[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 84 (Monday, June 8, 2009)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6235-S6238]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    COMMISSION ON STRATEGIC POSTURE

  Mr. KYL. Mr. President, the next matter I wish to address is a 
follow-on also to the bipartisan Commission on the Strategic Posture of 
the United States. I called it the Perry-Schlesinger Commission a 
moment ago. As part of the 2008 National Defense Authorization Act, 
Congress created this bipartisan Commission and charged the Commission 
of six Democrats and six Republicans to assess the needs of the United 
States with regard to nuclear weapons and missile defense and asked 
that it make recommendations regarding the role each should play in the 
Nation's defense.
  As its Chair and Vice-Chair, former Secretary of Defense for 
President Clinton, William Perry, and former Secretary of Defense for 
Defense and Energy for Presidents Nixon, Ford and Carter, James 
Schlesinger, respectively, stated in testimony to the House and Senate 
Armed Services Committees, the Congress wanted the Commission to reach 
a bipartisan consensus on its recommendations and

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findings to provide a roadmap for action by the administration and 
Congress.

  The final report issued by the Commission on May 6th did that to a 
remarkable degree.
  In fact, the Commission reached bipartisan consensus on all but one 
issue, the merit of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which this body 
rejected 10 years ago.
  It now falls to the administration and the Congress to act on the 
findings and recommendations of the Commission. And the recommendations 
come at a propitious time because the administration and Congress have 
been following a course significantly at odds with the Commission's 
findings.
  It is not too late for the President to change course and pursue the 
bipartisan recommendations of this esteemed panel to recreate the basic 
building blocks of the U.S. strategic deterrent.
  First, let me discuss the Commission's recommendations. The unifying 
theme of the Commission on the Strategic Posture was a simple one: 
nuclear weapons will be needed to guarantee U.S. national security--and 
that of our allies--for the indefinite future.
  There has been a great deal written about ways the U.S. should lead 
the world toward the elimination of nuclear weapons.
  The President himself has endorsed this goal.
  The Commission, however, urged caution:

       [t]he conditions that might make the elimination of nuclear 
     weapons possible are not present today and establishing such 
     conditions would require a fundamental transformation of the 
     world political order.

  It necessarily follows that if the United States needs to possess 
nuclear weapons for the foreseeable future, it needs a safe, reliable 
and credible nuclear deterrent.
  As the Commission stated:

       [t]he United States requires a stockpile of nuclear weapons 
     that is safe, secure, and reliable, and whose threatened use 
     in military conflict would be credible.

  However, the Commission issued ominous warnings about the current 
state of our weapons, and the programs to extend their life, stating:

       The life extension program has to date been effective in 
     dealing with the problem of modernizing the arsenal. But it 
     is becoming increasingly difficult to continue within the 
     constraints of a rigid adherence to original materials and 
     design as the stockpile continues to age.

  Of course, this is not breaking news. Those with responsibility for 
the safety and reliability of our nuclear weapons have been issuing 
similar, and, in some cases, more dire, warnings.
  For example, Secretary Gates stated in his October 2008 speech at the 
Carnegie Endowment:

       [L]et me first say very clearly that our weapons are safe, 
     reliable and secure. The problem is the long-term prognosis, 
     which I would characterize as bleak.

  He went on:

       [A]t a certain point, it will become impossible to keep 
     extending the life of our arsenal, especially in light of our 
     testing moratorium.

  Add to this the warnings of our lab directors, like Director Michael 
Anastasio at the Los Alamos National Lab who said in open testimony 
last April:

       [T]he weapons in the stockpile are not static. The chemical 
     and radiation processes inside the nuclear physics package 
     induce material changes that limit weapon lifetimes. We are 
     seeing significant changes that are discussed in detail in my 
     Annual Assessment letter.

  Sadly, these warnings have fallen on the deaf ears of Congress, which 
has killed, with next to no debate, even the most restrained 
modernization programs and has even been underfunding the tools by 
which we maintain the weapons we have.
  As Director Anastasio said in that same testimony:

       At the same time, there are ever-increasing standards 
     imposed by environmental management, safety, and security 
     requirements driving up the costs of the overall 
     infrastructure. When coupled with a very constrained budget, 
     the overall effect is exacerbated, restricting and, in some 
     cases eliminating, our use of experimental tools across the 
     complex. This puts at risk the fundamental premise of 
     Stockpile Stewardship.

