As the Obama Administration considers changes to the nation’s nuclear force structure, potentially moving toward a smaller nuclear force, the Administration should begin planning now to scale back its plans to modernize the nation’s nuclear deterrent rather than waiting for budget realities to dictate changes, a Congressional Research Service official said at an Arms Control Association event Friday. “Wouldn’t it make sense to make the decision about changing how you operate the force before the budget forces you to do it because the budget forces you to reduce the number of delivery systems?” Amy Woolf of the Congressional Research Service said at the event in Washington. “Right now we are kind of in that crossover point. The Administration is looking at changes in the guidance that might allow you to change how you operate the force and therefore buy fewer systems because budget pressures, which may win the day, are putting a lot of pressure to buy fewer systems, to buy them later, which may then force you to change how you operate the force.”
Woolf also said that the Pentagon’s plans to spread modernization efforts out over a longer time period in order to lower its budget request could end up resulting either in higher costs or less modernization. “If you want to reduce the amount of money that you put into the budget in the next year or the next five years or the next 10 years on any of these modernization plans, you’re talking generally about slowing them down, stretching them out. The budget funding, the money in the budget for the next several years is all R&D and design money,” she said, adding that procurements are not planned until five to seven years from now. “If you do that, if you slow them down, you don’t actually save money on nuclear weapons. You may actually cost more money in the long run, you just do it later,” she said. She added that another effect could be that “the longer you wait the less you need. That may be one benefit if you’re looking for a way to reduce long term costs, drag it out now and eventually you buy less.”
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