Nextgov/FCW - Authors - Elaine M. Grossman

Key Targeting Tech for Future U.S. Nuclear Missile Has Gone Unfunded

Elaine M. Grossman — Tue, 19 Aug 2014 12:53:22 -0400

OMAHA, Neb. -- A lapse in funding is potentially delaying by two years the development of a new U.S. nuclear missile, according to budget documents provided to Congress and interviews with defense sources.

The little-noticed spending gap of $28 million -- a minuscule fraction of the Defense Department's annual $500 billion budget -- is for developing and testing new solid-state components seen as essential for guiding the future Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent missiles to their targets.

The Air Force intends to begin replacing today's 450 Minuteman 3 intercontinental ballistic missiles by 2030 with up to 420 of the so-called GBSD weapon systems.

Some military insiders attribute to Air Force infighting the diversion of the $28 million to other uses in fiscal 2014 -- and a service failure to request any such funds in fiscal 2015 -- that would have provided Air Force Research Laboratory-built hardware to three defense contractors for their further development.

Lacking the lab's government-furnished equipment -- which contractors Boeing, General Dynamics and Lockheed Martin have each requested -- none of the three firms is expected to invest its own funds to militarize commercial off-the-shelf solid-state guidance technology used widely today in aircraft and missile systems.

During a major Air Force study effort of what the new GBSD missile should be -- with options ranging from a simple Minuteman 3 look-alike to a brand new design -- the service settled on what it has called a "hybrid" concept. This recommendation emerging from the "analysis of alternatives" -- begun last year and completed in early July -- has been tentatively approved in recent meetings with Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel's office, Nextgov has learned.

A Mobile Option

The hybrid plan for the Minuteman 3 replacement would involve using some of today's missile features -- its basic design, communications systems and existing launch silos -- while replacing aging rocket motors and targeting-guidance systems.

While the Air Force awaits formal, written confirmation that its hybrid option can proceed, this missile design also would maintain a possibility for the GBSD weapons to be made mobile. The optional feature could allow the missiles to be removed from their silos and dispersed by rail or truck if a nuclear attack against the United States appeared imminent, increasing their ability to survive, officials said.

Several spoke on condition of not being named to offer candor in addressing sensitive nuclear-arms matters.

Yet one aspect of the high-level thumbs-up -- direction that the GBSD system should feature an uptick in accuracy compared to any of today's U.S. nuclear systems -- already appears to have jumped the rails.

Inclusion of the solid-state guidance system in the Minuteman 3 replacement would allow the United States to hit some of the toughest-to-destroy enemy targets by using just a single warhead rather than a barrage. This is a top-level but rarely discussed U.S. nuclear-weapons objective, supported by both Democratic and Republican administrations, dating back to a Reagan-era interest in precision targeting as a substitute for carpet bombing -- a trend that has emerged more publicly in conventional warfighting.

Today, in the event of a nuclear conflict, a U.S. president may want to go after heavily reinforced underground Russian military-command centers -- an example of high-priority facilities said to be on the Pentagon's top-secret target list. In such a case, warfighters here at the Omaha-based U.S. Strategic Command would have to lob multiple Minuteman 3 land-based missiles or Navy Trident D-5 submarine-based missiles to ensure the target's disabling or destruction.

Speaking to reporters last week at a command-sponsored symposium on nuclear deterrence (the military art of preventing the most undesirable violence from occurring) Adm. Cecil Haney avoided discussing any specific capabilities needed for the new Ground-Based Deterrent System.

As head of U.S. Strategic Command -- the top officer who would carry out any White House order to launch a nuclear weapon -- Haney did say how "absolutely" important it is that the GBSD missile meets his own warfighter requirements, and noted that simply sustaining today's Minuteman 3 capabilities into the future would not be sufficient.

The Air Force analysis of alternatives was "to make sure that we have the requirements we need now and into the future," he said. Augmenting the other two legs of the U.S. nuclear triad -- bomber aircraft and submarines -- the ground-based missile arsenal "really has an impact associated with our deterrence calculus and capabilities," he added.

Yet, some officials at the Air Force Systems Directorate based at Hill Air Force Base, Utah, have suggested as a possible alternative to the more accurate solid state guidance system required to meet longstanding warfighter targeting requirements the use instead of today's Minuteman mechanical guidance components in the future GBSD system.

Units based at Hill perform maintenance and repair on today's Minuteman 3 guidance units, giving officials there what some see as a parochial stake regarding which technology is selected for the future ICBM replacement missiles and their components, including the guidance systems.

Mixed Messages

Compared to the mechanical guidance instruments found in today's Minuteman 3 missiles, solid state offers longevity, meaning these systems would not have to be repaired anywhere near as often, Air Force briefings suggest. Today's Minuteman 3 guidance systems break down roughly every three years, whereas solid state units are expected to last approximately 20 years without requiring repair or replacement, according to Defense Department data.

Air Force officials and documents also suggest that because solid state inertial measurement units are ubiquitous in commercial aviation and a number of the Pentagon's conventionally armed missile systems, they offer significant cost advantages from the get-go. Even after being militarized for use on a nuclear missile, the solid state technology developed by the Air Force research lab is estimated at $800,000 apiece, compared to a $2.5 million unit cost for old-generation mechanical guidance systems used by today's Minuteman 3.

"Hill Air Force Base ought to be very concerned about the cost profile of . . . replacing the Minuteman 3," said Jeffrey Lewis, a nuclear-arms expert at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, Calif. "Anything they do that drives that cost up or delays the ability to start those programs I think imperils the whole ICBM force. There will come a point at which people will [say], 'This is really expensive and it's going to take a long time. Maybe we should just not do it and spend the money on the bomber instead.'"

Industry officials are receiving mixed messages from the Air Force about which direction it will take with the GBSD guidance system: proceeding with the stalled effort to begin sled testing in 2016 (had funding continued uninterrupted that testing would have begun last year), versus attempting to include the older Minuteman 3 targeting technology in its hybrid replacement.

Those attending a July 16 briefing by the ICBM System Directorate at Hill Air Force Base on the results of the Air Force analysis of alternatives were told an increase in accuracy would, in fact, be needed in the new GBSD system. To at least some in the business community, that seemed to imply that the solid state technology largely defunded in fiscal 2014 and 2015 would be key.

The Air Force declined a reporter's request for information presented at the "industry day" event. Although prospective defense contractors saw both secret and non-secret slides about how the Air Force anticipates proceeding with the Minuteman 3 replacement effort, "an unclassified version of the written briefing does not exist for release," Lt. Col. Jared Yarrington, who heads Air Force Global Strike Command's ICBM Requirements Division, told Nextgov in a written response to questions.

Despite the service's discussions of the analysis results with industry representatives last month, Yarrington said that pending formal approval of the document by Hagel's office, "all materials are pre-decisional and not releasable at this time."

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Air Force Brass Confident of Nuclear Base Security Following Deadly Navy Incident

Elaine M. Grossman, Global Security Newswire — Fri, 20 Sep 2013 10:10:51 -0400

NATIONAL HARBOR, MD. -- A two-star Air Force general responsible for overseeing atomic matters has voiced confidence in security at service bases housing nuclear-tipped ground-based ballistic missiles and aircraft-delivered cruise missiles and gravity bombs, following Monday’s deadly shooting at the Navy Yard in Washington.

Asked if the Air Force would review its contractor security clearances and base-access procedures -- given revelations that alleged killer Aaron Alexis had a history of mental-health problems and gun-related incidents -- Maj. Gen. Garrett Harencak played down the idea that similar security gaps could affect his service’s stewardship of two-thirds of the nation’s nuclear arsenal.

“We never stop doing that,” said Harencak, the Air Force assistant chief of staff for strategic deterrence and nuclear integration. “We’re always constantly self-assessing our security procedures; we’re always testing our security procedures."

“This is not just part of the nuclear enterprise … but [is] throughout our United States Air Force,” he continued, speaking on Tuesday at an Air Force Association conference just outside of Washington. “We’re never static when it comes to looking at better ways … to secure our airmen and our facilities.”

The nuclear leader added, though, that he would have to check with his service’s security directorate before knowing whether a fresh Air Force review would be conducted, based on the apparent Navy Yard lapses that allowed Alexis a facility badge as a contractor and entry into the Navy facility.

The Air Force did not provide a requested response on the matter prior to press time on Wednesday.

The Navy Yard shooter killed 12 civilian personnel at the base before being shot dead himself by law enforcement. Several others were wounded in the attack, which has since been attributed to Alexis as the lone gunman.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel on Wednesday announced that he had launched two major reviews the prior day, both of which will be led by Ashton Carter, the Pentagon’s No. 2 official.

“We will do everything possible to prevent this from happening again,” Hagel said at a press conference.

One review is to focus on "physical security and access procedures" for U.S. bases worldwide, while the other will address Defense Department “practices and procedures for granting and renewing security clearances,” including for contractors, he said.

Pentagon leaders would implement the recommendations of both reviews and address any gaps they find, Hagel said.

"Obviously there were a lot of red flags," the defense secretary said in reference to Alexis's ability to retain a security clearance and facility privileges. "Why they didn't get picked up, why they didn't get incorporated into the clearance process, what he was doing -- Those are all legitimate questions that we're going to be dealing with."

Alexis previously had been arrested but never charged with a crime, leading some observers to question whether the clearance process may not account sufficiently for troubling warning signs.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff stopped short of concluding whether the process was to blame, or if instead there was human error in implementing existing clearance or access rules.

"I think this will be scrutinized a great deal," said Gen. Martin Dempsey, speaking at the same press briefing. "Until I understand the outcome of the investigation, I can't render a judgment about whether it was a red flag or just something that flew beneath the radar."

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Former Defense Brass Object to ‘More Restrictive’ Nuclear Trade Policies

Elaine M. Grossman, Global Security Newswire — Thu, 16 May 2013 15:52:58 -0400

A half-dozen former U.S. national security leaders last month implored President Obama to avoid tightening restrictions on foreign nuclear cooperation in the interest of nonproliferation.

“The U.S. civil nuclear industry is one of [Washington’s] most powerful tools for advancing its nuclear nonproliferation agenda,” according to an April 25 letter obtained this week by Global Security Newswire.

“It is critical to adopt policies that will strengthen that tool,” the missive reads. “Weakening it will merely cede foreign markets to other suppliers less concerned about nonproliferation than the United States.”

The appeal to Obama reportedly was circulated for signature by the president and chief executive officer of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, John Hamre, according to sources familiar with the initiative. It appears on CSIS letterhead.

In addition to the one-time deputy Defense secretary, signatories include former national security advisers Brent Scowcroft and James Jones, former Defense secretaries James Schlesinger and William Cohen, and retired Adm. Michael Mullen, previously chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The letter cautions “against the adoption of policies that could inadvertently weaken the ability of the United States to continue to provide international leadership on this critically important issue,” though it stops short of naming specific policies the authors find objectionable.

A CSIS spokesman, H. Andrew Schwartz, on Wednesday said Hamre was on travel and could not respond to questions about the letter.

Issue experts, though, said the eight writers appear to be concerned about an ongoing Obama administration internal policy review regarding its approach to negotiating atomic trade pacts with other nations.

Lawmakers repeatedly have called on the federal branch to strengthen its pursuit of the so-called nonproliferation “gold standard,” in which a trade partner receives access to sensitive U.S. nuclear materials or technologies only in exchange for a promise not to produce atomic fuel on its own soil.

Enriching uranium or reprocessing plutonium can be used in civil nuclear power generation, but these activities also could open the door to a clandestine atomic weapons effort, as is widely suspected in Iran and elsewhere.

“It’s clearly what the letter is about,” said one congressional source who asked not to be named, lacking authorization to address the matter publicly. “But since they can’t bring themselves to say that, some lawmakers will wonder what they are talking about. Why are they so reluctant to be explicit about what new restrictions concern them?”

Some senior administration officials have said the gold standard should be pursued on a case-by-case basis, and for a brief period last year that appeared to be U.S. policy. A number of key members of Congress and nonproliferation advocates, though, have urged the Obama White House to advocate this type of pledge abroad more widely and vigorously.

The letter to Obama notes that the U.S. market share for nuclear exports has dropped precipitously over roughly the past two decades, leading to “substantially diminished U.S. influence in such areas as nuclear nonproliferation and nuclear safety.”

The former defense leaders argue that managing proliferation risk should continue to be customized for each trade partner rather than expanded more broadly.

“In order to restore its nonproliferation influence around the globe, the United States government must find ways to strengthen the competitiveness of the U.S. nuclear industry, and avoid policies that threaten to further weaken it,” the letter reads. “We therefore urge that, as part of your export control reform initiative, streamlining of the process for licensing civil nuclear exports be made a top priority.”

Some critics are already questioning, though, why the former national security leaders have set their sights on nonproliferation measures as a chief hindrance to U.S. nuclear sales overseas, when competitors such as France, Russia and South Korea enjoy financial advantages that substantially reduce their prices.

“The problem is not nonproliferation but foreign subsidies of [the] U.S. [industry’s] competitors,” said the congressional source. “That’s the real problem that needs to be solved.”

One gold-standard advocate, Henry Sokolski, questioned the letter’s contention that U.S. nuclear sales to foreign nations must be a principal vehicle for Washington in stanching proliferation.

“You'd think after our wretched experience with civil nuclear programs in Iran, India, Iraq, Pakistan and our past near-calls with Taiwan and South Korea's programs, this would be the last thing anyone truly opposed to nuclear weapons proliferation would push,” said Sokolski, executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center.

Sharon Squassoni, who directs the Proliferation Prevention Program at Hamre’s organization, has long encouraged stronger export control measures to help curb proliferation. Neither Schwartz, the CSIS spokesman, nor Squassoni responded to queries about whether the organization’s nuclear trade and nonproliferation experts were consulted when the text of the letter was drafted.

Squassoni did say, though, that she differs with the view that taking a case-by-case approach to demanding a no-fuelmaking promise from U.S. nuclear trade interlocutors would help streamline the export process. She contended that the opposite is true.

“The current hold-up on the U.S. side in moving forward with nuclear cooperation agreements is apparently due to a policy disagreement on whether or not to take a principled -- [or] nondiscriminatory -- approach or a case-by-case approach,” she told GSN in a written response to questions. “It is always cleaner to take a principled approach.”

By contrast, “taking a case-by-case approach encourages states to argue for the least stringent requirements based on political-military issues,” said Squassoni, who also serves as a CSIS senior fellow. “This occurs because so many governments treat these nuclear cooperation agreements as prestigious prizes, rather than the implementing frameworks they really are.”

