If confirmed as the next Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force Gen. C. Q. Brown vows support for nuclear weapons modernization efforts underway at the U.S. National Laboratories and will undertake a review of the nuclear arsenal to identify capability “gaps,” he said in recent written testimony.
Brown testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee for more than two hours on Tuesday, answering an array of questions, none of which were about U.S. nukes, warheads or delivery vehicles. Buried deep in written answers to 339 questions submitted prior to his in-person testimony are Brown’s thoughts on modernizing the nuclear triad, stockpile management and deterrence.
The Senate Armed Services Committee will vote on Brown’s confirmation to become the first Black chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff before the nomination heads to the full chamber. What happens there is undetermined, given Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s (R-Ala.) one-man blanket hold on senior military confirmations over the Pentagon’s policy of paying for troops to travel to receive abortion services if stationed in a state where the procedure is illegal.
Brown called the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) stockpile stewardship “rigorous” and said the agency has developed the “computational and experimental tools needed to certify the current stockpile without the need for full-scale nuclear weapons testing.”
However, the modern nuclear forces under development require new tools to certify their potency and reliability, he said. The NNSA would benefit from “enhanced computing and experimental capabilities, including enduring exascale computing and experimental facilities to certify weapons in hostile environments,” Brown wrote.
“Continued support for the National Laboratories is crucial for the viability of the stockpile stewardship mission,” he added.
Brown wrote that the current array of nuclear forces is “safe, secure and effective,” but that they have “greatly exceeded their design life and they are showing their age.”
“The 2022 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) affirmed the U.S. commitment to full-scope modernization of our nuclear forces, including all three legs of the U.S. strategic triad, dual-capable fighter aircraft, and nuclear command, control, and communications (NC3) systems,” Brown wrote. “If confirmed, I will examine whether additional options for the President are warranted to address any exploitable ‘gap(s)’ in our deterrence capabilities.”
Those programs of record are likely sufficient to modernize the existing nuclear force, but the multifaceted plan to modernize all three legs of the triad at once is “increasingly challenged to succeed in a timely manner,” Brown wrote. If confirmed, Brown said he would determine whether the U.S. should pursue additional nuclear weapon technologies and assess the size and scope of the enterprise.
“This is further challenged by atrophy in both the DoD industrial base for nuclear delivery platforms and [National Nuclear Security Administration] production capabilities and infrastructure, some of which date back to the Manhattan Project,” Brown wrote. “Fielding modern nuclear weapons requires the recapitalization of the [Department of Energy]/NNSA nuclear weapons production infrastructure that was largely abandoned and has largely atrophied since the end of the Cold War.”
Brown did not endorse a controversial sea-launched cruise missile (SLCM) tipped with a lower-yield W80-4 variant that the Biden Administration considers superfluous to other capabilities. The 2022 Nuclear Posture Review and the president’s fiscal 2024 budget called for killing SLCM-N but Congress kept funding for the weapon’s development flowing in 2023 and intends to do so again in 2024.
A written question posed to Brown was prefaced with a statement that the previous chairman of the joint chiefs of staff and “several combatant commanders” support developing a SLCM-N as a “means of addressing Russia’s advantages in theater-range nuclear weapons, managing escalation in a potential conflict with China, and enhancing assurance to U.S. allies.”
Asked whether he agreed with those views, Brown hedged, saying the U.S. “must maintain a range of strategic military options and capabilities to present to the president.”
“If confirmed, I will be able to more fully review how we can continuously improve our ability to deter and, if deterrence fails, restore deterrence, against our nuclear adversaries,” he wrote. “I am aware of differing perspectives regarding the nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missile. If confirmed, I will analyze the arguments for and against this program and will provide my military advice to the Secretary and President.”
