A consistent lack of investment and support over too many years has caused systematic problems that threaten the U.S. nuclear arsenal, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Friday, announcing a series of reforms he said would cost several billion dollars in additional funding over the next five years.
“No other capability we have is more important,” Hagel said in announcing the results of comprehensive internal and external reviews of the nation’s nuclear deterrent. “As long as we have nuclear weapons, we will — and we must — ensure that they are safe, secure and effective.”
Hagel ordered the reviews in the wake of a series of scandals involving poor performance, misconduct and cheating on qualification exams by nuclear forces of both the Air Force and the Navy, along with concerns about the condition of the nation’s aging nuclear arsenal and its support infrastructure.
“The root cause has been a lack of sustained attention and resources,” Hagel said. “The good news is there’s nothing here that we can’t fix.”
But reform won’t come easily. All three legs of the nation’s nuclear triad — the land-based missiles, manned bombers and ballistic-missile submarines — are in need of modernization at a time when the defense budget is under severe political pressure and Russia is ramping up its nuclear rhetoric.
The Pentagon’s fiscal 2015 budget calls for dramatic increases in spending on a new manned bomber for the Air Force and a nuclear ballistic missile submarine for the Navy. The third leg of the nuclear triad, the 450 land-based Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles, are being considered for modernization as well.
The budget also includes more funding for new warheads and missiles and for refurbishing existing ones.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates the program would cost $355 billion by 2023, but that’s just a start. Deploying a new three-legged nuclear force is expected to cost $1 trillion over the next 30 years.
Those plans are “unaffordable” under current budget constraints and “would likely come at the expense of needed improvements in conventional forces,” noted a bipartisan, congressionally appointed panel that reviewed U.S. military strategy for a report issued in July.