The CSIS spokesman was asked if the former defense leaders’ letter to Obama might have a chilling effect on CSIS staff members whose views on nuclear trade and nonproliferation differ.

“[Hamre] signed the note in his private capacity as a former U.S. senior official. There is no connection to CSIS with regard to this matter,” said Schwartz, who serves as the organization’s senior vice president for external relations. “Dr. Hamre had it on his personal CSIS stationary, not official stationary, which has a masthead with all of CSIS’ trustees on it.”

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Pentagon Weighs Refurbishing or Replacing Ballistic Missiles

Elaine M. Grossman, Global Security Newswire — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 16:36:02 -0400

The U.S. Defense Department is weighing the feasibility of extending the service life of the nation’s aging Minuteman 3 intercontinental ballistic missiles versus replacing them in coming decades with brand new nuclear-armed ballistic missiles.

The 450 Minuteman 3s are expected to last through 2030, but might be retained longer if they can be further refurbished, senior Pentagon officials said at a Senate hearing on Wednesday. The weapons were first deployed in 1970 and sit on alert in underground silos at three different bases in Montana, North Dakota and Wyoming.

The Air Force, which fields and maintains the missiles, is “very carefully analyzing exactly how the current system is degrading, so that they have a much better understanding of how they might extend the life of this [ICBM], if that is the alternative that’s chosen,” Madelyn Creedon, assistant Defense secretary for global affairs, told the Senate Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee in testimony alongside other civilian and military leaders.

The analysis, which is to begin in July after some “bureaucratic delays,” will conclude late next year, said Lt. Gen. James Kowalski, who heads Air Force Global Strike Command. The assessment will examine whether to undertake a “program to further extend the life of the Minuteman 3 or to develop a follow-on ICBM,” Creedon elaborated in her written testimony.

Many details about the various modernization options and their projected costs -- first examined in an initial Capabilities Based Assessment finalized last October -- remain classified. However, officials say key factors under study include whether to place any new ICBMs in fixed launch silos or make them mobile on trucks or other vehicles; which warhead to mate with the delivery vehicles; and how to modernize these systems most affordably.

Whether the country’s future ICBM -- dubbed the “Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent -- is an updated Minuteman or a totally new design, it appears the missile will share quite a bit of hardware in common with the Navy’s future ballistic missile for basing aboard submarines, Defense officials say.

Which option ultimately is selected, according to experts, might come down to a question that many automobile owners would find familiar: Does it make more sense to save upfront investment by continuing to operate an old design with swapped-out parts and upgrades, or to invest instead in a new system with more up-to-date design efficiencies that could be easier to maintain in the long run?

Another question facing the Minuteman 3’s overseers and custodians is whether the missiles, even after some recent renovations, could actually function through 2030. At the hearing, Senator Deb Fischer (R-Neb.) asked if the Minuteman might age out sooner unless near-term steps are taken to extend its service life.

“I am confident we can get the missile, as it is, to 2030 with the programs that we have in place, or the programs that we don’t have funded yet but plan to pursue in the next couple years,” responded Kowalski, whose command is based in Louisiana.

For example, he said, there is some question about whether the casings around the missile propellant might degrade early, a possibility that could lead to leaks or malfunctions. If the existing propulsion unit lasts an estimated 30 years, no refurbishment would be needed until 2025 or later, he said. However, less longevity in the technology could demand earlier intervention.

Of the Minuteman’s three rocket stages, the third motor is attracting most concern. However, there is no indication to date of any degradation of the materials with which it is made -- not even any “adverse trends” -- which has led many officials to conclude that the already overhauled propulsion system might even last a half-decade or more beyond an estimated 30-year lifespan, one issue expert said.

The expert asked not to be named in discussing the sensitive issue of how long a nuclear-armed system might remain viable.

The Minuteman 3 missile guidance system also could require a service-life extension between now and 2030, Kowalski said.

This, too, is a question under internal debate, according to the issue expert. The Air Force estimate is that the current guidance system -- which helps direct a warhead to its target -- will function for another 17 years. However, some have raised questions about whether existing electronics might fail earlier and should be traded out for updated replacements, this source said.

Kowalski noted in written testimony that the overall service life initially anticipated for the Minuteman 3 was just 10 years, but the missile has since “proven its value in deterrence well beyond the platform’s intended lifespan."

The Air Force is studying how any near-term maintenance for the deployed Minuteman 3s, if needed, would relate to the missile’s eventual replacement, the commander said at the hearing.

“All of the things that we plan to invest in the Minuteman 3 are specific subsystems that we intend to dovetail into the ground-based strategic deterrent, the follow-on [ICBM],” said the three-star general, adding that the Pentagon intends to ensure “we are not paying for the same thing twice.”

Some have suggested the United States might safely eliminate the ICBM leg of the nation’s nuclear triad, and rely instead on a combination of dual-capable, nuclear-conventional bomber aircraft and ballistic missiles aboard highly survivable submarines at sea.

However, Kowalski suggested that as the capability to field atomic arms and ballistic missiles proliferates around the globe, Washington’s ICBM arsenal remains a crucial bulwark against possible nuclear blackmail or coercion threats.

“There are 450 hardened launch facilities in the heartland of this country,” he said. “And if we did not have those, we’d need to think through what that scenario looks like in 15 or 20 years.”

Creedon was asked about a recent Obama administration decision to avoid further escalating tensions with North Korea by rescheduling a Minuteman 3 test launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., which had been slated for last week.

“We decided it was wise to postpone for a while the last launch because of the situation on the Korean Peninsula,” she said. “It was a situation that we just wanted to deal with in a way that we didn’t increase the provocation cycle” in the region, she said.

Plans are now for the next Minuteman 3 test flight to occur between May 21 and 23, which would effectively resume the normal launch schedule where it left off, Creedon said.

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U.S. Nuclear Lab Ready to Shelve Costly Facility Plan

Elaine M. Grossman, Global Security Newswire — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 14:46:02 -0500

The Los Alamos National Laboratory is proposing to shelve plans to build an expensive new plutonium research facility and instead permanently parcel out work to an array of smaller buildings, the institution’s director said on Thursday.

“I’m concerned that in the current fiscal crisis, it may no longer be practical to plan and build very large-scale nuclear facilities,” Charles McMillan, who heads the New Mexico research site, said at a three-day conference on nuclear deterrence in Arlington, Va. “A new path forward is needed.”

A study team at Los Alamos has suggested scrapping plans to construct a $6 billion Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement plant in favor of replacing the nuclear facility’s intended functions with a more attainable constellation of structures, he said.

The new approach would involve a combination of new construction -- albeit at a more modest price -- along with “repurposing” some existing sites, McMillan told the conference audience.

The future CMRR facility was to help ensure that new and existing nuclear-weapon cores would function in an atomic blast, if necessary, despite a decades-long moratorium on underground explosive testing.

Early last year, the Obama administration announced that it intended to save $1.8 billion over the next five years by delaying construction of the new CMRR nuclear lab for a half-decade. The site had been expected to be up and operating by 2024, but the budget move delayed those plans indefinitely.

Now it appears that temporary workarounds for meeting near-term plutonium “pit” research needs could be altered slightly to become a permanent alternative to designs for the ambitious complex.

“This means the new nuclear facility, as it was originally designed, is dead,” Stephen Young, a senior analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists, told Global Security Newswire after hearing the laboratory director’s comments. “There may be a new building, but it won't be that big, expensive box.”

“I challenged the team at Los Alamos to explore alternatives that would provide the capabilities that CMRR represented, but to do that in ways that would be simpler,” McMillan said in prepared remarks. “Based on the work that they’ve done over the last year, I believe we should look at designing and building small, individual facilities to meet specific tasks for supporting the [nuclear weapons] stockpile.”

The Los Alamos chief did not elaborate on timing or say how much his backup plan would cost. The Albuquerque Journal reported last August, though, that the alternative concept might require$800 million over the next 10 years.

The “Plan B” project could include converting a recently constructed CMRR radiological laboratory and office building into a site capable of nuclear research, at a cost of $186 million, according to Greg Mello of the watchdog Los Alamos Study Group. That would effectively double the radiation facility’s original construction price tag.

The Los Alamos proposal also would include a $120 million tunnel to link the repurposed building to the PF-4 site, where plutonium pits are produced, the New Mexico-based critic said in an August analysis.

In describing the substitute proposal in broad terms this week, McMillan said no final determination had yet been made on how to proceed.

“At some level, it’s not for me to say whether CMRR as a design will ever happen. That’s going to be a governmental decision,” he said in response to an audience question. “What we have been working to do is to provide the government with options, to provide the capabilities that we have planned for CMRR at smaller facilities, as well as reusing existing facilities.”

McMillan said the earlier plan for consolidating plutonium work at a single CMRR facility had seemed attractive, but research for the nuclear arsenal could be accomplished more quickly and affordably under the alternative outline.

Last year, hundreds of millions of dollars were cut out of nuclear infrastructure budgets and additional reductions are widely anticipated in the future. More draconian budget cuts could materialize as early as next week in the form of the budget sequester, which experts say would make big federal construction projects almost unthinkable.

Congressional Republicans in 2012 pushed back against the Obama plan to delay building the CMRR nuclear facility. The president early this year signed into law a fiscal 2013 defense authorization bill that demands the laboratory building be constructed and operating by the end of 2026.

Young speculated that political and fiscal realities will ultimately trump last month’s law, and the provisions demanding CMRR construction will be reversed.

“Congress will, in the end, support this decision,” he said. “The unified position of the administration and the labs, combined with budget pressures, make it almost inevitable.”

This alternative became feasible mostly because of changes in policy for the nuclear weapons enterprise over the past year, McMillan said. For example, the existing CMRR radiological laboratory is now permitted to store 26 grams of fissile material, more than quadrupling its prior limitation at 6 grams.

“Those kinds of policy changes lead to different options,” he said. “We’re proposing a set of similar changes that could then lead to different ways to use space within existing facilities, as well as the smaller [new] facilities, to provide the capability.”

The “interim strategy” devised by the nuclear complex for plutonium core analysis uses facilities not only at Los Alamos but “across the enterprise,” to include buildings at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, McMillan noted. A more permanent approach would similarly “take advantage of the infrastructure that’s already there,” he said.

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Military could redefine global-strike weapons

Elaine M. Grossman, Global Security Newswire — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 16:00:00 -0500

The U.S. military is weighing a redefinition of what constitutes a “prompt global strike” weapon, and the result could be to expand the kinds of conventional arms available to hit targets on short notice virtually anywhere around the world, according to defense sources.

These might include weapon systems with shorter range and slower response times than previously considered, Global Security Newswire has learned.

“Some of the combatant commanders are beginning to understand that cost is important,” said one retired strategic-weapons officer, referring to mounting pressures to reduce the defense budget. “And it’s coming down to a fight over prompt global strike.”

The individual is one of several current and former military officials who requested anonymity in this article to allow more candid discussion of sensitive topics.

The Defense Department is grappling with a possible $52 billion funding shortfall in this fiscal year if the White House and lawmakers fail to agree by March 1 on how to avoid the so-calledbudget sequester. This would come on top of nearly $500 billion the Pentagon has already slashed from its 10-year spending plans.

With dollars increasingly short, combat commanders and service chiefs lately are battling not as much over warfighting plans as they are over getting a piece of the budget pie. That has made the global-strike mission an attractive catch that senior brass are vying to control, according to several informed sources.

For prompt global strike scenarios, the military has in the past said it needs a capability to hit targets anywhere around the world with just one hour’s notice.

Until now, that tall order appeared to require a state-of-the-art -- and expensive -- long-range weapon system, costing potentially hundreds of millions of dollars a pop. Such arms could be procured only in small number as a niche capability, one that would be used solely against the most important targets and when no other weapon platforms were available.

Those assumptions, however, are likely on the brink of major change.

Emerging from a top-level Pentagon meeting in November appears to be a mandate for the four military services to explore development of short-, medium- and long-range weapon systems for the mission, officials tell GSN. Consequently, the word “global” could soon fade from the prompt global strike moniker.

Madelyn Creedon, the assistant Defense secretary for global strategic affairs, hinted at that notion in public comments last August, saying that future such arms might alternatively offer “a mostly global strike” capability.

In fact, even the idea of “prompt” is being questioned at the highest ranks in an effort to relax some of the most costly aspects of the effort. Use of off-the-shelf weapons that take a bit longer to arrive at target could diminish the necessity for technological breakthroughs, somewhat dampening talk of costly hypersonic darts that skim the atmosphere en route to targets, in minutes’ time, halfway around the world.

Some expect that Adm. James Winnefeld, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, will soon tell other Pentagon leaders that the global-strike mission could be expanded to weapons capable of hitting targets within two hours of receiving a launch order, rather than the earlier 60-minute objective, according to defense officials and experts.

Over the past several years, all three military services have developed candidate conventional technologies for quickly attacking high-priority targets at long range. Yet, neither a Navy conventionally armed submarine-fired ballistic missile nor futuristic Army and Air Force concepts for land-based, hypersonic boost-glide weapons have moved from research and development to field deployment. Each has been hamstrung by cost, technical or operational concerns, or a combination of these impediments.

The idea behind developing conventional prompt global strike weapons has been to create viable alternatives to using nuclear-tipped long-range missiles during crises in which an important target surfaces but no U.S. or allied conventional forces are available in the area. Examples of such an urgent target might be a terrorist leader spotted at a remote safe house or a North Korean atomic weapon being prepared for imminent launch, defense officials say.

A top Defense Department panel that reviews what technologies the armed services need for carrying out assigned missions met in closed session on Nov. 6 to consider the conventional prompt-strike mission.

Chaired by Winnefeld, the Joint Requirements Oversight Council was expected to consider a proposal that would have placed principal emphasis on an emerging effort to equip NavyVirginia-class attack submarines with conventional missiles.

Defense officials were mum about what transpired during the secret panel meeting.

Since it occurred, though, staffs serving Winnefeld and the other JROC panel members -- the No. 2 officers from each of the four services -- have traded at least four different drafts of a memorandum for the vice chairman to sign that would outline military needs for prompt global strike, sources said.

Once finalized, Winnefeld’s memo is believed likely to signal affordability as a new and central objective for the effort. The modified military requirement should also increasingly set the stage for each of the services to once again play a role in the prompt-strike sandbox, officials toldGSN.

