Previous IFPA-Fletcher Conferences

36th Annual IFPA-Fletcher Conference on
National Security and Policy
Nuclear and Non-Nuclear Forces in 21st-Century Deterrence: Implementing the New Triad

December 14-15, 2005
Grand Hyatt Washington Hotel
Washington, D.C.

Session 6 - Providing Responsive Infrastructure for Updating and Maintaining the Nuclear Stockpile

Address by Admiral Henry G. Chiles, Jr., USN (Ret.), former Commander, U.S. Strategic Command

Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here with you this afternoon. Bob Barker’s at this table, and he and I both worked on the commission a few years back. I'm certainly no expert on the infrastructure of the Department of Energy, and the industry base necessary to sustain our stockpile, but my remarks are much different from John’s approach, and I really did want to focus a little bit on the innovation, modernization and transformation of the nuclear weapons complex itself.

And so in preparation, I went back through the reports over the last 17 or 18 years, included the Modernization Report of 1988 and then Complex 21, the Privatization Planning Panel, the Galvin Report, 120 Day Study, all the way through Johnny Foster’s work and then up to the recent Secretary of Energy’s Advisory Board Report, the Overskei Panel Report of 2005. I thought they, in general, provided a very good roadmap for getting started into the 21st century with a complex that would support our weapons program, and each contributed in different ways. Some of the comparisons were made of downsizing in place, going to a brand new facility, which again came out in the recent SEAB report, or going to the same sites we’ve been operating before, getting rid of some, but staying within our existing footprint. And in each case, they found from cost comparisons, until you come up to the Overskei Report that it would be more cost effective to stay within our existing footprint. Politically, that made sense. And so that is where we are as we start at the beginning of the 21st century.

For the time being, the bulk of the stockpile we have is going to consist of the legacy weapons of the Cold War. The changes to those weapons will be dependent on the existing infrastructure, like it or not. A full legacy weapon remanufacture is totally unlikely, I think, but since all of the components in the existing weapons are limited life in one way or another, we're going to have to replace some of those as we go through the Life Extension Program. But that Life Extension Program is going to maintain the essential features of the weapons. The modifications are not transformational. Yes, they will modernize but only to a limited extent. There's only a limited amount of innovation beyond that which the technology of electronics affords us to do on these weapons.

Now, I'm not going to address the pit production issue at this session, that would take us in a different direction. The reliable replacement warhead is the one key transformational element that I see in front of us. I think I might even hear a little bit of the Hallelujah chorus, maybe it’s the time of the year. But any way you look at RRW, it’s going to take time to design, build and the introduction of the weapon (in numbers) into the stockpile is going to be many years in the future.

But what's changed most, I believe, in the thinking about the new warhead for a successful design, is the parameters with which we are going to establish success or failure. The key criteria of the weapons currently in the stockpile were to attain the largest possible explosion from a device that was as light as we could make it and shoehorn it into the smallest volume possible. Well, that's not what we’re going to design our RRW for. And I believe the design criteria for a successful weapon at this time in our history is going to be maximum safety, security, not just from someone taking the weapon, but security from someone (a suicidal individual) who may want to detonate it in place. Reliability, it’s going to have a long time in service. We’re going to do all this, and we’re not going to conduct nuclear tests to certify it. Ease of manufacture is going to be important without a great number of exotic materials being utilized.

I believe the RRW offers the opportunity for broad based transformation: in the design, the research, the materials, the miniaturization, longevity, the whole ball of wax. But in order to design this weapon and to think about the infrastructure that will be necessary to sustain it in the stockpile, it (the process) has got to go in step. And those steps, I believe, are first decide what we want, what does it mean, how does it all tie together to be different from our existing weapons? And will it replace one warhead in the stockpile? Will it replace a number? Can it be used with a variety of launch platforms? I think the answers to those questions as we finalize a design are going to help us to answer the second question. The second question is: “What capabilities do we need in order to sustain RRW in the stockpile?” But I don’t believe you can get to the second question until you know the answer to the first. And finally, “Where do we want to site these capabilities?”