  That is a profound statement. Stockpile stewardship was the promise 
made--the bargain, so to speak--when Congress imposed the testing 
moratorium in the early 1990s and then again when President Clinton 
urged ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.
  We were told testing wasn't necessary because we would undertake a 
robust science-based stockpile stewardship program. But, as the 
Commission recognized, it isn't adequately funded. In fact, inadequate 
funding is now a recurring theme for the U.S. nuclear weapons 
enterprise. Director Anastasio warned last year that, at least 
regarding Los Alamos, the purchasing power of his laboratory has 
declined by more than half a billion dollars over the last 5 years and 
that according to preliminary planning--of the kind reflected in the 
President's budget for fiscal year 2010--the next 5 years will see a 
further erosion of about another $400 million. These are significant 
cuts.
  Perhaps the most troubling impact of these budgets is the human 
capital, the scientists, engineers and technicians who possess skills 
and experience that can't be replaced.
  In an understated fashion, the Commission warned that the 
``intellectual infrastructure is also in serious trouble'' and that 
budget trends show further workforce elimination is imminent.
  Secretary Gates expressed his concern about the nuclear weapons 
workforce this way:

       The U.S. is experiencing a serious brain drain in the loss 
     of veteran nuclear weapons designers and technicians. Since 
     the mid-1990s, the National Nuclear Security Administration 
     has lost more than a quarter of its workforce. Half of our 
     nuclear lab scientists are over 50 years old, and many of 
     those under 50 have had limited or no involvement in the 
     design and development of a nuclear weapon. By some 
     estimates, within the next several years, three-quarters of 
     the workforce in nuclear engineering and at the national 
     laboratories will reach retirement age.

  This is playing out today on the newspaper pages: just look at the 
May 29 Los Angeles Times report on delays in the Lifetime Extension 
Program for the W76 warhead, the submarine-based mainstay of America's 
nuclear deterrent.
  The L.A. Times reported:

       At issue with the W76, at least in part, is a classified 
     component that was used in the original weapons but that 
     engineers and scientists at the Energy Department's plant in 
     Oak Ridge, Tennessee, would not duplicate in a series of 
     efforts over the last several years.

  As Philip Coyle, a former deputy director of the Livermore Lab, 
stated in this article:

       I don't know how this happened that we forgot how to make 
     fogbank, it should not have happened, but it did.

  Related to the safety and reliability of our nuclear weapons 
stockpile, said the Commission, is the design and size of the nuclear 
force itself. On this point, it is not only U.S. security that is 
threatened, so is the security of the 30 or so friendly and allied 
nations that rely on the so-called U.S. extended deterrent, aka the 
nuclear umbrella.
  As Secretary Schlesinger explained at the Senate Armed Services 
Committee on Thursday, May 7th:

       The requirements for Extended Deterrence still remain at 
     the heart of the design of the U.S. nuclear posture.

  While this may seem like an onerous responsibility for the United 
States, it is one, Secretary Schlesinger explained, we must continue to 
pay, because ``extended deterrence remains a major barrier to 
proliferation.''
  And restraining proliferation is definitely a top national security 
interest of the United States.
  In essence, what this means is, numbers matter. We cannot just reduce 
the numbers of our weapons to some arbitrary number, like 1,500 or 
1,000, significant only because they end with zeroes, we must have a 
nuclear arsenal sufficient to cover both the U.S. and the allies who 
rely on us. And if we do not, our allies could conclude they need to 
develop their own.
  The Commission also recognized that specific platforms matter; this 
is why the Commission stated that the triad, the submarines, bombers, 
and ICBMs, must be retained as well as other delivery systems, such as 
our nuclear-capable cruise missiles, which are of interest to key 
allies in strategically vital areas of the world.
  It is my hope that the administration and Congress will take these 
findings and recommendations seriously.
  We owe the Commissioners a debt of gratitude for their service. The 
best