So, too, should a broader vernacular for defining the mission allow regionally based combatant commanders a new role in “strategic” conflicts that occur in their respective operating areas. No longer would the head of U.S. Strategic Command -- where the prompt global strike concept originated nearly a decade ago -- necessarily control the use of rapid-attack conventional weapons in conflict, as has been previously assumed.

Lt. Col. Melinda Morgan, a Pentagon spokeswoman, on Wednesday would not say whether Winnefeld’s memo had been finalized or what it contained, adding that the matter is classified.

According to other defense officials, though, military leaders plan to launch a fresh review that could offer greater detail on a new set of arms for hitting time-critical targets.

The upcoming review could allow for prompt global strike weapons that require as much as four hours’ notice to be ready for taking on a mission, according to defense officials. The relaxed requirements also could include attack systems with ranges as short as 200 nautical miles or as long as 4,200 nautical miles, sources said.

These changes could generate concern in some quarters about the possibility that anything less than the earlier yardstick -- a truly rapid-strike capability with global reach -- might allow some future targets to slip away. For that reason, Winnefeld appears interested in continuing to invest in advanced technologies for prompt global-range strike for the long term, even as more readily available weapons of various ranges and speeds populate the tool chest initially, sources said.

These nearer-term weapons could be capable against “soft targets,” such as assembled troops, or medium targets like buildings or vehicles. Other arms for use against time-sensitive targets could be built to damage or destroy hardened facilities built deep underground, such as command centers or WMD sites, according to some defense officials.

Others said, though, that final word from Winnefeld and his multiservice requirements council about the future of prompt global strike remained in formulation this week.

“It’s an evolving kind of [thing], floating trial balloons,” said one defense source. “It’s up in the air.”

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U.S. may land key Asian nuclear trade deals in 2013

Elaine M. Grossman, Global Security Newswire — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 15:59:36 -0500

U.S. envoys could seal as many as three important nuclear trade agreements with Asian nations this year, with at least one more key pact in the region on the diplomatic agenda for completion by 2015.

The renewal of Washington’s existing atomic cooperation pacts with Taiwan and South Korea is under negotiation, and the specific terms that emerge from the talks could prove of great interest to global nonproliferation advocates. A new U.S. agreement with Vietnam is also being discussed and another 30-year accord with China is on the horizon.

By law the U.S. executive branch must submit to Capitol Hill any new nuclear cooperation agreements or renewals for a review period of 90 days of continuous legislative session. If lawmakers in both chambers have not passed legislation to block a pact during that time frame, the agreement becomes eligible for implementation.

Typically this requirement for “continuous session” takes six to seven months to complete -- particularly when factoring in long holiday breaks -- meaning that the administration likely will submit by the end of June this year any deals it hopes to begin executing in 2014.

The timing is particularly important for the renewal of existing accords -- such as with Taiwan, South Korea and China -- so there is no gap in trade relations that could undermine business stability or affect the provision of nuclear energy.

Taiwan’s agreement with the United States expires in June 2014.

Taipei has signaled it is ready to pledge in the upcoming accord not to make nuclear fuel on its soil. U.S. officials have dubbed this type of promise the “gold standard” for helping reduce any risk that a trade partner would secretly use enriched uranium or reprocessed plutonium to build nuclear weapons.

U.S. renewal talks with Taiwan were launched with an initial meeting in October, and indications were that such a pledge would be formally discussed.

“Given the reporting that Taiwan is ready to embrace the gold standard, it shouldn’t take that long at all for the administration to complete that agreement,” said one congressional source who asked not to be named, lacking authorization to address the matter publicly.

By contrast, worries abound regarding South Korean demands that its upcoming renewal pact include a right to “pyroprocess” U.S.-origin atomic materials. That is an experimental reprocessing technique that Washington is reluctant to allow because of its potential to produce weapon-capable nuclear fuel.

Negotiations stalled over this issue and others last fall, heading into both U.S. and South Korean national elections. As 2013 unfolds, it remains unclear whether Seoul’s new president, Park Geun-hye, might be more amenable than her predecessor to simply renewing the old accord’s terms after she takes office on Feb. 25. South Korea’s agreement expires in March 2014.

Time is “running out” for the two nations’ envoys to seal the renewal, issue expert Miles Pomper said in a September essay published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. “Negotiators remain far apart on the terms of a new pact.”

The “sticking point” in talks now appears related more to uranium enrichment than the widely discussed rift over plutonium reprocessing, he said.

South Korea wants to develop a uranium enrichment capacity to help ensure a steady supply of fuel for its nuclear reactors, he said. The nation additionally seeks enrichment capability to more effectively compete in the world market for providing comprehensive nuclear fuel services, said Pomper, a senior research associate at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies.

Also set for possible achievement in 2013: A new nuclear cooperation agreement with Vietnam. A senior State Department official announced a year ago that bilateral discussions were kicking off with Hanoi, which some say has bristled at the idea of including a nonproliferation gold standard provision in its agreement text.

More recently, another high-ranking U.S. diplomat pointed instead to voluntary international trade guidelines as helping prevent the proliferation of enrichment technology to Vietnam or other emerging nuclear energy nations. That infuriated some on Capitol Hill who have pushed to see ironclad promises against nuclear fuel-making incorporated into bilateral cooperation agreements.

The official, acting Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Rose Gottemoeller, two months earlier noted that she did not “like this term, the ‘gold standard,’” because it implied “somehow everything else we’re doing already is not served by our policy.”

Yet, a so-called Section 123 agreement -- named for a passage in federal law that provides for international atomic cooperation pacts -- with Vietnam and other first-time nuclear energy partners likely will not be concluded until the Obama administration finalizes a policy review regarding how and when it will pursue no-enrichment-or-reprocessing promises abroad.

Interagency discussion of the matter reportedly concluded in 2012 but secret review recommendations have remained at the White House for decision, according to government officials. Earlier in the year, senior administration officials told Congress that U.S. nuclear diplomats would seek gold-standard pledges in nuclear trade negotiations only on a case-by-case basis.

The nascent policy, however, outraged key Democratic and Republican lawmakers, who charged the Obama team did not appear to be pursuing strict nonproliferation terms aggressively enough in its nuclear energy negotiations. The matter quickly went back into internal administration reviewand congressional aides say it appears no new policy has yet been set.

“There is an issue as to whether we should require the gold standard in all future 123s,” U.S. nuclear energy envoy Richard Stratford said in March 2011. “Some people think yes, we should. Let’s tighten up. Others say if you do that, there’s going to be a lot of people that you’re writing off in terms of nuclear cooperation, and do you really want to do that? Well, until we can settle that issue, we really can’t move forward with Vietnam.”

A State Department representative on Friday declined to describe the status of the ongoing review or say when the policy issue would be resolved and publicly discussed.

Until the review is complete, some other nuclear pacts under negotiation with nations elsewhere around the globe remain in limbo, as well.

One is a pending accord with Jordan. Stratford, who directs the State Department’s Nuclear Energy, Safety and Security office, two years ago said an atomic trade pact with the Middle Eastern state was “very, very close” to completion.

However, he said, the government in Amman “had other issues on its mind at the moment” that were delaying the agreement, namely events related to the ongoing Arab political awakening.

At the time, Stratford said, it appeared that further negotiations with Jordan would likely produce an accord “that Congress will like” -- a remark widely interpreted as meaning Amman was prepared to include in the text some form of gold-standard pledge.

Another bilateral pact potentially in the offing that could be directly affected by any new Obama administration policy is one with Saudi Arabia. The State Department representative this week listed the Persian Gulf state alongside Jordan, Taiwan, South Korea and Vietnam as nations with which “we are negotiating [nuclear trade] agreements.”

U.S. lawmakers from both parties have cited with concern Saudi interest in developing or procuring nuclear arms, suggesting that any atomic trade agreement with Riyadh would receive intense congressional scrutiny.

Back in the Asia-Pacific region, Washington is also looking ahead to renewal of its 1985 atomic energy cooperation pact with China, which expires in 2015. As a recognized nuclear-armed power, Beijing exercises a right to produce nuclear fuel capable of being weaponized.

Its agreement thus would not incorporate a pledge against sensitive fuel-making activities, but rather would include standard 123 language that more narrowly prohibits U.S.-origin atomic materials from being reprocessed or enriched.

Depending on when a renewal pact with China hits Capitol Hill, its review by lawmakers might or might not prove controversial. The level of Chinese support for U.S. policies on containing Iran’s nuclear development efforts and isolating the Syrian government for its brutality in an ongoing civil war could affect congressional treatment of a U.S.-China nuclear accord renewal, according to issue experts.

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Decision on proliferation assessments pending at nuclear agency

Elaine M. Grossman — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 16:00:00 -0500

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is poised to consider whether to begin requiring license applicants for emerging technologies to evaluate any associated proliferation risks, following the submission of a staff paper on the matter late last month, according to officials.

The five NRC commissioners might debate the viability of a rule-making change -- spurred by a 2010 petition from the American Physical Society -- alongside a potential review of the agency’s September approval of the first U.S. commercial license for using lasers to enrich uranium, as timing would have it.

Proliferation concerns surrounding a proposal by energy giant GE-Hitachi to build a laser enrichment facility in Wilmington, N.C., initially prompted the nation’s oldest organization of physicists to submit the rule-change petition two years ago.

Reform advocates have argued that although existing NRC license application reviews focus on plant security, they do not adequately address broader proliferation dangers.

For example, they say, U.S. approval for laser enrichment -- which is believed feasible in small facilities using minimal electricity -- could spur new clandestine research and construction in other nations that might make bomb-building efforts by nuclear-arms aspirants easier to conceal.

Though the pending APS petition and the NRC staff nod for laser enrichment are separate matters, the issues are overlapping, one commissioner said earlier this month. An NRC rule change could demand proliferation assessments for new uranium enrichment or plutonium reprocessing applications, including laser enrichment but also for other technologies or processes yet to emerge, according to supporters.

“It’s a little bit difficult” to “separate out” the question of revisiting the GE-Hitachi license from the “nonproliferation assessment petition,” NRC Commissioner William Ostendorff told Global Security Newswire following a Nov. 5 panel discussion in Arlington, Va. He did not indicate how he might vote on either issue.

Commission debate over the rule-making proposal is “something that will be coming up … not just focused on the GE-Hitachi technology, but more a policy issue,” he said. “That is one item that will be on our agenda here in the coming months.”

As it stands, NRC reviews of license bids do include a security dimension, albeit without a stand-alone proliferation analysis, he noted.

“There are many technical attributes, security attributes, that our staff does look at that [involve] a nexus of nonproliferation issues,” Ostendorff said. “So it’s a little bit of semantics involved in this issue.”

Under recently revised U.S. regulations, the commissioners have 120 days from NRC staff license approval to revisit the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board’s Sept. 19 findings in favor of the laser enrichment application, if they choose. The consideration period continues through mid-January.

This type of optional review could result in allowing the ASLB decision and subsequent staff license approval to stand as-is, or the commissioners might decide to delay or reject the laser enrichment effort.

GE-Hitachi has said the new technology might allow reactor fuel to be produced at lower costthan does today’s centrifuge approach, and the joint venture has played down the potentialproliferation risks.

Agency spokesman David McIntyre recently described a post-approval review by the five agency commissioners as “rare but not unheard of.”

Ostendorff said early this month that he had not yet seen the staff paper on the APS rule-making petition. Both that issue and the possibility of revisiting the laser enrichment license approval would be subject to a majority vote among the five NRC commissioners, he noted.

Late last week, McIntyre said he had no information about the timing of any meeting the commissioners might hold on either topic.

Though the NRC staff’s Oct. 29 paper remains under wraps, it was widely expected to recommend that commissioners reject the idea that the agency must broaden its evaluation of proliferation dangers as part of the licensing process.

Earlier this year, commission staff found that proliferation assessments would be “beyond the scope” of NRC responsibilities, according to an environmental impact statement issued for the laser enrichment license request. The February document also portrayed an agency view that a dedicated analysis of proliferation risks is unnecessary.

The following month, though, a Congressional Research Service memo argued that U.S. law affords the Nuclear Regulatory Commission sufficient authority to conduct proliferation analyses. Part of the NRC mandate, the CRS document said, is to avoid issuing licenses that “would be inimical to the common defense and security or would constitute an unreasonable risk to the health and safety of the public.”

Both Ostendorff and NRC Chairman Allison Macfarlane are believed open to discussing the possibility of newly requiring a dedicated proliferation appraisal for all future enrichment or reprocessing technology license applications. Commissioner George Apostolakis reportedly favors the idea, while fellow panelists Kristine Svinicki and William Magwood are said to have privately expressed some reservations.

“It should go forward because some new technology may have significant proliferation implications, particularly technologies that are hard to detect,” Linton Brooks, a former head of the National Nuclear Security Administration, said in a Monday telephone interview. “The time to be worried about that is in the design phase.”

(Image via rodho/Shutterstock.com)

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Officials say U.S., Taiwan 'discussing assurances' on sensitive nuclear activities

Elaine M. Grossman, Global Security Newswire — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 08:00:00 -0500

The United States and Taiwan have begun “discussing assurances” that could result in the East Asian nation’s pledge to avoid sensitive nuclear activities as part of a bilateral atomic trade pact renewal, Taiwan government officials said.

In a two-day “prenegotiation meeting” last month in Washington, U.S. and Taiwanese officials launched talks on the anticipated renewal of their 40-year-old nuclear trade pact, according to the Taiwan government’s written response to questions.

“We do not comment publicly on the details of any stage of our negotiations, but we are discussing assurances on enrichment and reprocessing,” the Taipei officials told Global Security Newswire last week. The officials requested not to be identified in this article because of the diplomatic sensitivities surrounding the ongoing talks.

The island nation made news in July when a government official told GSN it would be “no problem” for Taiwan’s leaders to embrace a strong nonproliferation stance by forgoing uranium enrichment or plutonium reprocessing in the new agreement. “Our government insists on peaceful use of nuclear energy, so we don’t want to raise any proliferation concerns,” the official said at the time.

The official in July went on to complain, though, that despite Taiwan’s efforts to press U.S. diplomats since 2010 to begin negotiating the replacement accord, the State Department had not yet agreed to begin talks. The existing pact expires in less than two years and any renewal must go before the legislatures of both nations with significant lead time to prevent a gap in nuclear trade relations.

With the newly launched renewal talks, it appears possible that a trade agreement might be struck as early as next year. Such a head start on the calendar could be necessary for meeting a months-long waiting period of congressional review, mandated by U.S. law before a nuclear cooperation pact can go forward.

