The subject of reforming the National Nuclear Security Administration has been a hotly debated topic on Capitol Hill over the last few months, but the commander of U.S. Strategic Command declined to definitively weigh in on the subject yesterday. Asked during an appearance at the Council on Foreign Relations whether he felt the NNSA needed to be reformed, as the House has proposed as part of the Fiscal Year 2013 Defense Authorization Act, Gen. Robert Kehler said he is mainly focused on the agency’s ability to deliver warheads to the Pentagon. “As the customer—I don’t mean to have this sound the wrong way—but at the end of the day what I’m really concerned about is that they deliver the weapons to us that we need when we need them,” Kehler said. “The management of the enterprise, it is certainly important to me, but only to the extent that it gets to that broader end.” Repeating statements he made before Congress earlier this year, Kehler has called funding issues facing efforts to modernize the weapons complex his biggest concern, and he acknowledged that the Pentagon was closely examining what the management structure of the agency “could be or should be.” But he added, “from a customer standpoint what is really important to me is that I can advocate for the investment they need and I can advocate for the people they need and what is coming out of the complex is the sort of product that I need.”
When asked afterward whether he was happy with the NNSA’s ability to deliver product, Kehler repeated his position that uncertainties about the Obama Administration’s plan to modernize the nation’s nuclear weapons complex and arsenal are incomplete beyond Fiscal Year 2013. House Republicans have criticized the Administration for delaying work on one of the pillars of the modernization effort, the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement-Nuclear Facility planned for Los Alamos National Laboratory, and slowing work on three key warhead refurbishment efforts, suggesting that management problems at the agency have contributed to the delays. “Don’t call me happy or sad,” Kehler told NW&M Monitor after his talk at the Council on Foreign Relations. “I’m not yet comfortable that we’ve got a way ahead that the plan closes beyond ‘13, and until I have that and I know there is something they can deliver, I will not be comfortable. And I will remain concerned.”
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