Hearings on the NNSA budget: comments & press releases

April 2, 2019

Re: Hearings on the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) budget; "NNSA to Congress: 'One more massive increase for nuclear warheads next year please; we will control costs better later'," Mar 26, 2019

Dear colleagues --

There's a lot to say about the projects and programs in this year's NNSA congressional budget request. Here are just a few of the top themes as we see them, in case you are interested.

1. A runaway budget request for Weapons Activities (WA)

We are deeply concerned about what might be described as a "runaway" budget request for WA.

The above press release of March 26, an update to one of March 20, discusses some of our misgivings.

Historically, Weapons Activities looks like this, in constant dollars (we discount FY20 and later years' requests by 2% per year):

(Chart)

What, we might ask, is so special about the present moment in time that justifies such unprecedented budgets?

Is there a surplus of funds? Are there no more pressing national priorities?

The first answer to why such large and rising budgets are needed is usually, in so many words, NNSA's and its contractors' own mismanagement and neglect over many years.

The other answer is invariably "Russia," a country with a defense budget only 10% of ours. A vague "threat of Russia" (and China) is being used to justify large, rapid spending increases on US nuclear warheads, much as was the case in the Cold War.

Isn't the situation more complicated than this? Yes of course it is, but we argue that real national security requires resisting the incessant propaganda of national military weakness and nuclear insecurity, coming as it largely does from the parties which benefit most from the spending you approve. Everybody needs to take a deep breath and look carefully at the number, diversity, reliability, accuracy, multi-layered redundancy, and longevity of US nuclear assets. Some of the programs you are asked to fund are a hell of a lot better justified and well-planned than others.

This ever-rising spending is ever-characterized by insufficient prudence, earning NNSA project management a place on GAO's "High Risk List" each and every year.

Every year, Congress rewards NNSA for its bad management by throwing even more money at it.

2. Project-specific data is being suppressed

Another major theme in this (as well as the FY19) budget request is the suppression of project-specific data, without which accountability is difficult to establish.

NNSA claims that its infrastructure projects are proceeding on schedule and on budget. Any deeper analysis would show something different, something more ... complicated.

At Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), one of the three or four sites with which we are most familiar, virtually every large infrastructure project in the past 20 years has been a fiasco in one way or another (cost, schedule, functionality, or a combination of these). For example, the Uranium Processing Facility (UPF) can be said to be "on-track" only after discounting the fact that its scope is much less, perhaps only 1/2 or 1/3 as much as it was when originally proposed.

Hundreds of millions have been squandered floundering around on various projects in recent years (e.g. the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement Project and the Radioactive Liquid Waste Treatment Project at LANL; many more could be cited).

More hundreds of millions are squandered every year on unnecessary overhead at the weapons labs.

Still other unnecessary costs are being incurred by the roughly 2,000 unused structures NNSA is currently maintaining.

New members and staff in Congress do not know the past and present financial and schedule problems in the infrastructure projects being funded, and Congress is not being provided with the planning information needed for any kind of meaningful oversight.

3. Where are the required pit production reports?

Pit production is a particular priority for NNSA. Yet the detailed reports and briefings required by Sec. 3120 (subsections b and c) of the FY19 NDAA to our knowledge not been submitted to the defense committees. The reports of subsection (b) are due in Congress April 15; those of subsection (c) were due on or about February 11, 2019.

We do not know if the Nuclear Weapons Council briefing (supposedly by March 1, 2019) required by subsection (d) has occurred, or if the annual certifications required by subsection (e) have been submitted.

For a program which is supposedly NNSA's highest priority, as Administrator Gordon Hagerty said today in the House, this appears slack.

There is high public interest in this program. Congress should demand publicly-releasable reports. 

We have a continuing project on this issue. Further resources can be found here.

4.Comments on the proposed W87-1 Life Extension Program” (LEP) (taken from the March 20 press release)

While serious policy objections can be and have been raised against the W76-2, B61-12, and W80-4 programs, the W87-1 merits close attention not only for its policy implications but also for its wide scope, tight schedule, great cost, and weak technical justifications.