“The current agreement expires in June 2014, and both [the] Taiwan and U.S. [governments] are working closely to avoid a lapse between the current and succeeding agreement,” the Taiwanese officials said last Wednesday. “Based on our past cooperative relations, we anticipate close cooperation on a wide range of issues.”

Taipei did not say when talks would next be held or might be completed. A U.S. State Department spokeswoman was unable to offer comment by press time.

Such an agreement would extend Taiwanese access to U.S. nuclear materials, technologies and expertise. A no-enrichment-or-reprocessing pledge accompanying the pact might ease any concerns that Taipei would use these sensitive civil energy activities to gain a clandestine nuclear bomb-making capability, along the lines of what Iran is widely suspected of doing.

A voluntary ban on sensitive nuclear activities could also represent a significant model for future nuclear accords, nonproliferation advocates say.

If Taiwan proceeds as anticipated, it could become the second U.S. nuclear cooperation partner to incorporate the pledge into its bilateral trade pact. The United Arab Emirates made this type of nonproliferation promise in its 2009 atomic trade agreement with the United States, leading a State Department spokesman later that year to dub the move the “gold standard” for U.S. civil nuclear accords.

State Department staffers last year put Taiwan ahead of other nations in line to negotiate atomic trade pact renewals, according to Energy Department correspondence obtained byGSN under the Freedom of Information Act.

It remains unclear why the effort to initiate the talks subsequently stalled. However, it came as Obama administration undertook three successive internal policy reviews to determine in which instances it would seek to duplicate the gold standard in bilateral atomic trade.

A policy for approaching the matter on a “case-by-case” basis flopped early this year on Capitol Hill in the face of significant bipartisan criticism. Lawmakers said the policy did not appear strong enough to prevent future U.S. atomic commerce partners from undertaking activities that might expand the spread of nuclear arms.

Since then, Rose Gottemoeller, the acting undersecretary of State for arms control and international security, has said Washington “is always pursuing the highest standards” and has cited voluntary global export guidelines as helping to reinforce nonproliferation goals.

The most recent interagency recommendation -- which remains secret -- is said to be on President Obama’s desk for a policy decision.

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Pentagon official blames bomb cost hike on “incomplete” Energy agency estimate

Elaine M. Grossman, Global Security Newswire — Fri, 03 Aug 2012 15:00:00 -0400

A Defense Department official has blamed an “incomplete” initial cost estimate last year by the Energy Department’s nuclear security organization for new revelations that a program to revamp the B-61 nuclear gravity bomb has more than doubled in price.

The effort to extend the service life of hundreds of the aircraft-launched weapons will cost $10 billion, in stark contrast to a $4 billion estimate the National Nuclear Security Administration, a semiautonomous Energy arm, had first projected.

“The earlier [figure] was a rough estimate based on incomplete knowledge,” said the senior Defense official, who was not authorized to address the matter publicly and demanded anonymity for this article.

Many program details are secret, including how many of the modernized versions of the weapon -- dubbed the B-61-12 -- will ultimately emerge from the life-extension process. Nuclear weapons expert Hans Kristensen speculates that roughly 400 will be produced -- suggesting the per-warhead cost, including a new guidance system, would be the most expensive in history at $28 million.

Benjamin Loehrke, a senior policy analyst at the Ploughshares Fund, in a Monday Twitter post and blog quipped that each of the warheads would cost only $16.5 million if instead they were cast in gold.

The Defense official said, though, that the price hike should not be considered cost growth in the effort, because nothing has changed programmatically. It is more a matter of who was doing the estimates and how they did the counting, the official suggested.

“It’s hard to say that you had a cost growth because you didn’t have a good baseline,” according to the insider. “So from now on, yeah, now watch what happens.”

The so-called “Mod 12” update is aimed at replacing a variety of B-61 versions fielded over the years.

Today the U.S. Air Force has in its active and reserve stockpiles roughly 900 B-61s, of which 400 bombs could be launched from strategic bomber aircraft. Fewer than 200 of these are believed fielded on bomber bases and thus available for operations with several days’ notice, Kristensen said on Friday.

Of the 900 or so total, there are roughly 500 tactical versions of the B-61 in active and reserve stockpiles, with 200 or so of them fielded at European bases.

About 35 B-61s, dubbed the “Mod 11” version, were updated within the past decade and will remain in the arsenal without the Mod 12 update, Kristensen said.

The first life-extended B-61 warhead should be available by 2019, according to Thomas D’Agostino, who heads the National Nuclear Security Administration. Funded at $369 million in the current White House budget request, the effort is to begin developmental engineering during the coming fiscal year, which begins on Oct. 1.

The updates are expected to lend the bombs another 20 to 30 years of service life.

An initial Air Force estimate this past spring was that the project would cost $6 billion, a revelation confirmed by the Defense official in May and first reported earlier that month by the Federation of American Scientists.

When Pentagon Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation officials weighed the Air Force estimate, they found it still lacking and tacked on another $4 billion to reach the $10 billion projection. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) on July 25 revealed that the Defense Department had briefed her two days earlier on the new estimate, but Pentagon officials have not publicly released the cost report.

Even the $10 billion figure underestimates total B-61 modernization costs, though, because the math does not include a key feature being installed on the new delivery systems.

“In addition to the [life extension] itself comes a new guided tail kit assembly that the Air Force is developing to increase the accuracy of the B-61,” Kristensen, who directs the FAS Nuclear Information Project, said in a recent blog post. “The cost estimate for that tail kit has recently increased by 50 percent from $800 million to $1.2 billion.”

When NNSA program officials tallied their initial estimate, the B-61 modernization effort was in an early programmatic stage called “concept exploration,” the Defense official told Global Security Newswire.

At that time, it was uncertain which of five notional program plans -- some of them technically ambitious, some less so -- the nuclear security agency would pursue for the B-61 bomb update, the official said. It was only after an option enigmatically labeled “3B” was selected that cost details and assumptions were shared with the Pentagon and given closer scrutiny, according to this source.

Once Defense Department program analysts got a hold of the more detailed information they realized that the effort could prove more expensive than the earlier NNSA projection had suggested.

“They went, ‘Oh, that’s really expensive. Oh, that’s really expensive, damn,’” the senior official said in an interview.

The reappraisal identified some faulty assumptions in the NNSA pricing, one of which revolved around how much it would cost to update the old electronics found in today’s B-61 warheads, the official said.

“There was a thought we could reuse” some of the aging systems, the official said. “We’re not going to be able to reuse as much as we thought. … They’ve corroded, they’re aged.”

Cost estimates also vary because various government agencies approach pricing differently, another Defense official said on Capitol Hill this week.

“The way DOD does business and the way NNSA does business is different,” Steve Henry, deputy assistant Defense secretary for nuclear matters, said at a Wednesday breakfast event. He noted that most of the facilities in the U.S. nuclear complex are government-owned but contractor-operated, whereas the military typically operates on bases overseen by government officials and uniformed officers.

Henry said Defense and NNSA officials continue to work together to pin down the cost projections.

Asked if he was familiar with the $10 billion estimate, Henry said, “I’ve heard ranges of everything. … We don’t know what the answer is, as of now.”

An NNSA spokesman on Friday agreed there remains some pricing uncertainty, but declined to offer specifics.

"It is too early in the process to speculate on any final cost changes or schedule impacts," said Josh McConaha, "and we will not comment on numbers or dates cited in any review until the required engineering work has been completed."

Some of the expense in modernizing aging components on the B-61 is associated with optional upgrades to the system, the first Defense official conceded in the May interview.

“We are always charged by national directive, by the president, to improve the safety and security of our nuclear stockpile, as a commitment we have to the American public,” the official said. “These are the most powerful weapons the world has ever known, and it is our duty to make sure that they’re safe, secure and effective. So if we know how to do something better, why wouldn’t we do it?”

Kristensen said safety features are important to avoid accidental or unauthorized detonations, but alleged that program officials have gone overboard. He would prefer to see a cheaper update to the warheads that mainly fixes or replaces ill-functioning or corroded parts.

The B-61 life-extension technology plan “includes new use-control and safety features to increase the surety of what is already the most safe warhead design in the stockpile,” he said.

“Several warhead design options were proposed, ranging from a simple life-extension with the current features to a significantly altered design with new optical wiring and multipoint safety,” Kristensen said. “The Nuclear Weapons Council in December chose the second-most ambitious design without optical wiring and multipoint safety.”

The Pentagon official responded that the Defense and Energy departments would be wrong not to build in the latest safety and security features afforded by today’s electronics.

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General: Cost worries could derail plan for next bomber to be unmanned

Elaine M. Grossman, Global Security Newswire — Fri, 11 May 2012 12:50:01 -0400

Making the nation’s future bomber aircraft capable of flying by remote control could prove unaffordable, a senior U.S. Air Force general said on Thursday.

Cost considerations are “probably going to make it difficult to afford an unmanned solution up front,” Lt. Gen. James Kowalski, who heads the Air Force Global Strike Command, told a breakfast event audience on Capitol Hill. “I think that would be a real challenge for industry.”

This was a surprising revelation about a planned key feature of the Air Force’s top-priority, new weapon system: the ability for a Long Range Strike aircraft to be “optionally manned,” flying either with or without a pilot in the cockpit.

Defense Department leaders have imposed a $550-million-per-unit cost cap on the service’s next-generation stealth bomber, which is to be capable of operating inside hotly contested enemy airspace. The price ceiling is part of a broader effort to curb long-term military spending.

The Air Force’s top officer, Gen. Norton Schwartz, has said his service understands that if the new bomber exceeds the half-a-billion-dollar price tag, the program risks being canceled. The first such aircraft is to be fielded during the 2020s, according to the service.

“Right now we’re going through that process of determining [the bomber’s required performance] parameters,” Kowalski said. “I think what we will discover is that [cost] may, in fact, be what drives us in terms of the trade space on manned and unmanned [capability].”

For years, the Air Force resisted embracing unmanned aircraft, preferring instead the extra measure of awareness and control that pilots might bring to the cockpit. Service leaders have since warmed to the benefits offered by remotely piloted drones, particularly given the central role these aircraft have come to play in gathering intelligence and targeting extremists abroad.

“That’s a great idea if you want to save some money up front,” Hans Kristensen, who heads the Federation of American Scientists’ Nuclear Information Program, said of the Air Force move to reconsider a pilotless version of the bomber. “There’s no doubt it would cost more to have both pilots and unmanned -- you have double capability.”

If the Air Force must choose between a manned or unmanned version of the bomber, it is no surprise that it would opt for maintaining a capacity for pilots onboard, he said.

“There are just too many missions for which it would be inconceivable to kick the pilot out of the cockpit, nuclear delivery being one of them,” Kristensen said. One long-valued benefit to a nuclear-armed bomber is that, unlike a missile, it could be recalled while en route to its target; a preprogrammed drone, by contrast, could potentially diminish the role of human judgment or control.

Not every issue expert supports this potential scaling back of the bomber’s capabilities. Baker Spring, a national security policy research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, called a manned-only Long Range Strike bomber a “bad idea.”

“The Air Force should be permitted to explore the full range of options,” he told Global Security Newswire. “This points out why the Obama administration’s projected defense budgets, even absent sequestration, are inadequate.”

The 2011 Budget Control Act mandates a roughly $450 billion cut in defense spending over the next decade. That amount could more than double under the sequester process if lawmakers do not by the end of this year reverse the legislation’s demand for $1.2 trillion in additional government-wide reductions.

For the bomber aircraft, Spring speculated that the “cost of exploring the option of an unmanned version could be relatively modest. Under certain circumstances, I could see it adding less than 2 percent to the total acquisition cost for the program.”

Air Force officials have not said how expensive the overall program might be or how many aircraft they would seek to buy.

Based on the per-plane cost limit, Spring estimated that the price to procure 100 of the new bombers could run roughly $50 billion.

“Anybody who thinks that’ll be the final price is going to be very surprised,” Kristensen opined.

Kowalski, whose Louisiana-based command oversees nuclear-capable bombers and ICBMs, also defended his service’s decision to certify the future bomber first for conventional operations, and only later allow the aircraft to deliver nuclear munitions.

The House Armed Services Committee this week prepared a fiscal 2013 defense authorization bill for debate on the chamber floor that would instead require the nuclear-capable bomber to gain Defense Department certification for potential use in atomic combat upon initial fielding.

Kowalski said this would be a more expensive path and could delay getting a vital conventional capability in hand.

“If you look back at the history of our bombers … none of them came off [production lines] and were certified in both nuclear and conventional” missions when first introduced into the fleet, even during the Cold War, the three-star general said.

“I don’t think it’s unreasonable to say, ‘Well, if we’re going to have it come off the line and be certified in one or the other first, what is probably the most pressing?’” said Kowalski. “I look at the range of military operations that the combatant commanders want, and I say probably conventional is the most pressing.”

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Draft House measure demands nuclear capability in bomber from get-go

Elaine M. Grossman, Global Security Newswire — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 15:11:30 -0400

A key panel of the House Armed Services Committee has drafted legislation that would require the Defense Department to ensure its future bomber has a nuclear-weapons capability immediately upon fielding .

If passed into law, the provision would toss out existing Air Force plans to phase in a nuclear capability only after a conventional-only Long Range Strike bomber is initially fielded in the 2020s. The measure is included in the Seapower and Projection Forces Subcommittee's draft text for the fiscal 2013 defense authorization bill, which the panel was marking up at press time on Thursday.

"The secretary of the Air Force shall ensure that the next-generation long-range strike bomber is certified to use both conventional weapons and strategic nuclear weapons as of the date on which such aircraft achieves initial operating capability," reads the subcommittee markup, released on Wednesday.

The full House Armed Services Committee is scheduled to consider its version of the same spending-authorization bill on May 9, after the chamber takes a one-week recess, according to a panel spokesman. The committee has the authority to alter provisions drafted by its subcommittees, but typically very few changes are made before a lengthy defense authorization bill is sent to the House floor.

Gen. Norton Schwartz, the Air Force chief of staff, explained last year that a dual-capable design would enable the aircraft to carry nuclear weapons from the start. However, to save costs and facilitate testing, the service would certify the bomber for nuclear missions some unspecified number of years after first fielding a conventional-only aircraft.

"We are going to phase this in a way that will initially introduce conventional capability, which is easier to test, less costly to test," Schwartz said in Nov. 2 testimony before the House Armed Services Committee. "And then as we get closer to the time when the B-52 and the B-2 [bombers] begin to age out, we will well in advance of that certify the [new] airplane for nuclear operation."

