March 17, 2014

HAGEL: NUCLEAR TRIAD TO SURVIVE CUTS IN FY 2015 BUDGET REQUEST

By ExchangeMonitor

The nuclear triad will survive Pentagon spending cuts in President Obama’s Fiscal Year 2015 budget request, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said yesterday. Offering a preview of the President’s budget request to reporters at the Pentagon, Hagel outlined a series of spending cuts across the Department of Defense, but singled out the nuclear triad—consisting of nuclear-capable bombers, intercontinental ballistic missiles and submarine-launched ballistic missiles—for protection in the budget. “Our recommendations favor a smaller and more capable force, putting a premium on rapidly deployable, self-sustaining platforms that can defeat more technologically advanced adversaries,” Hagel said. “We also preserve all three legs of the nuclear triad and will make important investments to preserve a safe, secure, reliable and effective nuclear force.”

Some arms control experts have called for the Obama Administration to make cuts to the nuclear triad with implantation of the New START Treaty ongoing and it planning to pursue another round of arms control negotiations with Russia. Hagel’s comments, however, appear to reflect the importance placed by the Administration on the triad. “The forces we prioritize can project power over great distances and carry out a variety of missions more relevant to the President’s defense strategy, such as homeland defense, strategic deterrence, building partnership capacity and defeating asymmetric threats. They’re also well-suited to the strategy’s rebalance to the Asia-Pacific region, to sustaining security commitments in the Middle East and Europe and our engagement in other regions.”

At the same time, the Pentagon recently confirmed that it is moving forward with an environmental study on trimming the size of the ICBM force as part of implementing the New START Treaty—going against language in the FY 2014 omnibus appropriations act prohibiting such a study from taking place. “The [environmental assessment] will collect information from all three missile bases on the effects of eliminating no more than 50 ICBM silos,” Pentagon spokeswoman Cynthia Smith said in a statement Friday. “While we don’t know what the final force structure will be at this time, the administration remains committed to maintaining safe, secure and effective nuclear deterrence capabilities that include the ICBM leg of the nation’s nuclear triad.”

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