, Obama has reduced our nuclear weapons stockpile each year. While stockpile numbers diminished more drastically under President Clinton and President Bush, President Obama took on the job when the stockpile was the smallest in decades. For instance, President Bush reduced the nuclear weapons stockpile by 5,304; which is 654 more nukes than the total of 4,650 nuclear weapons the U.S. has today.

The Obama administration got a strong start on reducing the threat of nuclear weapons. In his 2009 foreign policy address in Prague president Obama spoke of “America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.” In 2011, he secured the historic New START Treaty with Russia which necessitates significant nuclear weapons stockpile reductions on both sides and calls for more rigorous verification and inspection protocols.

The three Nuclear Security Summits initiated by President Obama helped to focus world attention on the proliferation of nuclear weapons and materials. According to a New York Times editorial, “[s]ince Mr. Obama took office, he has pushed the international community to improve nuclear security.  The result is that 14 countries have eliminated their nuclear materials stockpiles and 15 others removed or disposed of portions of theirs.”

It is also looking more and more (fingers crossed) like the U.S. and its negotiating partners, the five permanent members of the UN Security Council as well as Germany collectively known as P5+1, are close to a historic deal with Iran to prevent it from getting a nuclear bomb.

He’s certainly done well. Just not quite as well as advocates of reducing nuclear weapons stockpile size and importance would have hoped.

For one, Obama’s record on investing in nuclear non-proliferation programs hasn’t been great as of late. According to a July 2014 analysis of the Obama administration’s security spending out of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, the administration chose to cut the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) non-proliferation programs by $399 million and increase spending for weapons activities by $534 million. This was the second straight year of reductions in the U.S. non-proliferation budget.

And this reduction in spending to rein-in nuclear weapons has been met by an increase in spending on nuclear weapons.

In order to get the go-ahead from opponents in Congress on the New START Treaty with Russia, Obama agreed to spend $84 billion in nuclear weapons modernization over the next decade, a number the Congressional Budget Office estimates will likely come in at $355 billion with others estimating $1 trillion over 30 years. This is unnecessary spending on modernization that isn’t needed to meet today’s threats.

Nevertheless, the President did try again for nuclear reduction in 2013. But Vladimir Putin, President of the only country besides the U.S. with thousands of nuclear weapons, rejected Obama’s 2013 proposal to cut Russian and U.S. deployed strategic nuclear warheads beyond the 1,550 agreed upon in New START, down to 1,000.

But the deal hasn’t been sealed yet. Ultimately, the President’s legacy on nuclear issues depends on what gets done over his last two years in office.

The President still has a chance to make strides on the nuclear front. Both Russia and the U.S. have to cut their deployed nukes stockpile to 1,550 by 2018 under the New START accord. Obama could accelerate those reductions in the next two years without waiting for 2018. He could also scrap some of the expensive and arguably unnecessary modernization plans like fitting the F-35 for a nuclear weapon and building a new generation of land-based missiles.  

Those of us who are working to reduce the threat of nuclear weapons are eager to see Obama do more and fulfill his Prague promise.

Mobile-Basing: Can’t Keep a Bad Idea Down

During the Reagan presidency in the 1980’s, our military looked into alternative basing options for our nuclear missiles to prevent the theoretical possibility of their being targeted and destroyed by the Soviet Union.  After exploring over 30 basing options and hearing loud objections from some of the President’s most enthusiastic supporters in Nevada and Utah to spreading missiles across theirs states, the Pentagon decided that plunking missiles in fixed silos was perfectly safe.

Never mind!

Instead, our national security leaders decided that a combination of nuclear weapons on submarines and on bombers made mobile nuclear weapons on land unnecessary for maintaining a secure nuclear deterrent.

But sometimes in the Pentagon, you can’t keep a bad idea down, even though alternative options were discarded as too expensive and unwieldy.

According to Lt. Gen. James Kowalski, the U.S. Strategic Command Deputy Commander, the US should further pursue a “hybrid” and “flexible” future for our ground-based nuclear deterrent. The reasoning:  make it harder for enemies to destroy our land-based missiles.

A recent report by RAND Corp has explored these issues and found mobile basing wanting.

This report on the future of the US’s Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs), which was sponsored by the Air Force, undermines the validity of some of the justifications for alternative basing options.

In terms of survivability, the only country capable of threatening the US’s ICBM deterrence is Russia. This threat was always unlikely at the height of the Cold War; a huge nuclear strike targeting many hundreds of ICBM’s would not only leave untouched bombers in the air and submarines but would cause a nuclear holocaust threatening all life on this planet.

The RAND report further suggests that a combination of arms control reductions and de-escalation policies since the Cold War have made an all-out nuclear attack even more strategically ineffective and statistically improbable.  

Oh, and by the way, those nuclear subs and nuclear bombers can continue to provide flexible strike capabilities; a mobile land-based system would be added cost with no added value.

And the increased costs would be considerable. While no concrete plans for updating and modernizing the ICBMs have been released, RAND estimates costs over the next 39 years could reach $199 billion for a rail-based system and $219 billion for a road-based system. These far exceed the more pragmatic “indefinite, incremental modernization plan” which would cost $60-$90 billion to maintain and update our current missiles and silos over that same period. Clearly these would be hefty additions to an already inflated nuclear budget; one that many military minds agree is too large and too expensive.

While deliberation and study are important, the US Air Force should not return to a policy option previously and appropriately rejected.

Panel says thanks but no thanks to extra F-35s, Apaches

Last week House Defense Appropriations rejected part of a reprogramming request from the Pentagon that would have funded, among other things, 8 additional F-35s and 21 Apache helicopters using money from the Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) account.

In a letter to Pentagon Comptroller Mike McCord, Panel chairman Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen cites policy guidance from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) that expressly excludes non-war-related funding from the acceptable uses of OCO funds.

The Committee is concerned that OCO appropriations, which are provided by Congress specifically for ongoing combat operations and related efforts,” says Frelinghuysen, “are being utilized in this reprogramming to backfill budgetary shortfalls in acquisition programs that have only tenuous links to the fight in Afghanistan and other current operations.”

The letter specifically cites reprogramming requests for the F-35 and Apache helicopter, which amount to ~$1.5 billion, 80 percent of the Pentagon’s requested increase, as problematic.

Of course, budget watchdogs have lamented the unrelated use of OCO funds for years, but this is the first time a congressional committee has rejected such a high profile proposal. And the rejection is significant, since reprogramming requests must be approved by all 4 congressional defense authorizing and appropriating panels.

And hey, since the Pentagon is essentially recognizing that it has some extra money lying around by requesting the funding shift at all, one would think that the rejection would result in some savings, right? Not so much.

Barring congressional action to the contrary, the funds will return to their original allocations awaiting what is likely to be a new request.

A Pentagon spokesperson said Monday that officials will continue “to work with Congress to finalize our reprogramming request.”

Because surely the Pentagon can find something to spend all that money on.