At the time, some lawmakers were already expressing dismay at the service approach.

"I'm concerned about a de-emphasis on the nuclear role," Representative John Fleming, R-La., said at the House hearing. Combined with an array of other deep cuts to the defense budget, the delay in equipping the new bomber with nuclear arms "obviously makes this world a more dangerous place," he said.

Schwartz, the top Air Force officer, has since said his service must keep the cost of the new bomber capped at $550 billion per aircraft or risk seeing the project canceled .

Defense officials anticipate that the new stealthy bomber will be piloted either remotely or by humans in the cockpit. The aircraft is to feature futuristic capabilities for defeating enemy radar systems and destroying incoming missiles with lasers.

The House panel said, though, that it was "discouraged that the Air Force is unable to clearly articulate when the new long-range strike bomber will become certified for nuclear operations after attaining initial operating capability status."

Headed by Representative Todd Akin, R-Mo., the subcommittee did endorse service plans to maintain today's dual-capable bomber fleets at existing levels. Sixteen B-2s and 44 B-52s are available today for nuclear missions, according to atomic weapons analysts Hans Kristensen and Robert Norris.

The House lawmakers, however, rejected the Air Force perspective when it came to qualifying the new flying platform for its nuclear combat responsibilities.

"The committee does not believe that test and evaluation master plan affordability should be the limiting factor for certification," according to the draft House Armed Services markup.

The top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, Representative Adam Smith (Wash.), has said he would consider the possibility of calling for the future bomber to be capable solely of conventional missions, particularly given mounting pressures to cut federal spending .

More than 40 House lawmakers have joined Representative Edward Markey, D-Mass., in sponsoring legislation that would prohibit development of a nuclear-capable bomber over the next decade as part of a proposed $100 billion reduction in nuclear spending over that time period.

In related news, the same House subcommittee also moved to block a Navy blueprint for phasing its future nuclear-armed submarine into the fleet as today's Ohio-class vessels begin to retire. The Navy must "maintain a minimum of 12 ballistic missile submarines in the fleet," the panel's defense authorization legislation states.

This mandate conflicts with a recent Navy shipbuilding plan that has the service operating for 14 years, mostly during the 2030s, with less than its planned complement of a dozen nuclear-armed submerged craft. An anticipated two-year delay in developing and fielding the Ohio class replacement submarine is expected to force a dip to just 10 Trident D-5 missile-carrying vessels, and the Navy will not reach 12 such boats again until 2042, according to service plans.

Of a total 12 submarines, 10 vessels could be at sea at any one time, according to recent Navy testimony.

Today there are 14 nuclear-armed Ohio-class submarines, of which four are typically kept at sea and on alert at any given time. The Pentagon's 2010 Nuclear Posture Review said the White House would "consider reducing from 14 to 12 Ohio-class submarines" by 2020, without affecting the number of deployed warheads aboard the vessels.

In an opening statement as the mark-up process began on Thursday, Akin called the two-year delay in the new submarine effort "the most worrisome part of the budget request."

The Navy has determined there is only "moderate risk" associated with the dozen-plus years in which it will field just 10 ballistic missile submarines, the subcommittee head noted. Akin said that judgment is flawed.

"We cannot afford to take any unwarranted risk in this most important capability for national security, and so are mandating that the Navy retain no fewer than 12 of these submarines to provide adequate undersea nuclear capability," he said in released remarks.

The Seapower and Projection Forces Subcommittee stated in its draft bill that as of fiscal 2013, which begins on Oct. 1, "the secretary of the Navy may not retire or decommission a nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine if such retirement or decommissioning would result in the active or commissioned fleet of such submarines consisting of less than 12 submarines."

At a House Armed Services Committee hearing earlier this year, another key lawmaker expressed qualms about the Navy fielding plan for the new vessel, sometimes dubbed SSBN(X).

"When you lose two years" in the developmental schedule, Strategic Forces Subcommittee Chairman Michael Turner, R-Ohio said on Feb. 16, "certainly everyone has concerns as to what's going to be your overall operational effect."

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U.S. Navy to grapple with dip in deployed subs for more than a decade

Elaine M. Grossman — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0400

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Navy will field fewer than its objective 12 nuclear-armed submarines for more than a decade, due to a recently announced two-year delay in building its first Ohio-class replacement vessel.

The service plans to operate for 14 years -- mostly in the 2030s -- without a full complement of Navy ballistic missile submarines. That is a longer time span than was widely known until this week, when congressional testimony and a service shipbuilding report offered new specifics.

"We will have a period of time essentially through the 30s when we will be at that 10-minimum number in order to sustain the warfighting requirement that will impose additional risk on the Navy," Rear Adm. Terry Benedict, who directs Navy Strategic Systems Programs, told lawmakers on Wednesday. "We believe that is manageable."

The Navy had earlier stated in a February 2010 shipbuilding report that there was "no leeway" in its plans to field the first Ohio-class replacement vessel, also known as SSBN(X), by fiscal 2029.

However, President Obama's fiscal 2013 budget request, submitted to Congress last month, included a two-year delay in developing and building the new submerged craft, with the initial submarine now unavailable until 2031.

Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton Carter in January attributed the program delay to a desire to reduce risk in an acquisition effort that appeared to be moving too quickly from development into production.

That program stretch-out will ultimately trigger a dip below 12 ballistic missile submarines available for use at sea, Navy brass has publicly acknowledged. Service leaders have told lawmakers they planned to make adjustments -- likely to deployment schedules and warhead loading -- so that the number of submarine-based nuclear arms on alert at any given time would remain largely unaffected.

Operational workarounds, however, could put a strain on naval forces, according to some experts. Moreover, if fielding just 10 ballistic missile submarines throughout the 2030 time frame becomes the Navy's new normal, political will and budget dollars to bring the SSBN fleet back up to 12 vessels might simply never materialize.

"If you can go four years with 11 [submarines] and nine years with 10 [subs] -- why do you need 12 [subs]?" said one nuclear weapons consultant who asked not to be named in discussing sensitive operational plans.

Today the Navy fields 14 Ohio-class SSBN submarines, each of which is capable of carrying 24 Trident D-5 ballistic missiles. Each missile currently carries an average of four nuclear warheads, though loading is expected grow slightly as the service reduces to 12 Ohio-class submarines by the end of this decade, according to experts Robert Norris and Hans Kristensen.

After the two-year SSBN(X) program delay was announced earlier this year, many experts assumed that the Navy would have to employ compensatory measures for just a couple of years when fielded submarines would drop to just 10 or 11 vessels.

However, the extended dip in fleet size is now expected because the Navy must begin pulling Ohio-class submarines out of service at the end of the next decade, as they reach retirement age. Ships in a given class retire in staggered fashion, typically in the same order in which the vessels were built.

"As the Trident submarine class retired -- and they will start to retire in 2029 -- we were going to bring in the SSBN(X)," Adm. Jonathan Greenert, the Navy's top officer, said in a Feb. 16 appearance before the House Armed Services Committee. "When you retire those [first] two, we'll go from 12 to 10 operational SSBNs out there. That is close to what we provide today."

One longtime Defense Department adviser on naval issues said the operational gap was unavoidable once the decision was made to extend the SSBN(X) developmental effort for a full two years.

"When you delay [the replacement vessels], the numbers available go down because the older boats have to be retired," Norman Polmar said in a Thursday interview. "They get worn out."

"Essentially all Ohio class [submarines] will be -- give or take a number of months or within -- about 42 years of age at their retirement," said Benedict, testifying on Wednesday at a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee.

In Thursday testimony before a House Armed Services subcommittee, Navy officials indicated there was no consideration of extending the service lives of the aging Ohio-class boats -- a hugely expensive endeavor relative to the operational workarounds that could be done instead.

"The [SSBN(X) procurement] delay results in a temporary reduction to 10 available SSBNs in the 2030s during the transition period between Ohio and Ohio-replacement SSBNs," a three-person Navy panel -- led by Assistant Secretary for Research, Development and Acquisition Sean Stackley -- stated in written testimony.

Of a total 12 submarines, 10 vessels could be at sea at any one time, according to this week's Navy testimony. At any given time, the service typically keeps four of its current 14 nuclear-armed submarines at sea and on alert -- two in the Atlantic Ocean and two in the Pacific -- along with four more in transit or in training, and another four in port, according to experts.

Two additional submarines are typically in major overhaul, when the ships' nuclear reactor is refueled and key systems are repaired and updated.

However, the Navy will stop performing these midlife overhauls on Ohio-class submarines that are nearing retirement in the coming decades. The SSBN(X) will not require a midlife refueling, because its design includes "a nuclear fuel core that is sufficient to power the ship for its entire expected service life," according to a Congressional Research Service report issued last year.

"Because there are no major SSBN overhauls planned during this period, an available force of 10 ships will be able to meet the current U.S. Strategic Command's at-sea presence requirements, albeit with increased operational risk that stems from the reduced force levels," Stackley and his colleagues said in their written testimony for the House Armed Services Seapower and Projection Forces Subcommittee, referring to the 14-year gap in a 12-sub fleet.

During the verbal question-and-answer session with lawmakers, the service officials said the ballistic missile submarine fleet must be back up to the desired 12-boat level by the 2050s, because at that point the Navy will begin taking two SSBN(X) subs off line for major maintenance. That will once again leave the service with just 10 of the vessels operationally available, Stackley said.

"Eventually we would have to go back to the 12 boats," said Vice Adm. John Terence Blake, the deputy chief of naval operations for integration of capabilities and resources. "Because when those 10 boats start going through their refit periods, that's when ... the number has to go back up to 12 in order to maintain the requirement for the continuous number of boats at sea."

"We've evaluated it," Greenert, the chief of naval operations, testified last month. "And it is equivalent to ... the operational availability of SSBNs that we provide today."

He said the Navy would continue to assess the impact of its adjusted plans.

"We see that to be OK right now," Greenert said. "We'll watch it very closely."

According to the newly released Navy shipbuilding plan, the ballistic missile submarine fleet will:

-- Drop from 14 to 13 SSBN submarines in fiscal 2027 and to 12 vessels a year later. However, a major Pentagon policy paper, the 2010 Nuclear Posture Review, stated that the nation would "consider reducing from 14 to 12 Ohio-class submarines in the second half of this decade" -- that is, by 2020 -- without affecting the number of deployed warheads aboard the vessels;

-- Dip down to a level of 11 fielded submarines in 2029, 2030 and 2031, and then to 10 such vessels from 2032 through 2040;

-- Begin building back up again in 2041, once the introduction of new SSBN(X) submarines into the fleet can compensate for the steady losses of retiring Ohio-class vessels; and

-- Return to the desired force level of 12 fielded SSBN(X) boats by 2042.

The length of the delay in returning to a 12-submarine force for the nation's sea-based nuclear deterrent is prompting some head-scratching.

"It doesn't make sense that a two-year slip at the beginning of the R&D program ... will result in a 14-year shortfall in the required [submarine] force level," said the nuclear weapons consultant.

This defense expert said that mounting pressure on the federal government to further reduce its defense spending in coming years would likely prompt the Pentagon to draft some backup plans to its desired modernization blueprint.

"Until the [submarine-fielding] schedule is certain, I would be surprised if the White House decided to take irreversible reductions in other nuclear forces, like ICBMs or bombers," the consultant said. "What is going to stop them from delaying the [SSBN(X)] program again next year?"

In fact, the new Navy report for Congress said the "high cost for replacing the nation's secure, second-strike nuclear deterrent force will have a disproportionate impact" on the service's overall shipbuilding budget.

The Government Accountability Office this month estimated the Pentagon will spend $90.4 billion on developing and building the nuclear-armed underwater craft, based on Defense documents.

The Pentagon has allotted $565 million in its 2013 budget for research and development on the Ohio-class replacement submarines, according to a Navy spending outline released last month.

"To cover both the SSBN(X) program as well as other shipbuilding programs, yearly shipbuilding expenditures" for a decade beginning in fiscal 2023 will require, on average, $19.5 billion per year, this week's naval shipbuilding report states. "This is over $4 billion more per year than in the near-term planning period."

The Navy is "doing everything in its power to reduce projected yearly shipbuilding costs," including "trying to reduce" the average SSBN(X) procurement cost "to $5.3 billion, down from a projected $6 billion," according to the document, which called adhering to the shipbuilding budget plan "the key challenge" for the Defense Department for the next 30 years.

In seeking ways to cut SSBN(X) expenditures, "the question is, what [capabilities] do you give up?" Polmar said. The number of missiles each vessel is able to accommodate might be reduced below the currently anticipated 16, he said.

"And secondly, my understanding [is that] they're giving up certain nonacoustic stealth features -- and that could be critical," Polmar told Global Security Newswire. "[This] borders on the criminal if you consider these submarines will be around in the next 50 years or so."

If the service is unable to sustain the $19.5 billion-a-year average cap on shipbuilding, "plans to recapitalize the nation's secure second-strike nuclear deterrent and the Navy's conventional battle force will have to be dramatically changed, and the overall size of the battle force will drop below the levels needed to meet all naval presence and warfighting requirements," the Navy report warns.

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Officials defend delay for next missile intercept test

Elaine M. Grossman — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0500

U.S. Defense Department officials on Tuesday defended their decision to delay a planned missile defense intercept test to late this year, saying more time would be needed before they are ready for the trial launch.

Testifying before a House panel, Lt. Gen. Patrick O'Reilly, who heads the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency, said his organization would postpone reattempting a flight test first carried out in December 2010, when an Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle failed to hit an incoming dummy warhead.

The kill vehicle is the crucial front-end technology for Ground-Based Interceptors, the central weapon in the nation's Ground-based Midcourse Defense system.

O'Reilly's agency has 26 interceptors at Fort Greely in Alaska and four of the weapons at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, which "protect the United States against a limited ICBM raid size launched from current regional threats," he told lawmakers. Pentagon officials recently announced they could field an additional eight interceptors in Alaska by 2016, bringing the total to 38.

Designed to destroy incoming enemy ballistic missile re-entry vehicles outside the atmosphere, the EKV technology has scored three flight test successes to date aboard Ground-Based Interceptors, according to O'Reilly's agency. Overall there have been just eight successful intercepts using GBI system technology in 15 flight tests.

The December 2010 failure -- one of two misses that year -- led to a redesign for Raytheon Missile Systems' EKV system, the Army three-star general said in written testimony for a hearing of the House Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee .

