Alissa Tabirian
NS&D Monitor
10/2/2015
The House of Representatives passed its version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for fiscal 2016 yesterday in a 270-156 vote that authorizes President Barack Obama’s total $611.9 billion request for defense discretionary spending. The Senate is scheduled to vote on the bill next week before sending it to the president, who has threatened a veto. The bill authorizes $12.5 billion for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and fulfills the fiscal 2016 funding requests for each of its laboratories, totaling $830.8 million. The continuing resolution passed by Congress this week to fund the government through Dec. 11 and avoid a government shutdown leaves NNSA funding at fiscal 2015 levels.
The conference version of the bill directs Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz to establish a “stockpile responsiveness program” alongside the Stockpile Stewardship Program “to identify, sustain, enhance, integrate, and continually exercise all capabilities required to conceptualize, study, design, develop, engineer, certify, produce and deploy nuclear weapons.” The program is intended to ensure knowledge transfer “with respect to all phases of the joint nuclear weapons life cycle process from one generation of nuclear weapon designers and engineers to the following generation.”
Deferred Maintenance
The bill grants “an additional $50 million to start tackling the $3.6 billion backlog of old, crumbling infrastructure within the [NNSA],” according to the summary of the conference report version of the bill. The report also retains language in the Senate and House versions of the NDAA for fiscal 2016 that calls for the transfer—within three years of the bill’s passage—of nonoperational NNSA facilities to the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management, for decontamination and decommissioning activities. The agreement also carries over language from both chambers’ versions of the bill to provide a “forcing function” to DOE and NNSA to ensure implementation of recommendations for improving the “longstanding governance and management problems at these agencies,” the report summary says.
Governance and Administration
The bill calls on the secretary of energy and the NNSA administrator to create a team of senior officials from both agencies “to develop and carry out an implementation plan to reform the governance and management of the nuclear security enterprise.” The plan, meant “to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the nuclear security enterprise,” must be submitted to Congress by March 31, 2016, according to the bill. Another section of the legislation prohibits bonus pay to career appointees for one year in case of “improper program management.” In case of improper management by DOE or NNSA contractors, the agencies would be required to submit to Congress an explanation of appropriate agency responses, including potential contract termination.
Russia and the INF Treaty
The bill includes a bipartisan proposal calling for “research and development of military responses to Russia’s violation of the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty,” according to the report summary that calls the alleged violation “largely unchallenged by the Administration thus far.” Since 1987, the treaty has banned all intermediate-range and shorter-range missiles by the two countries. Citing “the development and deployment of a nuclear ground-launched cruise missile” as the violation, the bill asks the president for a report within 30 days and then every three months afterward of whether Russia has tested or deployed such a system and whether it “has begun steps to return to full compliance with the INF Treaty.” It calls on Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter to submit a plan for the development of counterforce capabilities, countervailing strike capabilities, and active defenses against intermediate-range ground-launched cruise missile attacks.
Other activities authorized by the bill include:
- Up to $50 million “to carry out the nuclear weapons dismantlement and disposition activities of the Administration”;
- Up to $5 million for naval reactor research and development “of an advanced naval nuclear fuel system based on low-enriched uranium”; and
- Creation of a “microlab” program, associated with the national security laboratories, to facilitate collaboration with research groups, promote “technology transfer from national security laboratories to the marketplace,” and develop the regional workforce “through science, technology, engineering, and mathematics instruction and training.”
