May 29, 2014

ADMIN. OPPOSES HOUSE EFFORTS TO SPEED UP ALCM, PIT PRODUCTION

By ExchangeMonitor

The Obama Administration is objecting to House attempts to accelerate some warhead modernization efforts and is threatening to veto the House version of the Fiscal Year 2015 Defense Authorization Act if the provisions remain in the bill. In a Statement of Administration Policy, the Administration said it opposes language in the bill that would speed up work on a new air-launched cruise missile (ALCM) warhead and quicken efforts to establish a plutonium pit production capacity. In the SAP, the Administration said moving up a First Production Unit for the ALCM to 2024 “would require increased funding through FY 2019 and significant cuts in other programs,” while it said establishing the capability to produce 30 pits by 2023 and 50 by 2026 would “unnecessarily increase risk by requiring further trade-offs with other nuclear weapons programs. The Administration believes the plan put forward in the FY 2015 Stockpile Stewardship and Management Plan represents the best balance of programs to maintain the deterrent and provide for a responsive infrastructure.” A provision to limit the size of NNSA federal staff to 1,650 full-time employees also was opposed.

The Administration also said it opposed language requiring construction to continue on the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility in FY 2015 as well as a provision requiring the Pentagon to keep all of its 450 ICBM silos in warm status through 2021. A $93 million reduction in authorized funding for the NNSA’s Second Line of Defense program to install radiation detection equipment at key border crossings around the world also was opposed by the Administration, which suggested that “abruptly removing SLD capabilities would result in gaps in our defenses that cannot be filled by any other program.” The Administration also said it opposed provisions that would limit nuclear security and nonproliferation cooperation between the U.S. and Russia, arguing that “cooperation with Russia remains an essential element to the global effort to address the threat posed by nuclear terrorism. Critical bilateral nuclear nonproliferation activities are continuing in a number of key areas, and nuclear security is of paramount importance. The blanket restriction on the use of funds for ‘contact’ or ‘cooperation’ between the United States and the Russian Federation unconstitutionally interferes with the President’s constitutional authority to conduct diplomacy.”

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