Editor’s note: the following was adapted from remarks delivered Wednesday by retired Air Force Gen. Frank Klotz, administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) from 2014 to 2018, in a virtual forum organized by the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies and the Advanced Nuclear Weapons Alliance Deterrence Center. The Exchange Monitor has abridged Klotz’s remarks and edited them for style only.
By Frank Klotz
It is well past time, well past time, especially given NNSA’s more recent track record, to change the narrative that NNSA can’t do anything right in managing large-scale programs and to acknowledge how well it actually has done and is continuing to do to reestablish the capabilities of the U.S. nuclear weapons enterprise following 20 years of neglect and under-funding that immediately followed the collapse of the Soviet Union.
In my view, one of the best ways to promote cooperation between the Department of Defense (DOD) and NNSA would be to discard the outdated, negative narrative regarding NNSA’s capabilities and performance. It may have been justified in the past, but it no longer is.
Unfortunately, that negative narrative is so deeply entrenched, including in the halls of the Pentagon, and even in the think-tank world that I currently inhabit, that it continues to poison, I think, the relationship between DOD and NNSA.
But think for a moment what NNSA and its labs and production facilities have accomplished over the past few years: the W76 life-extension program was completed under budget and ahead of schedule. The W76-2 warheads were delivered to the Navy. The first production units of the W88 Alt-370 and the B61-12 have been completed. Construction of the Uranium Processing Facility at Y-12, which I just discussed, remains on schedule and on budget. Enormous strides have been made in adopting DOD best practices in managing acquisition and construction programs, and the NNSA has used its accepted service hiring authorities to bring on board highly experienced program and construction managers from the military services.
It’s true, NNSA has experienced delays associated with supply chain problems, the challenge of qualifying new vendors and reestablishing capabilities that our national leadership, quite frankly, allowed to atrophy over two decades. And they’ve taken on the challenge of fielding new, state-of-the-art capabilities.
But these are the same issues that have led to delays and cost overruns in DOD acquisition programs, as anyone who is familiar with the F-35, the KC-46, just to name two, knows quite well.
I mention these not to cast stones at my former employer, far from it. Rather, it is to suggest that no one who works in the vast and complex national security enterprise should be the first to cast stones at anyone else or any other organization.
Like much of life, we’re all on similar journeys, often striving for the same objectives and facing similar opportunities and setbacks along the ways. That fact alone should engender empathy and understanding, not unfounded and counterproductive criticism.
So to conclude, I think a good resolution for the new year would be for all of us to adopt a new, more constructive and factually based narrative about NNSA, its performance and its important place within the U.S. nuclear weapons enterprise.