During the last intercept attempt, the weapon launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California but failed to hit a target missile over the Pacific Ocean .

This year the Missile Defense Agency plans to initially conduct a nonintercept flight test of the Ground-Based Interceptor in July, using what O'Reilly called the "upgraded" EKV design. Hoping to have corrected the technical problem, the agency will then retry the more challenging intercept test by the end of 2012, he said.

"Extensive ground testing and modeling have demonstrated with high confidence" that the EKV fault was associated with "space-related dynamic environments which caused the EKV to fail in the final seconds of the test," Rick Lehner, an MDA spokesman, said in response to a reporter's questions. "The first generation EKV now deployed in Alaska and California do not have this design issue."

O'Reilly characterized the effort to achieve success in these upcoming GBI flight tests as "MDA's highest priority."

A December intercept retest would represent a 90-day delay from earlier plans, a setback that appeared to trouble subcommittee Chairman Michael Turner, R-Ohio.

"We won't see return flight tests for the [redesigned] kill vehicle for two months more than projected, [delayed] to July 2012. And the return-to-flight intercept test for the [redesigned] kill vehicle will be delayed three months to December 2012," the lawmaker said at the hearing. "Yet the nuclear missile programs of Iran and North Korea continue to expand."

Most worrisome for national missile defense is Pyongyang's "continued development of long-range missiles and potentially a mobile intercontinental ballistic missile and their continued development of nuclear [weapons]," Turner said. "North Korea is in the process of becoming a direct threat to the United States."

However, David Ahern, deputy assistant Defense secretary for portfolio systems acquisition, warned against rushing key developmental steps in the GBI program.

"The flight test pace of about one per year is the best that we've been able to do on average over ... about a decade. That's because these tests are extremely complex. There's over a terabyte of data that's collected during these tests," said Ahern, testifying alongside O'Reilly on a four-witness panel. "I'm all for testing at the most rapid pace possible, but you have to assess and analyze the results of the tests in order to learn from them."

O'Reilly added that in the case of the EKV system, he and senior program engineers opted for the new test delays after assessing findings of an expert panel that reviewed the 2010 failure.

"As we looked at the results emerging from the last flight test in the failure review board, we did identify a component that had an error that was not apparent -- you couldn't test it with the facilities on the ground," O'Reilly told lawmakers during the hearing. "So we have re-established new specifications that we believe will be robust, and we'll prove that in a flight test this summer."

O'Reilly also said he and his technical advisers were dissatisfied with quality lapses they discovered in the production of certain kill vehicle components. Neither the agency leader nor the other witnesses identified the specific parts in question.

"It was in the review of the factories and the plants themselves that we saw that we needed more stringent production processes," O'Reilly said. "Unfortunately, these devices are the very first ones you use when you build up [an] enhanced kill vehicle. And so by replacing them with production-representative devices -- actually will cause a delay, because we had to start over the production of these [kill vehicles]."

The general, who has headed the Missile Defense Agency since November 2008, said he wanted to ensure that the kill vehicle that is intercept-tested late this year would be "production representative."

Building a test weapon that matches systems that will be manufactured in quantity into the future "gives us the confidence, based on the results of a successful intercept, that in fact we can put the rest of the production line into operation," O'Reilly said.

The nonintercept test in July, though, is to be performed with "an existing part" and is aimed at demonstrating "mitigations to the problems that were discovered in the earlier flight test" with that previous-design part, said Michael Gilmore, who directs the Pentagon's Operational Test and Evaluation office.

For the December test and in future production, "they're building a new part and they have to make certain that they're building it to the right tolerances, under the right conditions," Gilmore explained, also testifying on Tuesday before the House subcommittee. "And so the intercept test, I agree, should be postponed until we can have a fully production-representative part in the test."

Representative Loretta Sanchez, D-Calif., the House panel's ranking member, said she supports taking a methodical approach to fixing and testing the EKV technology.

"I've always been one of those people who thinks it's important that we get the testing right and understand what we should have before we begin to acquire any more of that," she said. "In the GMD program, which stands at about a 45 percent test success rate, it means determining the causes of the recent test failures, and [ensuring] that they're adequately resolved and corrected before buying additional costly interceptors."

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Air Force plans two-year delay in developing new Cruise Missile

Elaine M. Grossman — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0500

The B-52H Stratofortress bomber will likely carry the new missiles developed by the program. United States Air Force

The Air Force now plans a two-year delay in the development of a new $1.3 billion weapon to replace today's nuclear-capable Air Launched Cruise Missile aboard bomber aircraft, according to budget documents submitted to Congress last week.

Under current plans, the service in fiscal 2013 would spend $2 million to continue work on a secret "Analysis of Alternatives" that weighs various technological options for the new missile, called the Long-Range Stand-Off weapon or "LRSO" for short.

However, the "LRSO program start [is] delayed two years," the Air Force states in newly released charts on research and development funding. The service will save $39.4 million in its five-year budget plan by postponing the beginning of the cruise missile's technology development phase from fiscal 2013 to 2015, according to the documents.

In debuting its 2013 budget request on Feb. 13, the Defense Department announced a number of delays to other nuclear weapons programs. Those included two-year schedule slips for fielding both the Ohio-class replacement submarine and refurbished versions of the B-61 bomb.

The Pentagon did not reveal in several budget rollout reports and press conferences, though, that it was planning a similar two-year delay for the new cruise missile. A Defense Department spokeswoman this week deferred comment on the omission to the Air Force, which did not respond by press time to a question on the matter.

Maj. Gen. William Chambers, the Air Force assistant chief of staff for strategic deterrence and nuclear integration, did acknowledge the delay during a Feb. 17 appearance at a nuclear weapons symposium in Arlington, Va., according to the independent news publication InsideDefense.com.

An official in the Air Force's nuclear office on Friday said the service postponed launching the cruise missile program because other efforts simply proved more important as defense spending tightens.

"The LRSO contract award was delayed until [fiscal] '15 to accommodate higher priorities in a constrained budget," Michael Hargrove, a technical adviser at the Air Force's strategic deterrence and nuclear integration directorate, said in a written response to questions. "We are slowing modernization, terminating or deferring numerous acquisition programs, but at the same time protecting the key programs most critical to future Air Force capabilities."

"It was purely a budget-driven decision," agreed one retired Air Force cruise missile program official in an interview this week. The former official requested anonymity in describing closed-door Pentagon discussions.

The Air Force had previously intended to spend more than $800 million on the LRSO research and development effort by 2015 . Given the latest program changes, the service is now slated to spend roughly $625 million on design and development of the new cruise missile by 2017, according to the new budget figures.

To meet a congressional spending-reductions mandate passed into law last year, the Defense Department has cut $259 billion from its five-year budget plan and a total of $487 billion over the next decade.

Conservative nuclear-weapon advocates on Capitol Hill view the multiple program delays as signaling failure by President Obama to fully fund nuclear armament and platform programs in coming years. The White House promised increased funding for nuclear arsenal and infrastructure modernization in the run-up to the Senate's December 2010 ratification of the U.S.-Russian New START arms control agreement.

"Delays of this [LRSO] program would only further confirm the administration's abandonment of its promises to modernize our nuclear forces," Representative Michael Turner, R-Ohio, said on Thursday in response to questions.

Turner, who chairs the House Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee, recently led nearly three dozen other GOP lawmakers in calling on the White House to protect nuclear efforts from spending cuts.

He has also signaled plans to introduce new legislation aimed at holding Obama to nuclear program funding levels laid out more than a year ago in a so-called " Section 1251 Update " report. The White House had committed to requesting more than $85 billion over the next 10 years for constructing new nuclear research and production facilities and overhaul aging warheads.

Additional billions of dollars would be spent on modernizing nuclear delivery platforms including submarines, bomber aircraft and missiles.

In a dueling legislative initiative, Representative Edward Markey, D-Mass., and 34 other like-minded lawmakers on Feb. 8 introduced the so-called "SANE" Act of 2012, short for a "Smarter Approach to Nuclear Expenditures."

Formally dubbed H.R. 3974 , the measure would cut $100 billion in nuclear spending over the next decade by reducing new ballistic missile submarines from 12 to eight, delaying development of a nuclear-capable bomber aircraft, and reducing the number of fielded ICBMs, among other provisions.

In response to questions, Markey on Friday said he would support a delay in the LRSO cruise missile effort and a reassessment as to whether the weapon is even needed at all. The SANE Act does not address planned funding for this missile.

"A delay is prudent in this budget environment, but really we should reconsider whether this nuclear capability is even necessary for our 21st century needs," said Markey, who sits on the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

The Massachusetts Democrat would additionally support canceling the nuclear mission for the future bomber, known as the Long-Range Strike aircraft, though such a provision also is not included in the legislation he is co-sponsoring, his office told Global Security Newswire .

With today's cruise missile gradually aging, it is unclear whether the two-year delay for the LRSO missile would pose a problem for equipping the aging B-52 bombers or the future nuclear-capable Long-Range Strike bomber. The reams of new budget documents do not appear to include a fielding date for the new missile.

In the fiscal 2013 budget, the Pentagon preserved plans to go forward with developing and building 80 to 100 of the new-design bomber aircraft, adding that it could avoid unnecessary development expense by employing many technologies available today.

The future strike aircraft "will not need the same capabilities that were planned for the previous Next Generation Bomber," according to a Defense budget overview report . "The new bomber will incorporate many subsystems ... and technologies that are already proven."

The Long-Range Strike bomber -- which the Air Force now estimates at $550 million per aircraft -- will be ready for initial fielding in the mid-2020s, according to a service spokeswoman.

The Obama administration's 2010 update report on nuclear efforts said that today's B-52 aircraft -- the only bomber that carries nuclear-tipped Air Launched Cruise Missiles -- will remain "in the inventory through at least 2035 to continue to meet both nuclear and conventional mission requirements."

The Air Force said in its 2013 budget documents that it plans to retain today's Air Launched Cruise Missiles through 2030, and is currently undertaking a maintenance program to ensure the weapon continues to perform properly. Roughly 1,140 of the cruise missile's nuclear version, the AGM-86B, are currently in the Air Force arsenal.

"Service life extension of this critical weapon is essential to meet United States Strategic Command deliberate planning requirements," the new Air Force research and development planning charts state. The service in 2013 plans to spend more than $430,000 on an "aging and surveillance program" aimed at keeping the cruise missile's key components functioning.

In the meantime, the Air Force is working on the LRSO Analysis of Alternatives, which will "define the platform requirements, provide cost-sensitive comparisons, validate threats, and establish measures of effectiveness, and assess candidate systems for eventual procurement and production," according to the Section 1251 Update report.

Hargrove, the Air Force technical adviser, said that despite the funding crunch, the Air Force was able to include the $2 million in its 2013 plan so it could complete the major analysis, which began over the past few months.

The Air Force is also drafting its acquisition and contracting strategy for the future missile, according to the 2013 budget documents. The service plans to take Long-Range Stand-Off missile program plans to the Pentagon's top-level Defense Acquisition Board before the end of calendar 2013 for formal review and approval, which would allow it to move into the technology development phase.

Air Force documents show that this "Milestone A" decision -- led by the Pentagon's top acquisition official -- is to be taken during the first quarter of fiscal 2014, which begins on Oct. 1, 2013. A contract award for initial technology development would be made a year later, during the first quarter of fiscal 2015.

Some concerns, though, are already bubbling about the projected pace of development for the future missile.

After funding the LRSO effort in the single-digit millions of dollars in fiscal 2013 and 2014, the Air Force intends to boost spending on the cruise missile's development to $41.7 million in 2015. Research and development funding then would leapfrog more than 400 percent to $209.1 million in fiscal 2016, followed by nearly 70 percent growth to $352.9 million in 2017, according to service budget charts.

The former cruise missile official said there is talk in some Defense and industry circles that the ramp-up in funds may be "too steep," and that a race to get the new system procured could increase risks that the weapon would not meet technology expectations. The deeper concern is that the LRSO missile, if rushed, could fall short of military needs.

Pentagon leaders have "said they've slipped SSBN(X) and B-61 by two years," said the former official, referring to the future ballistic missile submarine and the nuclear bomb life-extension effort. "They've said that will give them more time to design and mature their plans."

The question now, the cruise missile expert said, "is that if you go from spending $2 million in 2013 to $200 million in 2016, [are] you ramping up [the LRSO program] too fast?"

One alternative approach, the former official added, could be to design and build one or two prototype LRSO cruise missiles, put them through flight tests to ensure the technology works, and then make any necessary changes before committing to the major funding that final development and production would demand.

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Pentagon unveils new conventional sub-based missile plan

Elaine M. Grossman — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0500

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Defense Department plans to develop a new conventional ballistic missile for fielding on attack submarines, according to major budget decisions announced on Thursday at the Pentagon.

"The Navy will invest in a design that will allow new Virginia-class submarines to be modified to carry more cruise missiles and develop an undersea conventional prompt strike option," Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said at a press conference.

Obama administration national security leaders -- like their Bush administration predecessors -- have touted the idea of developing conventional military technologies that could attack urgent targets without having to resort to nuclear-armed ballistic missiles. The capability could be used against terrorist leaders spotted at a safe house or a North Korean ballistic missile being readied for launch, officials have said by way of example.

If the new submarine-based missile plan goes forward, it would be the third such proposed system to receive prompt-strike developmental emphasis. Earlier Pentagon plans for long-range submarine- and ground-based missiles have faced some serious political and technical challenges over the past months and years.

Three main options are now under consideration for pursuing the attack submarine-based capability, Global Security Newswire has learned. Under one possibility, a newly designed intermediate-range ballistic missile could be fielded in two new launch tubes designed initially for carrying Tomahawk missiles aboard the Virginia-class vessels.

A second, more ambitious option would be to install in the attack submarines a so-called "four-pack" missile launcher designed for the Trident D-5 nuclear-armed ballistic missiles on future Ohio-class replacement submarines, also known as SSBN(X). Potentially three of the 32- to 36-inch diameter midrange missiles could fit in each of the four Trident-sized tubes, giving the Virginia-class boats a capability to launch as many as 12 of the conventional ballistic missiles.

This alternative would require a major modification to the attack submarines, namely the addition of a "humpback" midsection behind the sail to accommodate the four-pack launch tubes of significantly greater length than the new Tomahawk canisters, according to defense sources.

