Moments after Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel’s Nov. 14 announcement of upcoming reforms to the under-resourced U.S. nuclear enterprise, Rep. Buck McKeon (R-Calif.), chair of the House Armed Services Committee, called for his congressional peers to appropriate funding toward the aging nuclear arsenal, and charged President Obama to dump his “Global Zero” philosophy, equating the concept with unilateral disarmament. Among other initiatives, Hagel pledged to meet quarterly with top U.S. Strategic Command officials and to request billions of dollars for STRATCOM for Fiscal Year 2016, in the wake of two studies – one
internal and one
external – that revealed a culture of micromanagement and decades-long negligence by officials within nuclear forces. “I hope the President will listen to his senior civilian and military national security leaders, take this as seriously as they do, and cast aside his Global Zero vision that is in reality unilateral disarmament,” McKeon remarked in a Friday statement. “We can work together to follow the blueprint established by Secretary Hagel and his review and show the leadership our men and women in uniform deserve.”
Two senators joined McKeon last week in calling for increased investments in the U.S. nuclear enterprise. In statements released Nov. 14, Sens. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.) and Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) both pushed for modernization of the U.S. nuclear deterrent. “I’m glad Secretary Hagel is acknowledging that we need to upgrade our nuclear deterrent – the problem, as in so many cases, is that the Obama administration isn’t saying how to pay for it,” stated Alexander, the top Republican on the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy & Water Development. “Secretary Hagel’s words are more evidence that the president and Congress need to restrain out-of-control entitlement spending and fix the nearly $18 trillion federal debt so there will be funding for urgent national security needs.”
After revelations detailing widespread cheating among Malmstrom AFB missileers surfaced in January, Hagel commissioned two reports on the nation’s nuclear weapons enterprise. A copy of the external report was released Nov. 14, along with a fact sheet on the internal report. Former Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Larry D. Welch and former commander of U.S. Fleet Forces Command Adm. John C. Harvey led the independent review, completed in June. Former Pentagon official and current National Nuclear Security Administration Principal Deputy Administrator Madelyn Creedon led the internal review. During a Nov. 14 press conference at the Pentagon, Hagel said DoD plans to request $10 billion in funding for the nation’s nuclear enterprise over the next five-year Future Years Defense Program. After the press conference Friday, Hagel spent the remainder of the day at Minot AFB’s 91st Missile Wing Operations Center, where he addressed airmen from the intercontinental ballistic missile and bomber legs of the nuclear triad, regarding the announced reforms.
