June 18, 2014

StratCom Chief Voices Support for Nuclear Cruise Missile, Modernization Efforts

By ExchangeMonitor

With questions swirling from the Senate Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee about the Air Force’s need for a follow-on nuclear air-launched cruise missile, Strategic Command chief Adm. Cecil Haney voiced his support for the mission need for the weapon. “That’s an important facet of our deterrent, to have that capability, to have that standoff capability now and well into the future,” Haney said during a speech at the Capitol Hill Club yesterday. The subcommittee earlier this week zeroed out funding for National Nuclear Security Administration work on a nuclear air-launched cruise missile warhead replacement over concerns that clear military requirements haven’t been established for the follow-on cruise missile.

The action by the subcommittee represents increasing concerns raised by lawmakers about the Administration’s ‘3+2’ warhead modernization strategy. In addition to the recent action by the Senate Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee on the air-launched cruise missile, authorizers and appropriators in both the House and Senate have raised questions about the now-deferred first interoperable warhead proposed by the Administration over technical issues as well as concerns that the warheads might be too expensive in the current budget climate. But as he did earlier this year in Congressional testimony, Haney continued to advocate for the full suite of modernization efforts proposed by the Administration. While he called modernizing the sea leg of the deterrent his top priority, he said the air leg is no less important. “I won’t speculate on where Congress will go at the end of this journey, but I will say as we do this balance of where our funding is relative to sequestration and what have you, we just have to be mindful of what it needs to have a strategic deterrent that also has an air leg associated with it,” Haney said.

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