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way to show our gratitude is by listening to them and charting our 
course based on where they revealed consensus is possible.
  Will Congress and the administration heed the Commission's bipartisan 
findings and recommendations?
  I am fearful that that will not be the case. Why do I say that?
  It appears the administration is preparing to take big risks in the 
negotiation of a START follow-on treaty with Russia.
  Specifically, the President announced at his G-20 meeting with 
Russian President Medvedev that he intends to seek a START follow-on 
treaty that moves below the lower level of strategic nuclear forces 
permitted by the Moscow Treaty.
  Some press reports suggest that administration is seeking to go as 
low as 1,500 deployed strategic nuclear weapons, or about a 30-percent 
reduction from present levels.
  I am not going to prejudge the correct number of nuclear forces for 
the U.S.
  I will, however, say that I agree with the Commission, which referred 
to the ``complex decision-making'' process involved in determining the 
size of the U.S. nuclear force.
  What this means is that careful and rigorous analysis is needed 
before pursuing reductions below Moscow levels.
  Congress has ordered just this analysis in the form of a Quadrennial 
Defense Review and Nuclear Posture Review.
  But there is every indication that our arms control negotiators are 
working off of some other kind of analysis.
  Presumably, the next NPR would then have to conclude that the level 
agreed to in a START follow-on is the right number.
  This is like writing the test to suit what the test taker knows, and 
not what the test taker should know.
  The last NPR looked at the world as it stood in 2001 and its 
recommendations resulted in reductions of U.S. nuclear forces to 
approximately 2,200 strategic nuclear weapons.
  Is the world more or less safe than in 2001? Is Russia more or less 
aggressive that it was then? Is Pakistan a more or less significant 
threat? Is Iran closer to a nuclear weapon? How many more nuclear 
weapons has China built since 2001?
  These are all questions that must be answered.
  And the needs of our allies must be understood in this threat 
context. They are similarly concerned about the size of our deterrent, 
as I noted before.
  We must engage in consultations with each of them about what U.S. 
nuclear force posture assures them of their security, not what we think 
should assure them.
  And we must understand what threats they need to deter for their 
security. We must understand whether they are concerned about Russia's 
tactical nuclear weapons, which Russia insists absolutely cannot be 
discussed.
  If so, how do further U.S. strategic nuclear reductions affect the 
balance of forces between the hundreds of tactical nuclear weapons the 
U.S. possesses versus the several thousands of tactical nuclear weapons 
Russia possesses?
  Equally concerning is the fact that the cart appears to be before the 
horse. And by that I mean, it appears we may be presented with a START 
follow-on that compels a new nuclear posture, with significant 
reductions, but does not explain how that posture will be supported.
  What kind of modernization program will be undertaken to support the 
requirement articulated by the Commission that the U.S. maintain a safe 
and reliable deterrent for so long as one is necessary? And what about 
the Manhattan Project-era complex of physical infrastructure that 
sustains it--what will be done to modernize it?
  It is unclear how we can safely put further reductions ahead of long 
overdue modernization. All of this argues for slowing down and taking a 
breath.
  The START Treaty of 1991 expires early this December. I agree with 
those who say that the verification and confidence building elements of 
that treaty are too important to allow to expire. It is also 
significant that that treaty's provisions undergird the Moscow Treaty.
  So why not simply negotiate a 1- or 2-year extension to permit time 
to perform the complex analyses that are involved in appropriately 
sizing the U.S. nuclear force posture?
  At the same time, the administration could devise a plan for the 
modernization of our nuclear weapons and the complex which supports it.
  Otherwise, the administration will be asking the Senate to ratify a 
START follow-on that may include significant strategic arms reductions, 
which compels serious and lengthy review based on the panoply of issues 
the Commission addressed, without the necessary modernization plan, 
which, in light of the fiscal year 2010 budget request, would have to 
be included in the fiscal year 2011 budget request that will not be 
submitted to the Congress until February of 2010.
  So the administration either needs to slow down on this ambitious 
START follow-on, move forward on a follow-on that only deals with the 
necessary issues, or submit an amended budget request that reflects 
modernization programs recommended by the last administration, such as 
the NNSA complex transformation, which the Commission endorsed, and 
RRW. 
  In fact, with or without nuclear weapons reductions, this is a 
critical exercise.
  We maintain a significant nondeployed reserve of nuclear weapons 
today because we are concerned about the reliability of our aging 
weapons, the last of which was designed in the 1980s and built in the 
1990s and we have no viable production capability.
  We worry about the failure of a weapon that could affect an entire 
class of weapons, possibly knocking out a leg of the triad.
  We worry about this because the weapons are old and we have do not 
have the capacity to respond quickly to a significant failing in these 
weapons because of the age and obsolescence of the nuclear weapons 
complex.
  Additionally, because of the ancient state of much of the nuclear 
weapons complex, we must also be worried about the danger of a 
strategic surprise, put another way, a new global threat.
  If a new threat emerged, a real prospect given the instability in 
Pakistan and North Korea's proliferation to Syria, we do not presently 
have the capacity to quickly build up our stockpile or develop a 
nuclear weapon capable of dealing with the threat.
  So, we maintain many more nuclear weapons than necessary.
  A modernization program for our stockpile and infrastructure would 
permit the administration to pursue all of its objectives now, 
including reducing the number of warheads.
  The administration should fund the NNSA transformation plan, which 
would allow us to build a smaller, more efficient, and modern 
laboratory and production infrastructure, and finally replace the 
Manhattan Project-era facilities we are currently spending so much 
money to maintain. In fact, the NNSA complex transformation plan was 
specifically endorsed by the Commission.
  It can pick up and fund the Reliable Replacement Warhead studies, 
which would, for the first time since the 1980s, put our weapons 
designers to work on a modern warhead for the U.S. stockpile.
  But it must move forward now.
  Unfortunately, the budget the administration just put forward does 
not recognize the critical state of affairs in our nuclear weapons 
enterprise.
  It not only does nothing to modernize our weapons, it continues the 
neglect of the Stockpile Stewardship Program and the basic science and 
engineering that supports it.
  Specifically, the science campaign, the science in science-based 
stockpile stewardship, continues to be underfunded in the President's 
fiscal year 2010 budget request. Worse yet, according to the 
projections in the President's budget, the underfunding of the science 
in Stockpile Stewardship will actually be accelerated between fiscal 
year 2011 and fiscal year 2014.
  The impact of these cuts to the science campaign can also be seen in 
the continued cuts in the funding requested for the laboratories to use 
the Stockpile Stewardship Program, SSP, tools, including the DAHRT 
facility, which is essentially a big x-ray used to study what goes on 
in a nuclear weapon at the earliest stages of criticality, without 
actually producing nuclear yield.

