A Hillary Clinton presidency could get rid of more than $100 billion in opportunities for the defense industry if she follows through with her opposition to modernizing some pieces of the nuclear triad.
A report from Capital Alpha Partners released Friday said two recent developments suggest Clinton may not be willing to follow President Obama’s modernization plan for two parts of the ground-based nuclear deterrent: intercontinental ballistic missiles and air-launched cruise missiles.
Author Byron Callan points to a New York Times op-ed from former President Bill Clinton’s defense secretary suggesting that it’s time to get rid of the ICBMs, and a leaked tape of a fundraiser in which Clinton said she may not be willing to replace the ALCMs.
ICBMs, which are fired from land-based missile silos, are set to be replaced with the ground-based strategic deterrent. The ALCMs will be replaced with the long-range standoff cruise missile. Contracts are set to be awarded for each program, valued at $85 billion and $20 to $30 billion respectively, in late 2017, according to the report.
Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman are expected to compete for the contracts, according to the report, meaning could have the most to lose.
Kingston Reif, the director for disarmament and threat reduction policy at the Arms Control Association, said it’s “encouraging” that Clinton is looking seriously at the need for a large stockpile of nuclear weapons as tight budgets for money spent on nukes means cutting other Pentagon programs.
“That’s encouraging because the plans are unnecessary and unsustainable and, if pursued to completion, are likely to force-damaging cuts to other national security priorities,” Reif said.
Callan wrote that cutting the nuclear modernization programs could create other opportunities for industry if the “absence of these programs may leave more funding for other defense modernization programs and thereby reducing risk to further squeezes as a result of limited defense resources.”
One option to maintain the ground-based deterrent in a more cost-effective way could be to see if use of the current Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile stockpile, built by Boeing, could be extended beyond 2030, Reif said.
“I think that it is really going to have to take a hard look at if they’re going to keep ICBMs as part of the mix, how can we do that more cheaply because I think that the ICBM leg is the lowest priority for the Defense Department when it comes to triad modernization plans,” he said.
The U.S. is also modernizing the other two legs of its nuclear deterrent, two programs the report predicts will continue under the next administration. Northrop Grumman is building the nuclear-capable B-21 Raider to replace the Air Force’s aging fleet of bombers. The Navy is also pursuing its Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine program.
Reif said that, while these two programs are also expensive, they have been a higher priority for the Pentagon, since submarines are widely seen as the most survivable and useful leg of the triad and the bomber is primarily being built to fill a conventional role.
The replacement for the Ohio-class submarines is expected to cost $150 billion, while the bomber contract was valued at about $80 billion.
Asked what sort of modernization the U.S. might expect under a Donald Trump presidency, Reif said some of his broad remarks that Russia is outmaneuvering U.S. nuclear capability have suggested that he’d like to at least follow Obama’s nuclear plan, if not do more.
“He’s doing nuclear, we’re not doing anything. Our nuclear is old and tired and [Russian President Vladimir Putin’s] nuclear is tippy-top from what I hear,” Trump said in June.
