Top defense officials were scheduled to brief the Senate Armed Services Committee today in a closed session about the Donald Trump administration’s expansive Nuclear Posture Review, a draft of which leaked to the press in early January.
The hearing is scheduled for 9:30 a.m. at the Office of Senate Security in the Capitol Visitor Center. On the witness list are: John Rood, undersecretary of defense for policy, and Air Force Gen. Paul Selva, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The Nuclear Posture Review will set U.S. nuclear deterrence policy for up to a decade. The leaked draft nuclear says the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) should prioritize work on existing warheads, but also modify some of those warheads for new nuclear capabilities.
The draft report adds that the “NNSA will maintain the capability to resume underground nuclear explosive testing if called upon to do so,” but that the United States will continue to observe a weapons-testing moratorium established in 1992 in reciprocation to a unilateral test ban by the Soviet Union.
The draft Nuclear Posture Review, the first since 2010, also calls for more spending across the NNSA complex, among other things.