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  Another example is the advanced computing program, the use of which 
this budget continues to underfund.
  The budget for the engineering campaign, which develops capabilities 
to improve the safety and reliability of the stockpile, is kept at the 
fiscal year 2009 level, which is a reduction from the fiscal year 2008 
level. Again, between fiscal year 2011-2014, the engineering campaign 
budget is cut, and it is cut more significantly than the science 
campaign budget.
  The effect of the administration's budget is to continue, and even 
accelerate, the brain drain at the labs.
  The Commission is not alone in warning about the effects of this 
brain drain.
  The recent Los Angeles Times article was based off of, in part, a 
recent GAO study that pointed out that the lifetime extension programs 
on the W-76 and the B-61 were in some cases affected by the fact that 
we have forgotten some of the key processes involved in building our 
nuclear weapons.
  The administration would also be wise to consider that there was 
bipartisan consensus on every aspect of the Commission's report save 
one, the CTBT.
  The administration has said that it intends to push hard to get the 
Senate to ratify this treaty, even though the Senate has already 
rejected it once, by a significant margin.
  I know of no information that suggests that the matters that led the 
Senate to reject the treaty have changed for the better. In some 
respects, like the deteriorating condition of our strategic deterrent, 
they have gotten worse.
  Lastly, it is worth pointing out that the Commission articulated real 
dangers from nuclear terrorism and the ``tipping point'' of a 
proliferation cascade on which we are now perilously perched thanks to 
the impotent response of the world community to the illegal Iranian and 
North Korean nuclear weapons programs.
  The President also recognized this threat in recent remarks in Prague 
when he stated: ``in a strange turn of history, the threat of global 
nuclear war has gone down, but the risk of a nuclear attack has gone 
up.''
  I think that is exactly right.
  My concern is the initial steps the President has chosen to deal with 
this threat, the threat also identified by the Commission, are not at 
all tailored to provide a solution to these grave threats.
  It is important to ensure the verification measures of START do not 
expire, but that treaty would not deal with the threat of terrorists 
obtaining nuclear weapons technology or material.
  Likewise, CTBT, a bad idea shrouded in good intentions, would not 
even be capable of detecting political tantrums like the North Korean 
test, even when the international monitoring system is told where and 
when to look.
  Yet, these are the measures the administration has chosen to spend 
its capital on.
  I urge the administration to look for areas to work with the 
Congress: globalizing the Nunn-Lugar program, dealing with the threat 
posed by the spread of civilian nuclear technology, strengthening our 
nuclear intelligence, attribution and forensic capabilities to name a 
few.
  Mr. President, the Commission on the Strategic Posture, led by two of 
our most esteemed experts on U.S. national security, has just completed 
more than a year-long review of the role that nuclear weapons play in 
our national security.
  The 12 Commissioners have done what no one thought was possible: they 
have found a bipartisan consensus.
  They have presented their findings and recommendations to the 
President and the Congress.
  It now becomes our turn, the elected political leaders, to take the 
fruit of the Commission's labor and move forward on the necessary and 
long overdue steps these experts have deemed necessary, regardless of 
party affiliation, to protect the American people.

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