On its third try, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) mapped out a classified a plan to verify and monitor global proliferation of nuclear weapons, weapon components, and fissile materials, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) said Friday.
Congress ordered the NNSA to create this plan in 2015 and 2017, but the agency failed both times to produce a document that passed muster with Armed Services committees on Capitol Hill. Among other things, Congress said the NNSA’s classified plan should include an estimate of how much it would cost to verify and monitor weapons proliferation over 10 years, and create a road map defining roles and funding requirements for other U.S. agencies, including the military, that would participate in these decade-long nonproliferation efforts.
The 2018 National Defense Authorization Act, signed in December, ordered the NNSA to try again — and in April, the agency produced a plan the GAO deemed mostly adequate. The congressional watchdog reviewed the classified nonproliferation plan from May 2018 to August 2018, it said in a report.
Per the report, the NNSA still has not provided an estimate for how much the plan would cost over 10 years, the GAO said.
In a letter appended to the report, NNSA Administrator Lisa Gordon-Hagerty said it would be “impractical” to provide a 10-year cost estimate, in part because it is difficult to predict research and development costs “required to achieve specific outcomes.” Gordon-Hagerty said neither the NNSA nor the agencies with which it cooperates on proliferation matters ordinarily provide decade-long cost forecasts.
Gordon-Hagerty said the NNSA briefed congressional staff the plan, and that the agency does not intend to add a 10-year cost forecast, despite the GAO’s recommendation. The congressional auditor “maintains that the recommendation is valid,” the report reads.
The NNSA’s Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation appropriation was more or less stable in this budget cycle. The account would be trimmed by about $70 million to $1.9 billion under the fiscal 2019 minibus spending bill Congress passed last week. That is still about $70 million more than the administration requested for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1.
