The Air Force and the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), major stakeholders in the Minuteman III follow-on ICBM study, need to better coordinate their efforts to provide cost estimates for the program if the study is to succeed, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) said in a recent report.
GAO said in its report, ICBM Modernization: Approaches to Basing Options and Interoperable Warhead Designs Need Better Planning and Synchronization (GAO-13-831), reliable cost estimates are critical to any program because they provide the basis for informed decision making. The Nuclear Weapons Council (NWC), the joint activity of the Defense and Energy departments for nuclear weapons programs, is synchronizing DoD programs to modernize nuclear weapon delivery systems with NNSA warhead life-extension programs, but neither the Air Force nor NNSA are developing complete system costs estimates that identify total costs for both the Minuteman III follow-on delivery system and the W78/88-1 warhead life extension for various reasons.
NNSA said it is premature to prepare cost estimates for the W78/88-1 warhead life extension because doing so requires making assumptions about the warhead’s design and mode of deployment. GAO said the Air Force is not providing W78-88-1 cost estimates because it says NNSA is responsible for those estimates.
GAO also said NNSA and Air Force are playing budgetary games to absolve themselves of the responsibility to provide cost estimates. GAO said in 2010, DoD transferred $5.7 billion of budget authority to NNSA for nuclear weapons and naval reactor program activities from 2011 to 2015, including $784 million for the warhead life-extension program. DoD later augmented this $5.7 billion with an additional $2.2 billion to be allocated annually from fiscal years 2012 to 2016. But neither the Air Force nor NNSA are preparing total system cost estimates nor providing such estimates to the NWC.
The NWC expects to update and revise its baseline plan for the nuclear weapons enterprise in 2013 based on information obtained from ongoing weapons modernization programs and analyses. Such revisions could include adjusting the schedule of key weapons modernization programs, including the W78/88-1 life extension program. In preparing the long-term baseline plan that it adopted last November, GAO said the NWC recommended adjusting initial operational dates for multiple nuclear weapons systems and warhead life-extension programs.
Absent accurate and reliable information on nuclear weapons programs such as the Minuteman III follow-on program, the NWC may be poorly positioned to consider such changes in the future, GAO said.
GAO said the 2010 Nuclear Posture Review recommended the NWC study options for extending the life of ICBM warheads, including the potential for developing a warhead that is interoperable on both Air Force and Navy missiles. DoD is to initiate a study this year to identify a replacement for the Minuteman III missile.