Defense Secretary Ashton Carter will soon lead his first meeting of the Nuclear Deterrent Enterprise Review Group (NDERG), after former Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel held two NDERG meetings following the completion of one internal and one external review that both uncovered morale and equipment flaws within the nuclear enterprise, according to Greg Weaver, Principal Director for Nuclear and Missile Defense Policy. Hagel initiated the reviews in January 2014 in parallel with an ongoing drug investigation involving multiple Air Force bases and an investigation at Malmstrom AFB that uncovered cheating by missileers on monthly proficiency tests. In November, Hagel announced the creation of the NDERG, whose purpose is to evaluate implementation of more than 100 recommendations the reviews prescribed to reinvigorate the nuclear enterprise. Weaver on Friday told attendees of the Annual Nuclear Deterrence Summit that he expected Carter to lead an NDERG meeting “fairly quickly,” emphasizing that the approach of this group would probe force culture more deeply than previous task forces aimed at improving the nuclear enterprise. Chaired by Deputy Defense Secretary Bob Work, the NDERG meets once a month and reports to the Defense Secretary once a quarter.
"After previous reviews…the department took something of a checklist approach to monitoring the implementation of the recommendations of previous reviews of the nuclear enterprise,” Weaver said. “As a result of that approach, which was ill-advised, we knew whether we had implemented a recommendation of a review. What we didn’t know was whether the effect was working to fix the underlying problem that we have. There was no fundamental assessment of whether the implementation of our recommendations was fixing the problems, or in some cases, that we found in the most recent reviews, creating new problems as a result of unanticipated consequences and implementing some of our recommendations.”
The last nuclear force mishap occurred in 2007, when a B-52 mistakenly carried six unaccounted for nuclear-armed air-launched cruise missiles from Minot AFB to Barksdale AFB. To engender lasting culture change and reliability within the nuclear enterprise this time, the office of Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation (CAPE) within the Office of the Secretary of Defense has developed assessment methodologies and is looking at whether the “root causes” of enterprise problems are being addressed. Weaver said CAPE begins every NDERG session with a report to Work “on where we are and where we aren’t making the force healthy.”
Partner Content
Jobs