Through 2040 the W87-1 is the only NNSA warhead which requires new pits. If pursued it will use all new parts and be deployed in a new-design reentry vehicle (the Mark 21A) on the proposed new Ground Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD) missiles.

Unlike the previous IW1, the W87-1 would not be deployed on any Navy systems. It is to be strictly an Air Force warhead.

NNSA estimates (p. 4-42) this warhead will cost up to $15.1 B, plus up to $4.4 B in DoD expenses (in then-year dollars), excluding any share of the costs associated with common NNSA capabilities (more than half the Weapons Activities budget) and also excluding the costs of the new pits and the facilities in which they are to be manufactured.

W87-1 production is the sole programmatic driver for the nearly impossible “2030” deadline for producing “80+” pits per year. In 2017, NNSA said “2033” was the earliest possible date. By now, add two years.

The Congressional Budget Office (CB) recently estimated (p. 5) NNSA needs to spend roughly $9 B by 2030 to supply that capacity. Attributing this $9 B to NNSA’s W87-1 high-end estimates, which we believe to be logical although NNSA does not, gives a total of $28.5 B.

There are about 540 W87 warheads. These are the only warheads using insensitive high explosives (IHE) certified for a reentry system. This is more than enough for all 450 (or for all 400 active) ICBM silos.

Deploying an all-W87 ICBM fleet would bring the safety benefits of IHE relatively quickly and cheaply – and without dependence on new pit factories which may or may not be functional by the required date.

Absent W87-1, NNSA’s production workload in the 2020s could be lightened, its workforce and infrastructure issues mitigated, and its budgets kept in check -- even without otherwise desirable stockpile policy changes.

The case for the W87-1 is so weak, and its costs and risks so great, that it is hard to avoid the conclusion that its high costs, production burdens, artificial urgency, and gratuitous belligerence are being seen as virtues.

The sole unique capability the W87-1/Mark 21A would provide (unlike the W87/Mark 12 but like the W78/Mark 12A which it would replace) is the ability to deploy an upload hedge of three multiple independent reentry vehicles (MIRV) warheads on each W87-1-assigned missile. With 200 out of 400 deployed ICBMs thus assigned, the number of deployed ICBMs warheads can, as at present, be doubled at will.

As for hedging against technical failure, the JASON advisory group has noted (p. 5) that in a “well-understood scenario" (which as far as we know describes the W87) multiple designs that meet the same requirements “provide little benefit over a single high-confidence design.”

Congress will need to decide whether the W87-1, or for that matter any MIRV capability, is wise, realistic, and worth the cost and risk.

At the same time Congress must evaluate the overall merit, scale, scope, design, and timing of the $85-140 B GBSD program as a whole – especially in relation to other national needs, which press far more than Congress is remotely close to admitting.

5. Russian nuclear weapons programs do not diminish the US nuclear deterrent

The high pace, and hence high budget, of NNSA and its programs are being largely if not entirely justified by Russian activities (and to a lesser extent by Chinese activities, even though the Chinese arsenal is very small by US and Russian standards).

This was the dynamic of the previous Cold War. In our view an arms race now makes no more sense than it did then, as several members of Congress have noted.

With crises underway in global warming and its extreme weather, fires, floods, and rising seas; in our fiscal affairs; in our growing inequality and social unrest; in our infrastructure; in the exhaustion of natural resources (e.g. water) and the collapse of terrestrial and oceanic ecosystems, all with dramatic consequences for US security and stability -- does Congress really think the priorities embodied in the Administration's overall defense and nuclear postures and their associated budget requests are justified? 

We do not.

However even with the present nuclear priorities, we argue for a more deliberate pace of work, one that better conserves NNSA and taxpayer resources.

We do not think NNSA budget requests will level off in real dollars in the post-FY20 years, as this request implicitly claims. There is too much work in the near-term pipeline.

6. The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB)

We have been deeply engaged with DNFSB essentially since its creation. Leaving aside at this time all the details, we think the DNFSB is at present grossly understaffed. We urge Congress to bar any reorganization that accepts a smaller staff. As we have repeatedly urged, we believe DNFSB's mandate to protect workers should be made explicit, to bar further mischief from without and from within.

Thank you for your attention,

Greg Mello, for the Los Alamos Study Group