Klotz: If Sequestration Hits, NNSA Will Collaborate With DoD on Priorities

National Nuclear Security Administration chief Frank Klotz has warned that potential sequestration cuts in Fiscal Year 2016 could be “devastating” to the agency’s weapons program, but he said yesterday that any decisions about prioritizing work haven’t been made. And those decisions will only be made in consultation with the Department of Defense. “We will have to prioritize but it will be a collaborative effort,” Klotz said following a speech at the Air Force Association yesterday. “This will have to be a dialogue, if we get to that, and our great hope is we don’t have to get to that. If we get to that this will have to be a collaborative discussion with the Department of Defense in terms of what their priorities are and where they will go forward with particular delivery systems under the same conditions of sequestration that we have to deal with.”

 

Klotz said previously that sequestration cuts could force the Administration to delay or cancel the agency’s surveillance and life extension programs. He emphasized that decisions must be made with DoD in part because budget cuts would impact warhead work as well as the modernization of nuclear delivery systems at the same time. “It’s all part of the national defense budget,” he said. “If that’s hit by sequestration or some variant of that in the way of budget caps it’s going to affect both of us and the trades, the option space that will have to be considered, could impact the entire budget.”