Obviously, two teams are working on the design now and we’re in the initial stages. And for the time being, we’re going to have to sustain the existing stockpile. It’s going to take time, and so that's evolutionary, to bring this new warhead (RRW) into our stockpile. But in the ensuing years, I don't know whether this stockpile is going to stay the same (size) or whether it’s going to reduce sharply in number beyond the numbers that have been postulated for 2012. I doubt it will grow, but sizing of the stockpile in the future is going to be an important facet in what kind of infrastructure that we have and what its overall maximum footprint will look like.

But I do believe that there are a number of aspects with which to consider the infrastructure.

First, some of our existing facilities are in reasonable condition. It’s been a few years since I looked at them, but the laboratories appear to have been well sustained. Others are clearly old, neglected and require upgrading. And since we’re going to need it (support infrastructure) for years to come, I think we have to insure that upgrading happens and that we do take care of those structures and those facilities that need the work.

I can’t see that we’re going to go to a new “green field” and produce a brand new plant that will handle all of the requirements (manufacturing, maintenance, assembly, disassembly) for sustaining the existing stockpile for the rest of its life (with RRW and whatever follows it in the future). It’s been considered before, but it’s been rejected each time for budgetary reasons.

The other issue that I think is a concern is that if we put all of our nuclear weapons infrastructure, maintenance and manufacture operations in one place, we would have just created a wonderful target for an adversary to be able to knock out our sustenance capability. I believe it’s much harder for an adversary looking at the United States to handle our facilities if they are dispersed (as located today). Now, obviously we're going to need new structures over time, and I don't know what RRW is going to entail, as mentioned before. But I see the maintenance of our facilities in the physical plant sense as not being transformational either.

Secondly, another aspect is the research facilities, as John had on his slide. We’ve invested considerably for stockpile stewardship and life extension in our research facilities, and I think in general they’re first rate and still coming on line. So it’s unclear to me right now what other major research requirements are unfunded that are really required before we can get to a new reliable replacement warhead design. Nothing jumps out as being a major difficulty to me. But it’s certainly possible that as we get into the design of RRW that there will be emergent needs.

The third aspect is the people. RRW afford us the opportunity for really meaningful design work that has not been seen within this complex in many years, and we must take full advantage of this opportunity. We have to get our new designers involved in every aspect of RRW before we lose the old folks with either gray hair like John or no hair like me. [laughter] Now, I was struck by the folks at the 60th anniversary in July of the Trinity Test conducted in World War II. It (the anniversary celebration) was at the National Academy of Science; some of you were there. But of the 11 or so folks who had worked on the Trinity device and had been present for its test, several of the people commented that they were drafted for that operation while still working on their masters degrees or Ph.Ds and had no idea why they were being drafted out of the university initially to go and work on the Manhattan Project. Perhaps we should search our graduate schools today for those very bright young 23 and 25 year old folks, the brilliant future scientists of America who just might accept such a challenge, even though they know little of us right now.

I don’t want to neglect those bright folks who are coming up the line in our laboratories and our other facilities. They need the opportunity to work on this, too. But I think we ought to try to do something transformationally with personnel that would have long-term impacts for our capabilities.

The fourth aspect is perhaps the portion of the complex that in my view needs the real transformation. That is NNSA and DOE. Issues of excessive oversight were highlighted in the Galvin Report, the 120 Day Study and in my opinion, they largely remain unresolved. As mentioned in the 1999 President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board Report on page 4, “the DOE is a dysfunctional bureaucracy that has proven it is incapable of reforming itself.” In my judgment, the initiatives to transform and streamline the NNSA business practices to a system based on industrial best practices and commercial standards, coupled with clear lines of accountability and authority have been unsuccessful. Programmatic micromanagement remains a problem in that headquarters allocates funding in narrow stovepipes and restricts discretionary funding of research. Contractors lack flexibility in personnel practices to recruit and retain critical personnel in an increasingly competitive labor market.

