Silence is not consent: the unanswered warhead question

By Chris Jones

Despite all the recent attention to declaratory policy in the NPR, one of the toughest questions for this administration to answer will be how to square maintaining a safe, secure, and reliable arsenal while trying to shore up the U.S. image on nonproliferation internationally to gain much needed cooperation. This battle has picked up steam based on the language of the Defense Authorization Act requiring the plan for the arsenal to be tied to START.  This was reinforced by the letter sent to Obama from 41 Senators.

For quite some time, there has been a perception in the press that this interagency tug of war on this question has featured Vice President Biden in one corner and Secretary Gates in another. For example, Elaine Grossman’s 6 January article about the NPR delay explains:

At the same time, the White House is exploring how it might modernize the existing nuclear stockpile. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has advocated a more ambitious approach to updating the arsenal than some other top leaders, including Vice President Joseph Biden, have supported (see GSN, Sept. 24, 2009). In Gates' perspective, further nuclear arms reductions can safely be made only if the remaining arsenal continues to credibly deter attacks on the United States and its allies, and the defense secretary has said that requires a replacement program for older warheads. By contrast, Biden reportedly has argued that manufacturing new nuclear warheads could undermine Washington's ability to build an international coalition to curb the spread of atomic arms to nations like Iran.

The answer to how these seemingly opposing views will reconcile became much clearer with Vice President Biden’s op-ed in the WSJ late last week. Previewing the budget that will be announced today, Biden explains:

Our budget devotes $7 billion for maintaining our nuclear-weapons stockpile and complex, and for related efforts. This commitment is $600 million more than Congress approved last year. And over the next five years we intend to boost funding for these important activities by more than $5 billion

Following on the heels of the third Gang of 4 op-ed that emphasized the importance of maintaining confidence in the nuclear arsenal, Biden’s piece shows considerable support for shoring up the infrastructure, both physical and intellectual:

Among the many challenges our administration inherited was the slow but steady decline in support for our nuclear stockpile and infrastructure, and for our highly trained nuclear work force . . . The consequences of this neglect—like the growing shortage of skilled nuclear scientists and engineers and the aging of critical facilities—have largely escaped public notice. Last year, the Strategic Posture Commission led by former Defense Secretaries William Perry and James Schlesinger warned that our nuclear complex requires urgent attention. We agree. . . This investment is long overdue. It will strengthen our ability to recruit, train and retain the skilled people we need to maintain our nuclear capabilities. It will support the work of our nuclear labs, a national treasure that we must and will sustain. Many of our facilities date back to World War II, and, given the safety and environmental challenges they present, cannot be sustained much longer

The administration will leverage these new investments to marshal support for ratification of START and CTBT but there still remains an unanswered question: what about the warheads?

Both the Gang of 4 op-ed and the Biden op-ed tiptoed on the question of where exactly to come down on the “spectrum of options” approach that has been recommended for the warheads. The Gang of 4 endorsed the JASON’s study language that approaches similar to those in current LEP approaches (assuming sufficient support for complex and intellectual capital) are adequate but also noted that “Departures from our existing stewardship strategies should be taken when they are essential to maintain a safe, secure and effective deterrent.” The Biden op-ed emphasizes the importance of complex modernization so that the United States does not need to test nuclear weapons which could help with the CTBT ratification debate but does not address what to do with the warheads. In some respects, there appears to be a broad consensus that the complex is in need of modernization but there is little agreement about what to do with the warheads. The problem occurs when the silence on warhead is taken to mean consent.  For example, Jon Kyl takes the Gang of 4 op-ed to mean calling for a new warhead:

In their Jan. 20 op-ed "How to Protect Our Nuclear Deterrent," George Shultz, William Perry, Henry Kissinger and Sam Nunn deliver a clarion call for the "necessity to maintain the safety, security and reliability of our own [nuclear] weapons." In so doing, they have associated themselves with Defense Secretary Robert Gates and the experts on the bipartisan Perry-Schlesinger Commission, who have urged significant and immediate funding to develop a modern warhead and repair our decrepit Manhattan Project-era nuclear infrastructure

As Max Bergman at Wonk Room explains, the op-ed did not call for “funding to develop a modern warhead.” It called to invest in the complex infrastructure. In another example, the ACA media advisory about the Biden op-ed argued:

