U.S.: $56M Needed To Complete Warhead Study

JOHN T. BENNETT
Defense News
April 7, 2008

The Bush administration has left it up to Congress to determine the fate of a crucial study designed to help military and federal officials determine how the nation might replace its aging nuclear and conventional warhead arsenal.

Senior defense officials said the assessment, known colloquially in defense circles as the “Phase 2A Study,” was intentionally slated for completion in time to inform the congressionally mandated 2009 nuclear posture review. But they now stand $56 million shy of being able to hit that target.

Officials said it will take about 12 to 18 months to complete the study, once full funding is granted. Some of the work is complete, but senior defense officials estimate as much as $66 million is needed to finish the effort. Yet the administration included only $10 million in its 2009 budget.

The National Nuclear Security Administration, U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM) and other Pentagon and federal entities are working on the unfunded study on the future of the nation’s nuclear and conventional warhead plans.

It is tailored to further the conceptual design “of a potential modernized warhead and analyzing the likely cost and schedule to complete engineering design and development, certification, production, fielding and sustainment,” STRATCOM spokesman Lt. Charlie Drey wrote in an e-mail.

What the Phase 2A assessment does not do, however, is anything that would move the Pentagon “further into the process of physically building a weapon,” Drey said.

Air Force Gen. Kevin Chilton, STRATCOM commander, made a plea to a key Senate subcommittee last month for the remaining $56 million. “What’s important about doing that study is it’s not a decision to go down the path; it will inform a decision for the next administration, next year,” Chilton said during testimony before the Senate Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee March 12.

Completing the study, if Congress provides the funds, would not commit the federal government to launching a new warhead development program, Drey said.

The administration and many Pentagon leaders appear to support the study’s goals but curiously did not seek funding to finish it in the 2009 budget plan that went to Capitol Hill in early February. The Bush administration in recent years has used this tact, most recently with the C-17 airlifter effort. In that case, the Department of Defense has made clear it would like to buy more Globemasters, if Congress pluses up the Air Force’s annual budget with “new money” for the planes.

And while there are differences between the two cases — the funding line for the Phase 2A Study lies within the NNSA budget, not a Pentagon account — there does appear to be support for the warhead assessment in influential places on Capitol Hill, as with the C-17.

During the March 12 subcommittee hearing, its chairman and ranking members, Sens. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., and Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., expressed concerns about the administration’s decision to not include the $56 million to finish the study.

Nelson made clear he is worried about the age of the nation’s nuclear and conventional warheads. Some in Washington have questioned why the administration has not crafted a comprehensive plan to replace those warheads.

“Well, whether it’s the airplane life extension or whether it’s the life extension of the weapons, there is a point — there has to be a point — where it’s no longer either economically feasible to do it, nor is it possible to get that extension indefinitely,” Nelson said. “So that’s why I think it’s extremely important that we know what it’s going to take, and some idea of what kinetic nuclear and kinetic nonnuclear warheads are going to be required as replacement, over some period of time, of what we currently have.”