Legislation unveiled Tuesday would put the deputy secretary of defense on the Nuclear Weapons Council once a year and attempt to put the Pentagon on the hook for some risk management in the Department of Energy’s nuclear-weapons enterprise.
The proposal by the House Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee is part of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for 2023, which that subcommittee and others are assembling this week. Strategic Forces was set to mark up its part of the larger NDAA on Wednesday.
Larger nuclear-weapon debates, including whether to cancel a sea-launched nuclear cruise missile or cease maintaining the megaton-capable B83 gravity bomb, will wait for the full Armed Services Committee markup scheduled for June 22. Proposed spending for weapons programs will also be under wraps until then.
Meanwhile, the subcommittee’s proposed changes to the Nuclear Weapons Council aim to “coordinat[e] risk management efforts between the Department of Defense and the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA),” and “consolidate Nuclear Weapons Council reporting requirements,” according to bill text and explanatory statements posted online Tuesday.
To help do that, the bill would change the law so that “at least once annually,” the deputy secretary of defense would attend a Nuclear Weapons Council “and may serve as chair for that meeting,” according to the bill text. The deputy secretary of defense is not currently part of the Nuclear Weapons Council and would, if added to the body, be its most senior member.
The bill also would require the Nuclear Weapons Council to inform Congress if the military’s requirements for deploying modernized nuclear weapons, along with their delivery systems and carrier craft under the ongoing, 30-year, U.S. modernization program “create significant risks to cost, schedules, or other matters” at the NNSA, the semiautonomous part of DOE that handles nuclear weapons programs.
There are six voting members of the Nuclear Weapons Council, five of whom are either Department of Defense civilians or high-ranking military officers. The NNSA administrator, who may chair council meetings that are mostly about the NNSA, is the only representative from DOE.
Former NNSA administrator Frank Klotz in 2020 complained that the imbalance on the council created an environment where the Pentagon could “constantly grade the NNSA’s homework without its homework being graded in a reciprocal sort of way.”