Adm. Cecil Haney, commander of U.S. Strategic Command, Tuesday underscored the importance of “stable, predictable funding” in sustaining the nuclear triad, as Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) introduced the Smarter Approach to Nuclear Expenditures (SANE) Act this week.
The bill would cut nuclear weapons spending by $100 billion over the next decade, including a reduction in Ohio-class Replacement posture, from 12 to eight planned subs. The bill would also trim warhead life extension programs such as the B61-12, and would cancel the Long-Range Standoff Weapon, the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility, the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement-Nuclear Facility and the Uranium Processing Facility.
“Stability in the budget is important for defense at large and security for our nation. For my business, no different,” Haney said during a Pentagon press briefing. “Being able to look at it year to year is very problematic, because when you look at these programs [it takes] awhile in order to get them built and in operation, even though they last a long time. I mean, the B-52 we’re operating today, built in ’62, will be out there all the way to 2040.” Haney called for a long-term view of defense spending, aligning with the sentiments of Air Force Maj. Gen. Garrett Harencak stated Tuesday during the Carnegie Nuclear Conference. Harencak said the quick hit of sequestration can prevent the Air Force from prudent budget planning.
“Intellectually, we understand defense budgets are decreasing,” Harencak said. But sequestration “doesn’t allow us to plan the way we need to plan. My best military advice I would give somebody is if you…allowed us to know what that glide slope is going down, which allows us to make the right decision in recapitalization or modernization or how much money we put in this particular year into readiness, and maybe the next year, we can move a little bit more. You don’t know that with sequestration.”
Harencak used a pilot analogy to illustrate sequestration’s potentially damaging effects. “You might believe [sequestration is] an effective way to get through government,” he said. “You can believe that. You’d be wrong, but you can believe it. And if you believe that, then I want you to do something. When you leave here, wherever you fly back home to, I want you to tell the pilot that, ‘Hey, when you come in to land, don’t use a glide slope. Approach the arrival end of the runway at 5,000 feet and land from there.’ And you see what happens to the aircraft.”
While the United States is maintaining its nuclear capabilities, other countries are modernizing, Haney said. The Air Force is asking for a $5.6 billion plus-up over the Future Years’ Defense Program (FYDP) for its two legs of the nuclear enterprise, and the Navy has programmed $5 billion in research and development funding and another $5 billion in advanced procurement for the Ohio-class Replacement over the FYDP. Within the Air Force’s FYDP portfolio is approximately $945 million for the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent, the Minuteman 3 follow-on, and $1.8 billion for the Long-Range Standoff Weapon.
Haney defended STRATCOM’s modernization plans. “Today, we sustain on something less than 3 percent in the capability and the national insurance policy we have and associated with an existential threat to the United States of America and our allies,” he said. “When we look at this modernization, we’re talking about…instead of 2.6 or so percent of Defense spending, to be on the order of 5 percent to 6 percent. And I would say as we look at that, we may want to flip it around a little bit and think about it in terms of it [being] part of the national policy that is an insurance policy for deterrence well into the future. And it’s something that the cost of not doing it can be more of a problem than the cost of doing it would be.”