"The administration's approach is consistent with independent technical assessments that have found that the U.S. nuclear arsenal can continue to be refurbished through non-nuclear tests and evaluations and, as necessary, the remanufacture of warhead components to previous design specifications . . . These findings indicate that new-design replacement warheads are not needed to maintain reliability. . . . "Contrary to myth, the U.S. nuclear arsenal is not 'degrading.' In fact a major effort to refurbish warheads and modernize the weapons complex has been underway for some time. Even without this additional funding, confidence in the ability to maintain U.S. warheads in the absence of nuclear test explosions has been increasing,"

The ACA media advisory is at odds with the Vice President and the Gang of 4 on the status of the weapons complex but the warhead issue is trickier. The advisory isn’t incorrect when it says the administration’s approach outlined by the Biden op-ed “is consistent” with a primarily refurbishment based approach but the op-eds emphasis of both “safe, secure, and effective” and international cooperation, much like the Prague agenda, means that quotes, or lack thereof, can be parsed to be consistent with almost any position. One place that helps outline the general direction the warhead program will take is the language in the 2010 Defense Authorization Act about the Stockpile Management Program.  Discussing in detail the objectives and constraints for maintaining the weapons stockpile it states:

‘‘SEC. 4204. STOCKPILE MANAGEMENT PROGRAM.
‘‘(a) PROGRAM REQUIRED.—The Secretary of Energy, acting through the Administrator for Nuclear Security and in consultation with the Secretary of Defense, shall carry out a program, in support of the stockpile stewardship program, to provide for the effective management of the weapons in the nuclear weapons stockpile, including the extension of the effective life of such weapons. The program shall have the following objectives:
‘‘(1) To increase the reliability, safety, and security of the nuclear weapons stockpile of the United States.
‘‘(2) To further reduce the likelihood of the resumption of underground nuclear weapons testing.
‘‘(3) To achieve reductions in the future size of the nuclear weapons stockpile.
‘‘(4) To reduce the risk of an accidental detonation of an element of the stockpile.
‘‘(5) To reduce the risk of an element of the stockpile being used by a person or entity hostile to the United States, its vital interests, or its allies.
‘‘(b) PROGRAM LIMITATIONS.—In carrying out the stockpile management program under subsection (a), the Secretary of Energy shall ensure that—
‘‘(1) any changes made to the stockpile shall be made to achieve the objectives identified in subsection (a); and
‘‘(2) any such changes made to the stockpile shall—
‘‘(A) remain consistent with basic design parameters by including, to the maximum extent feasible, components that are well understood or are certifiable without the need to resume underground nuclear weapons testing; and
‘‘(B) use the design, certification, and production expertise resident in the nuclear complex to fulfill current mission requirements of the existing stockpile.
‘‘(c) PROGRAM PLAN.—In carrying out the stockpile management program under subsection (a), the Secretary of Energy shall develop a long-term plan to extend the effective life of the weapons in the nuclear weapons stockpile without the use of nuclear weapons testing. The plan shall include the following:
‘‘(1) Mechanisms to provide for the manufacture, maintenance, and modernization of each weapon design in the nuclear stockpile, as needed.
‘‘(2) Mechanisms to expedite the collection of information necessary for carrying out the program, including information relating to the aging of materials and components, new manufacturing techniques, and the replacement or substitution of materials.
‘‘(3) Mechanisms to ensure the appropriate assignment of roles and missions for each nuclear weapons laboratory and production plant of the Department of Energy, including mechanisms for allocation of workload, mechanisms to ensure the carrying out of appropriate modernization activities, and mechanisms to ensure the retention of skilled personnel.
‘‘(4) Mechanisms to ensure that each national laboratory of the National Nuclear Security Administration has full and complete access to all weapons data to enable a rigorous peer review process to support the annual assessment of the condition of the nuclear weapons stockpile required under section 4205.
‘‘(5) Mechanisms for allocating funds for activities under the program, including allocations of funds by weapon type and facility.
‘‘(6) An identification of the funds needed, in the fiscal year in which the plan is developed and in each of the following five fiscal years, to carry out the program.

The task of balancing all of these objectives and constraints will produce some different technical answers on how to do so but the debate about the warheads is far from over, even if the debate about the complex has been somewhat resolved.