A third option -- seen as yet more costly and ambitious -- would be to adopt a design for an even wider Trident-capable launch tube for humpback installation on the attack submarines. This would potentially allow for the medium-range missiles to be larger and have longer range, sources said.

Budget pressures could force the Pentagon to stick with the first option -- assuming that lawmakers are even willing to entertain that possibility, according to Hans Kristensen, who directs the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists.

The relatively small size of these attack submarines, relative to the large Ohio-class "boomer" vessels, could accommodate only a limited-range ballistic missile if the boat's basic design contours are to remain unchanged, he said.

However, any of these options for fielding a prompt-strike capability aboard submarines is almost certain to spark objections in Congress, which has consistently rejected earlier submarine-based concepts that the Defense Department proposed for conventional ballistic missiles.

Lawmakers have generally supported the idea of non-nuclear "prompt global strike," Pentagon nomenclature for the ability to attack an enemy anywhere around the world on just one hour's notice, without resorting to atomic war.

Retired Gen. James Cartwright, who served until last year as vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, argued in 2005 that advanced conventional-weapon technologies could allow the nation to "drastically" reduce its nuclear arsenal. One military expert subsequently estimated that conventional munitions were capable of destroying up to 30 percent of targets in the nuclear combat plan (see GSN, May 28, 2008).

However, the U.S. Congress, Russian leaders and many nuclear strategy experts warned that fielding conventional ballistic missiles on nuclear-capable submarines could be a potentially destabilizing way to carry out the strike mission. According to this view, Moscow or Beijing might mistake a ballistic missile launch from a submarine for a nuclear salvo, and set loose a devastating response.

Citing these concerns, Capitol Hill repeatedly denied funding for an earlier plan to swap out the nuclear payloads for conventional warheads on a limited number of Trident D-5 ballistic missiles aboard Ohio-class submarines (see GSN, Sept. 22, 2010).

In response, the Defense Department in 2008 shifted its main emphasis in the conventional prompt global strike effort to developing an Air Force ground-based weapon called the Conventional Strike Missile (see GSN, Sept. 3, 2008). The maneuverable weapon system was imagined as a hypersonic dart that would initially boost aboard rockets but transition to flight just inside the atmosphere and glide into its target at Mach 20 speeds (see GSN, June 24, 2011).

Lukewarm Air Force support for development of the strike missile, though, and flight test failures by a developmental front-end system -- the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency's Hypersonic Technology Vehicle 2 -- have thrown into question whether the Pentagon would continue to invest in the ground-based approach, according to defense insiders (see GSN, Aug. 18, 2011).

"Throughout this 10-year process, the Air Force has never gotten enough money to flesh out their designs," said one retired service officer, ruing the failure to fully explore simpler weapon technologies that might have resulted in a fielded system by now.

"The Air Force money [for this] is actually DARPA money," and the research agency's strong role in the effort resulted in highly ambitious technology objectives that proved challenging to attain, according to the former official, who requested anonymity in discussing a politically charged issue.

Before his military retirement, Cartwright last July indicated that if a prompt global strike system is needed urgently to address an emerging threat, ICBM rockets could launch simple conventional payloads at high speed against virtually any target.

"I mean, we use cement to test with today," Cartwright said. "It makes a very big hole."

Other fairly straightforward options eyed under the Air Force missile effort have involved off-the-shelf munitions installed on the front end of the hypersonic boost-glide missile, according to officials.

Panetta's effort to reduce the defense budget by $487 billion over the next decade -- mandated by a deficit-reduction law passed last year by Congress -- has affected more than just the Air Force missile, according to defense insiders. The entire conventional prompt global strike initiative will be getting significantly less funding than anticipated, sources said.

In internal Defense Department deliberations, the multiservice prompt global strike effort lost roughly two-thirds of its projected budget for fiscal 2013 through 2017, GSN has learned.

Congress funded the multiservice Pentagon account for prompt global strike at $180 million in fiscal 2012. Of that amount, the Pentagon directed $10 million to the Navy to study the medium-range missile concept, according to defense sources.

An intriguing twist to Thursday's announcement is that the Pentagon leaders and documents referred to the new submarine-based missile effort as "a conventional prompt strike option," dropping the word "global." That more-limited description dovetails with reports that the missile would be designed with intermediate range, generally understood to be about 1,800 to 3,500 miles of flight.

That contrasts with a long-range missile, such as today's nuclear-armed ICBMs, capable of hitting targets on the other side of the world from bases in the continental United States.

It appears that the midrange missile would continue to use prompt global strike funding, though the fate of the Army-, Air Force- and DARPA-led efforts in the president's upcoming fiscal 2013 budget remains unclear.

Cheryl Irwin, a Pentagon spokeswoman, would not address directly any implications that funding the submarine missile design effort might have for the seemingly ailing Air Force-DARPA Conventional Strike Missile.

"This budget will focus this development on a submarine-launched option," she said in written response to a reporter's questions. "There are other efforts that are ongoing."

Asked whether fielding the missile aboard submarines might raise the same hackles on Capitol Hill and elsewhere that the earlier Trident-modification effort did, Army Gen. Martin Dempsey said differences in the technology should afford the new approach broader acceptance.

Compared to the prior Trident missile-based concept, "the technology and therefore the trajectory that would be required to deliver it" would be different for the medium-range missile being sought today, the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman told reporters at the Thursday event. "There's [also] the speed at which these delivery systems can move."

He added: "You can lower the trajectory and therefore avoid the confusion you're talking about in terms of it being mistaken for an ICBM with a nuclear warhead." Dempsey also alluded to additional factors that could differentiate this new missile from existing nuclear-armed weapons, but did not identify them.

Kristensen was skeptical that the new missile, if placed aboard a stealthy attack submarine, would ease concerns about potentially destabilizing ambiguity during a crisis.

"Even a conventional intermediate-range ballistic missile launched from a converted Virginia-class attack submarine could be misinterpreted because its compressed trajectory would look much like a nuclear D-5 launched in a compressed trajectory as part of a first strike," he told GSN. "And it's still unclear to me why it is so important to have a conventional ballistic missile against terrorists and rogue states, given the overwhelming firepower that we deploy today."

In a document released on Thursday, titled "Defense Budget Priorities and Choices," the Pentagon characterized its decision to invest in the submarine-based capability as part of its effort to "rebalance toward the Asia-Pacific and Middle East regions."

Defense leaders debuted this regional shift in U.S. focus earlier this month as part of new military strategic guidance, based on force draw downs in Iraq and Afghanistan and mandates to reduce Pentagon spending over the next decade (see GSN, Jan. 6).

Offsetting some of the budget reductions proposed over the next fives years totaling $259 billion -- compared to previous spending plans for the same time period -- defense leaders said in the newly released document that they "increased or protected investment in capabilities that preserve the U.S. military's ability to project power in contested areas and strike quickly from over the horizon."

Among these focused investments would be to develop a new stealth bomber to replace today's fleet of nuclear- and conventional-capable long-range aircraft.

The new Asia-Pacific emphasis -- which many defense experts interpret as largely a response to China's rising role in the region -- "requires an Air Force that is able to penetrate sophisticated enemy defenses and strike over long distances," Panetta said at the Thursday news briefing. "So we will be funding the next-generation bomber, and we will be sustaining the current bomber fleet."

No previously unanticipated U.S. nuclear reductions would be included in Obama's fiscal 2013 budget request, said Ashton Carter, the deputy Defense secretary, in a follow-on press conference.

The White House is "considering the size and shape of the nuclear arsenal in the future," he said in response to a question about whether further atomic cuts must await new negotiations with Russia following last year's New START agreement. "When those decisions come, we'll factor them into our budget," Carter said.

The spending plan does foresee a two-year delay in a Navy effort to replace its Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines, which Carter said would reduce schedule risk in what had previously been an "aggressive" developmental plan, "maybe even verging on optimistic" (see related GSN story, today). Prior expectations had the new submarine first being deployed in the 2029.

Along with these nuclear-capable strike systems, the Pentagon will also "design changes to increase cruise missile capacity of future Virginia-class submarines" and design "a conventional prompt strike option from submarines," the document states.

If the simplest of the three options for giving the attack submarines a ballistic missile capability is embraced, launch tubes being built for Tomahawk cruise missiles on the stealthy underwater vessels could do double duty as launchers for the new medium-range ballistic missile.

A redesigned bow for new Virginia-class subs would allow for the emplacement of two launch tubes, each of which is expected to accommodate six Tomahawks, according to Defense Department documents. A 2010 Navy briefing on its submarine development and fielding plans depicts the location of the two tubes, each capped by a lid, in front of the submarine sail.

Each launch tube could be fitted with at least one -- maybe more -- of the new medium-range ballistic missiles, permitting a total of two or possibly additional ballistic missiles in each modified submarine, defense sources told GSN.

The Navy is currently buying Virginia-class attack vessels at a rate of two per year. Procurement is in a series of "blocks," with incremental upgrades expected in each block of submarines, according to a fiscal 2011 Pentagon report on test and evaluation.

Eight Block 3 submarines, beginning with the 11th Virginia-class hull built, will for the first time feature the new, wide-diameter launch tubes. The two wide tubes replace 12 narrow vertical launch tubes for launching the same number of Tomahawks.

The design for next set of boats in the series, Block 4, has not yet been finalized.

Irwin, the Defense Department spokeswoman, would not say on Thursday how much the new-design ballistic missile might cost, how many of the weapons could be procured or how soon they might be fielded.

A "sea-based prompt-strike missile is in the early stages of development" so these details "are not yet available," she said in the written responses.

With the new design and procurement of U.S. ballistic missiles typically running into hundreds of millions of dollars or more, Kristensen was skeptical that Congress would embrace the Pentagon initiative at a time of budget restraint. The Pentagon could face yet another roughly $500 billion in reductions if lawmakers are unable to negotiate an alternative to the budget "sequester" process by the end of this year.

"Congress is very unlikely to pay for an entirely new ballistic missile," the longtime defense analyst said.

In fact, the new submarine missile initiative appears to be based on an initial design concept first discussed under the Pentagon's conventional prompt global strike effort several years ago, he noted (see GSN, March 20, 2008).

For her part, Irwin hinted in response to questions that basing the missile aboard the Virginia-class submarines is not the only option under consideration.

"The development is not service specific," she said. "The current focus is a submarine variant, but we are very early in the R&D process."

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GE-Hitachi fined for "significant" security breaches in nuclear fuel effort

Elaine M. Grossman — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0400

GE-Hitachi Nuclear Energy has paid more than $45,000 in penalties for "significant" violations of federal regulations in its effort to develop a new means of producing atomic fuel, Global Security Newswire has learned.

Newly available U.S. government documents show that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission determined in May that the company's Global Nuclear Fuels-Americas branch had committed five infractions in its laser enrichment program. GE-Hitachi hopes to win licensing approval for the nation's first such laser facility by next June.

The proposed plant near Wilmington, N.C., would employ an as-yet experimental process to commercially enrich uranium for fueling nuclear power stations worldwide. If successful in an industrial setting, laser enrichment could be carried out in relatively small facilities and significantly reduce the cost of reactor fuel.

At least one of the violations in the company's so-called Global Laser Enrichment effort involved "willful actions" and "deliberate misconduct," according to an NRC letter obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has not publicly released the May 19 notification letter it sent to the GE-Hitachi entity. However, it made the document available to GSN in heavily redacted form, citing proprietary information and security concerns for the selected omissions.

Many key words and phrases are missing from the document, so the specific nature of the violations remains largely unclear.

What is apparent from the text, though, is that the violations were "security-related" and were deemed troubling because of the potential for harm. David McIntyre, an NRC spokesman, on Tuesday declined to discuss the breaches on the basis that the agency does not publicly address security matters.

In May, however, the nuclear commission found at least one infringement of regulations serious enough to constitute a "Severity Level II" violation -- one that is "of very significant regulatory concern," according to agency guidelines.

"Although no actual consequences occurred ... the potential consequences were very significant due to ... the willful actions (deliberate misconduct)" of one or more individuals, the much-censored NRC letter states.

It continues: "Willful violations are a particular concern to the NRC because our regulatory framework is based, in part, on the integrity and commitment of licensees, contractors, and employees, to adhere to regulatory requirements."

Other unspecified violations cited in the notice represented a "significant" or "Severity Level III" contravention, for which the NRC assessed a $17,500 civil fine.

The one "very significant" violation -- marked by "deliberate aspects" not spelled out in the redacted letter -- warranted a $28,000 penalty, the commission said. GE-Hitachi paid a total of $45,500 in NRC civil fines earlier this month, according to the NRC document and information provided by company and agency spokesmen.

One of the justifications cited by the nuclear agency for blocking out more than three dozen passages in the four-page notice is already raising eyebrows among some atomic experts who have read the document. The commission is pointing to a Freedom of Information Act exemption from public release aimed at protecting law enforcement information that "could reasonably be expected to endanger the life or physical safety of any individual."

With the exact nature of the violations remaining secret, the oblique reference to persons vulnerable to potential security risk adds a mysterious twist to the case.

The agency findings stemmed from a January on-site inspection and an in-office inspection the following month, the violation notice states. After an April conference with NRC officials to discuss the violations, the company took several "corrective actions," including "terminating individuals from the project" and reinforcing a "commitment to integrity," according to the letter.

This was not the first time the Nuclear Regulatory Commission cited GE-Hitachi for serious infractions in its Global Nuclear Fuels effort. The agency lashed the entity in June 2010 for a significant problem with its "integrated safety analysis methodology," the May letter states.

Word of the revelations has reached Capitol Hill, where some key Democrats and Republicans have voiced nuclear proliferation concerns associated with the laser-enrichment technology.

Debate lately has revolved around an American Physical Society petition filed last year that calls on the independent Nuclear Regulatory Commission to require license applicants for domestic civil nuclear facilities to evaluate any potential proliferation risks.

The physicists' group and its supporters have argued that U.S. licensing of the laser enrichment technology might embolden Iran or other suspected nuclear-weapon aspirants to build covert laser facilities that could be more easily hidden from public view than today's mammoth enrichment plants.

"Members [of Congress] will take a dim view if it is found that NRC and GE have been attempting to sweep a history of multiple serious violations of government regulations under the rug," one Capitol Hill aide said this week.

The congressional staffer and a number of other sources for this article spoke on condition of not being named, citing the sensitivity of the issue.

Nuclear energy and foreign policy experts said they are particularly troubled by news that one or more individuals associated with the Global Laser Enrichment effort knowingly flouted federal security-related regulations.

