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 second 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.
This story first appeared in Defense Daily associate publication Weapons Complex Morning Briefing.