Our nuclear weapons complex, as may have been mentioned here in the last couple of days, is capability limited (vice capacity) and most of the capability is associated with the paper work and the fixed cost dominating the budget. It’s too expensive to do the work of the future, and it’s self sustaining without the construction of anything. Hence, the government-owned, contractor-operated (“GOCO”) model in my opinion appears severely strained, if not broken. Additionally, with the elimination of the Albuquerque Operations Office, there's no system integrator except at headquarters. It seems to me that such a function should not be performed there and needs to be performed closer to the work and in the field, especially as we think about the construction of this new RRW.

And let me just throw one more grenade out on the floor. I believe the Congressional oversight requires transformation. The oversight of the program needs to be reinvigorated; Congress needs to take a strong role in supporting the conduct of our work. Support of the Congress would become broader, I believe, if the authorizers and the appropriators became more knowledgeable about the program details and implementation. And I believe that that might entail Congressional organizational changes that would be appropriate for focused oversight.

I believe the Nuclear Weapons Council (DOD and NNSA) should be required to meet with the appropriate Congressional committees to be able to show a position of what the Nuclear Weapon Council wants to do and the direction it wants to take the program. And it’s my hope that if the appropriate Congressional committees really understood the program integrity, that would improve the feeling enough within the Congress to give the NNSA managers greater reprogramming latitude and would increase also the understanding of the Congress of the managerial impediments to doing work that currently exists. I also believe that the Congress needs to provide more positive reinforcement of the public service character of the work that's going on within the nuclear weapons organization.

In conclusion, I think the United States is going to have a legacy stockpile for many years. We must be judicious in modernizing this stockpile. Some would say in a no testing environment we shouldn’t touch it at all, but I believe that's too strong. Some components are going to have to be replaced in the Life Extension Program. RRW affords us a transformational, innovative and modern design focused on safety, security and reliability. That opportunity doesn’t come often. We must take full advantage of it. And after the design is understood, then we can sort out the infrastructure if anything is needed that's different and figure out the siting.

I'm sorry to say that it appears that many of the difficulties inherent in DOE remain at NNSA almost six years after the formation of that organization, and the Congress bears some of the responsibility for it. Subject to your questions, sir, that completes my comments, thank you. [applause]

Questions and Answers

Audience: I’m Thomas Shepherd from Lawrence Livermore. I have two questions, one for General Moore and one for Admiral Chiles. The one for General Moore, the shortest one, has to do with the idea of, if my notes are correct here, having the U.K. do pit production for the U.S., which is similar to an idea that I’ve actually talked about before. So I’d like to ask the same question that gets asked to me when I ask that, which is are there any laws, either U.S., U.K. or international, which could prohibit or otherwise impede that idea?

And then the question for Admiral Chiles has to do with the basing of—Or the location of a new infrastructure, and I believe he said that it’s preferable to have it dispersed like our current situation, because putting it all in one place like a complex 21 would be an obvious target for an adversary. And nowadays, we have—I mean, it’s obvious that would be a target for a peer or near-peer adversary. But on the other hand—And I'm sure he’s thought about this—But I’d like to hear expansion on the modern situation where we have terrorists for whom a target which his sort of isolated and less protected like the planes on September 11th would be easier to attacked and since you're dispersed you have to do more transportation, and how you fold in considerations of local politics, not in my back yard and what not. So those are the only two questions.

Admiral Chiles: Over to me? Okay. Well, one, I pointed out that if you're going to site our current infrastructure for construction, for maintenance, assembling and disassembling and move that all into one complex 21, that's a very expensive proposition, and I'm not sure where the money’s going to come from to do that and still pull together an RRW and sustain a stockpile. To be able to do that, I think, you need to get over this problem we have in NNSA and the Congress, that has us capability limited instead of capacity limited in our sites.

I believe it would be a high value target for our enemies, whether they are terrorists or state actors. And in a world where a biological weapon could be used against our whole complex (as well as a nuclear weapon), however it came onto the facility or near the facility and put it out of commission, I just don’t think it’s a good idea to put all your eggs in one basket for this high level capability (Consolidated Nuclear Production Center) at the very extreme, if you will, of our military skills and operations. So I don’t think it’s a good idea.