"There was a previous case in which an employee engaged in willful misconduct at an enrichment facility," said Francis Slakey, a physics and public policy lecturer at Georgetown University. "His name was A.Q. Khan. We know how that turned out."

Slakey -- a public affairs deputy at the American Physical Society -- was referring to the Pakistani scientist who in 2004 confessed to leaking sensitive nuclear technologies to Iran, North Korea and Libya. Khan was released in 2009 after five years of house arrest.

"Laser enrichment technology can be dangerous from a proliferation perspective," the congressional staffer said. "For individuals of the company entrusted with this technology to be guilty of willful violations, according to the NRC, raises serious questions about the company's competence to protect this technology."

A GE-Hitachi spokesman based in Wilmington insisted otherwise.

"The U.S. government has been actively involved from the outset to ensure that strict measures are in place to safeguard this technology," Mike Tetuan, a Global Laser Enrichment representative, said in a written response to questions. "GLE has worked very closely with the responsible government agencies to ensure security."

McIntyre, the NRC spokesman, said the agency's handling of the incident shows that the oversight system is working.

"Without addressing the substance of the violation, I can say that this enforcement action demonstrates that the NRC inspects our licensees and when we find violations of our regulations, we act swiftly to correct them," McIntyre told GSN.

Tetuan credited his company for "uncovering and promptly reporting the events" in question to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, adding that GE-Hitachi "has taken all necessary corrective action to ensure future compliance."

He also noted the firm last year commissioned an independent analysis that "confirmed that development of the [laser] technology will not result in a risk of proliferation of enrichment technology."

GE-Hitachi has not released the evaluation by a three-person expert panel, citing a need to protect commercial trade secrets.

Donald Kerr, a former Los Alamos National Laboratory director who led preparation of the seven-page independent assessment, has been slightly less definitive than the company spokesman about the team's findings. He recently told the New York Times that, in the panel's view, laser enrichment could not be "easily hidden."

"My understanding is that the analysis team came to the conclusion that laser enrichment offers a detectable signature for the large-scale facility of the kind that GE-Hitachi aims to build," Slakey said. "However, it is unclear whether the analysis also considered the possibility that a foreign entity's illicit laser enrichment facility might be scaled-down and successfully hidden."

Coming amid lingering worries about the technology's global proliferation potential, news that the first U.S. commercial program of its kind has been cited for security violations -- even as its federal license to begin operations remains pending -- could make for heightened unease in Congress.

"If these alleged violations touch upon laser enrichment, a very keen interest is guaranteed among those on the Hill and in the nonproliferation community who are concerned about the proliferation risks of that technology," a second congressional source said this week.

Slakey, who spearheaded his organization's petition for mandatory nonproliferation assessments before NRC nuclear-facility licenses are issued, said the Global Laser Enrichment violations raise questions about "integrity" in the company. They also underline why an NRC licensee's "voluntary proliferation assessments aren't sufficient," he said.

The existing NRC licensing system does not require a dedicated review of proliferation concerns. To date, agency officials have maintained that the "net effect" of the overall process discourages the spread of sensitive technologies.

The agency is reviewing the APS petition, which was supported by more than 2,000 nuclear experts, lawmakers and ordinary citizens but opposed by the atomic energy industry's lobbying arm, the Nuclear Energy Institute. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is expected to issue a decision on it early next year.

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Latest tumbling satellite fails to warrant space intercept: U.S. officials

Elaine M. Grossman — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0400

An out-of-control satellite is expected to re-enter the Earth's atmosphere in the next couple of weeks, but U.S. officials say they have determined that the risk to humans does not warrant a pre-emptive intercept .

"This is the largest NASA satellite to come back uncontrolled for quite a while," NASA official Nicholas Johnson told reporters last week. However, he said, "I hope [people] don't get too concerned, because this is something which is ... a very, very low probability of anyone being hurt, or anybody's property being damaged."

Satellite debris enters the Earth's atmosphere on average more than once daily, but most fragments are small and fall harmlessly into water, according to NASA officials. By contrast, large pieces of the size expected before month's end tumble out of space typically just once a year.

The impending re-entry of NASA's Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite -- or "UARS" for short -- is reminiscent of another dysfunctional U.S. spacecraft that in early 2008 was on the brink of leaving orbit and hurtling toward the Earth's surface.

Then-President Bush decided the Defense Department would shoot down the "USA-193" spy satellite using a specially modified sea-based Standard Missile 3, which the military initially built for regional and tactical missile defense.

Pentagon officials at the time justified the intercept on the basis that if the spacecraft were allowed to enter the atmosphere on its own, any wreckage could prove dangerous to someone discovering it on the ground, because it might still contain toxic hydrazine rocket fuel.

Shooting down USA-193 at a precisely targeted location in space instead would shatter the fuel tank into small pieces that would be more likely to burn up and fall harmlessly into an ocean, officials said back then. The Pentagon carried out the intercept on Feb. 21, 2008.

Many skeptics cried foul, unable to believe the government's scenario -- that hydrazine would make it through descent without burning up, land on ground rather than in the Earth's vast oceans or unpopulated areas, and be encountered close-up by humans -- actually justified the high-technology intercept.

A number of critics alleged that the move to take down USA-193 was secretly based on a desire to signal to China -- which had tested an antisatellite weapon a year earlier -- that the Pentagon had a satellite-elimination capability of its own.

Another possible Bush administration motive was to protect secret technologies on board the spycraft from even a remote chance of discovery on the ground by blowing them up prior to re-entry, some experts surmised.

Today's UARS spacecraft -- the acronym is widely pronounced YOO-arz -- entered into orbit in 1991 and no longer contains rocket fuel. So there is zero danger in this case that a person might unwittingly encounter toxic wreckage, NASA officials said last week.

However, the orbiter is huge in size -- at 13,000 pounds, more than twice the mass of USA-193. NASA officials project that during re-entry, the satellite will break up into roughly 26 pieces and the largest of those could weigh approximately 300 pounds.

The space agency has estimated a 1-in-3,200 risk of human fatality as UARS debris hits the Earth. Those might seem like long odds, but the hazard is roughly three times more than NASA's threshold for taking action to protect human life from falling debris.

"NASA, the U.S. government, and some foreign space agencies seek to limit the risk of human injury by re-entering satellites to less than 1 in 10,000," Beth Dickey, a NASA spokeswoman, told Global Security Newswire this week.

The only measures the space agency can take to reduce risk, though, are to design the spacecraft from the outset "to burn up more completely" upon re-entry, or at the end of satellite life "to execute a controlled re-entry," she said.

Neither of these options was available for the $750 million UARS craft, space agency officials said. The satellite was designed and built decades ago, before such systems incorporated materials optimized for burn-up upon returning to Earth, as they are today.

Controlled re-entry also was not a possibility for the satellite because NASA controllers expended all its fuel in lowering the spacecraft's orbit after it ceased mission operations in 2005. UARS would have been orbiting until 2025 had the space agency not succeeded in hastening its re-entry by 14 years to 2011, according to Johnson, chief scientist at NASA's Orbital Debris Program.

If additional fuel had been available on board, scientists could have lowered its orbit even more and carried out a controlled re-entry specifically aimed at avoiding damage on the Earth's surface, Johnson explained during a Sept. 9 teleconference with journalists.

The NASA spokeswoman did not include a Standard Missile 3 intercept or similar intervention as an option for the UARS system, noting that the lack of rocket fuel on the orbiter makes its debris less of a danger than the expiring military satellite posed three years ago.

"USA-193 was destroyed because it contained a large amount of hydrazine propellant that was expected to reach the ground," Dickey said in a written response to questions. "UARS has no hydrazine remaining on board."

Then-Air Force Lt. Gen. Henry Obering, who at the time directed the U.S. Missile Defense Agency, is reported to have said in July 2008 that the risk that USA-193 debris would harm anyone was between 1 in 25 and 1 in 45. The likelihood of harm in that case was chalked up largely to the presence of the toxic fuel that could lead to human injury or death, rather than the possibility of damage directly from impact.

At 1 in 3,200, the chances of human fatality from this month's UARS re-entry are significantly lower than those of USA-193, while still well surpassing NASA's 1-in-10,000 threshold for action to mitigate hazard.

"Throughout the entire 54 years of the Space Age, there's been no report of anybody in the world being injured or severely impacted by any re-entry debris," Johnson said.

Absent interception, was the USA-193 satellite likely to become the first exception to this trend, as it hurtled toward the Earth's atmosphere in early 2008?

Yousaf Butt of the Federation of American Scientists takes issue with the government assumption that rocket fuel aboard USA-193 -- judged by the Bush team to be its primary threat -- could have endured descent without burning up.

"Even internal NASA reports imply that the [fuel] tank would not have survived in the first place," he told GSN this week.

Based in part on government documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, Butt found that NASA and a contracting team had concluded that it was "highly unlikely that the tank would survive the high g-forces and dynamic pressure of re-entry" if left without intercept.

Butt, an FAS scientific consultant, additionally found that an incremental remaining risk of lingering hydrazine that NASA identified was based on false assumptions and "biases toward [fuel] tank survival." That led Butt to conclude in an August 2008 technical analysis that the chances were even slimmer that hydrazine could have posed a danger in any USA-193 satellite wreckage found on the ground.

"Although it should be presumed that the public-health reason for the interception was legitimate and made in good faith, the official study released so far certainly doesn't support the contention that the tank would have survived intact to the ground," he wrote. "In fact, despite its optimistic oversimplifications, the released study indicates that the tank would certainly have demised high up in the atmosphere."

If it was virtually impossible for hydrazine to be present in USA-193 debris, its uncontrolled re-entry ostensibly would have posed much less of a human hazard than the UARS orbiter does today, because USA-193 was considerably smaller in size and mass than the NASA science satellite.

Given that the U.S. government has no intention of intercepting that satellite in the coming weeks, "I have to ask were there were other reasons for carrying out the intercept of USA-193, a satellite less than half the mass of UARS," Butt said in a written response to a reporter's questions. "We will let UARS enter just like many other pieces of orbital debris."

Air Force Lt. Col. April Cunningham, a Defense Department spokeswoman, declined this week to say whether a military or intelligence requirement to protect classified technologies or information on board a descending satellite should be regarded as a legitimate factor in assessing whether to intercept the system.

The Pentagon "has been working closely with NASA to prepare for the UARS re-entry," said the spokeswoman, but she would not address whether defense officials had participated in a NASA assessment of UARS re-entry risks.

Cunningham did say the Defense Department had not considered the possibility of performing an intercept of the satellite prior to its entering the atmosphere.

"[The] USA-193 engagement was a unique circumstance," she said in an e-mail.

"The decision to make that [2008 intercept] was due to the fact that there [were] hazardous materials on board," said Air Force Maj. Michael Duncan, a deputy chief of space situational awareness for U.S. Strategic Command, who also spoke with reporters last Friday. "And since that doesn't exist in this situation, there doesn't appear to be a reason to do those same measures."

Meanwhile, Johnson minimized any impending danger from falling shards of the satellite, saying there were "obviously very low odds that anything or anybody is going to be impacted by this debris."

A NASA briefing released to reporters stated that "UARS does not meet the [international] definition of a risk object," but did not provide additional detail on that standard.

The space agency reports that UARS re-entry is anticipated for Sept. 24, plus or minus one day.

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Minot nukes clear of Midwest flooding, but wrestle with snow melt

Elaine M. Grossman — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0400

The Souris River flood inundating Minot, N.D., has spared the 150 nuclear-armed strategic ballistic missiles on alert in underground silos at a nearby Air Force base, according to a service spokeswoman.

A huge winter snow melt has, in fact, posed a months-long challenge for keeping the buried ICBM launch facilities dry, said Capt. Genieve David. All told, though, each of the 60-foot-high missiles remains functional, she said.

"Our missile launch facilities are not directly threatened by the flooding of the Souris River," she told Global Security Newswire on Thursday in a brief phone interview from Minot Air Force Base, located 8 miles north of the city limits.

The river snakes through the city of Minot west to east.

The North Dakota flood water reportedly has hit record high levels not seen for more than 130 years and has forced more than 11,000 people from their homes. Last week, an estimated 4,100 houses were deluged, including roughly 2,400 that the Federal Emergency Management Agency found to be under at least 6 feet of water, according to reports.

The river overflowed its banks beginning on June 20.

Remarkably, the 91st Missile Wing's Minuteman 3 force spread over 8,500 square miles at the base -- comprising one-third of the nation's ready long-range ICBMs -- has remained unaffected, said David, who heads base public affairs.

However, winter run-off since April has led to some "localized pooling" around a number of underground missile-launch facilities, she said. Soggy ground conditions affect "just a handful of them," said the Air Force captain, who declined to provide specifics on how many blast-hardened ICBM silos are involved.

The service has been able to head off any serious H2O threat to the ground-based deterrent force through a combination of sandbags and pumps, she said. Minot base officials procured portable pumps this spring to drain off collected ground water, allowing maintenance trucks continued access on dirt roads that lead to the launch facilities, officials said.

"The silos remain dry," said a onetime ICBM commander, who asked not to be named in describing nuclear weapon maintenance. When water seeps into the launch facilities, the service typically drains it off using built-in "sump pumps, just like a basement," said the former officer.

The first version of Minuteman ICBM was fielded in the early 1960s. Today's Minuteman 3 variant initially entered the fleet in June 1970 and a total of 450 missiles are maintained at three bases; beyond Minot, missiles are deployed at F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming and Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana.

Missile silos are geographically dispersed at each base to help protect them from the possibility of a massive attack. Each is connected by hardened cables to underground launch control centers at which two-officer teams serve on around-the-clock alerts.

As of last Saturday, 1,142 Minot airmen and their families had been displaced by the river flooding. With the river crest moving downstream, mandatory evacuations have forced residents as far away as the town of Velva -- 22 miles from Minot -- to leave their homes, Air Force spokesmen said in a June 25 release.

As flood waters this week began to recede, affected military personnel started their recovery effort, base officials said on Wednesday. Officials reportedly have said it could take weeks before the Souris retreats to normal levels.

Thursday brought the news that several water main breaks in the town of Minot had forced the Air Force base -- which reportedly relies on the city system -- to cut its water consumption in half. Residents were advised to drink only boiled or bottled water.

Work crews were unable to locate breaks in the lines because they were under 10 feet of water, base officials said.

"We're well beyond a crisis," Minot Public Works Director Alan Walter was quoted as saying. "We're in very deep. We have a long grind ahead of us."

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