AF General Lobbies For New 'Affordable' Nuclear Modernization Programs
Posted: January 20, 2015
The Air Force has been on a 25-year nuclear weapons "procurement holiday" and now all its bills are coming due at once, but those bills are affordable despite declining military budgets, according to a top service official. The branch wants to replace just about every nuclear weapon in its inventory, from outdated bombers to the 45-year-old Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile, and those programs are competing for funding at a time when resources are spread thin.
"It is unfortunate a lot of these bills are all coming due now," Maj. Gen. Garrett Harencak, assistant chief of staff for strategic deterrence and nuclear integration, told a Jan. 20 Air Force Association forum in Washington. "It sucks to be us. We should have been taking care of this, we didn't. That's in the past. I've got to deal with today and the future." The general's comments come as other countries, including Russia and China, outpace the United States on nuclear modernization and field new land- and sea-based intercontinental ballistic missiles and cruise missiles, according to media reports and Air Force Global Strike Command's latest strategic guidance document. On Feb. 2, President Obama is expected to submit the administration's budget request for fiscal year 2016, which is expected to be higher than sequester-level budget caps and include funding for a range of new nuclear weapon programs.
"It's not going to be inexpensive but it's also not unaffordable," Harencak said. "It's something we have to do to protect our nation." As Inside the Air Force reported last month, Global Strike's top acquisition priorities for the nuclear force going into FY-16 include the Long-Range Strike Bomber, Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent and Long-Range Standoff Missile programs as well as B-2 and B-52 bomber upgrades. At the same time, the command wants to replace its fleet of UH-1N Hueys that fly security sorties around the missile fields with restored Army UH-60 Black Hawks. How the Air Force plans to squeeze all of these priorities into its base budget has not been explained, but Harencak believes these new recapitalization projects are affordable. The general added that he fully supports the Navy's multibillion-dollar program to replace the Ohio-class submarine, which carries the sea-based Trident missile.
"My two legs of the triad are less than 1 percent of the defense budget," he said. "Add our brothers and sisters in the Navy and the submarine portion of the triad, and it's less than 2 percent." Speaking to reporters after the presentation, Harencak pointed to the development of a tail kit that gives the new B61-12 tactical nuclear bomb more range and precision as an example of a nuclear weapons program staying on cost and schedule. The general said the Air Force has taken too long to modernize its two legs of the nuclear triad, the bomber and missile forces, and other nations have been doing what they needed to do to upgrade their nuclear stockpiles. "Over the past 20-25 years, we took a procurement holiday in getting this stuff done," he said. "Other countries have not, they did not take that procurement holiday."
Harencak said he is not necessarily worried about the pace of modernization elsewhere, but the United States cannot afford to be left behind. "That should concern us, and that's what we've found, this realization that we need to get on with it," he said. Next month, the Air Force plans to brief industry on its latest approach to replacing the Boeing-built Minuteman III with what is known now as the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent. The service expects to move that program to milestone A by December. A request for proposals for the new Long-Range Strike Bomber was released last summer. The Air Force plans to buy between 80-100 of those next-generation aircraft for $550 million each. "This is an easy one," Harencak said of the new bomber. "There are lot of hard decisions we have to make out there, but this is not one of them."
The program to replace the service's aging cruise missile is expected to move to the technology development phase somewhere from FY-15 to FY-19, depending on funding. According to the general, the U.S. government is committed to a world without nuclear weapons, but the president's orders are to keep the nuclear deterrent "safe, secure and effective" until that day comes. "That's what the Air Force is doing for our two legs of the triad," he said. -- James Drew
