President Obama's Anti-Nuke Sentiments a Cover for Plans to Secure Their Existence in Perpetuity

By Russ Wellen, June 28, 2013

The National Nuclear Security Administration’s new Stockpile Stewardship and Management Plan is as grandiose as it is unconscionable.

In its most recent press release, the Los Alamos Study Group (LASG) explains how President Obama’s recent speech in Berlin reaffirming his ostensible commitment to nuclear disarmament is contradicted by plans to lock their existence in for at least the next 25 years. Many readers may not be exposed to the LASG’s work. Hence, from another one of the most eloquent series of press release you’re likely read (emphasis added).

The “$275 billion (B), 25-year plan to maintain, design, and produce new nuclear warheads and build up U.S. warhead production capacity. … eclipses all prior planning for U.S. nuclear warheads. 

Among its other features the new plan would:

Replace all current warheads and bombs – even those currently being upgraded – with several new warheads and bombs in a so-called “3+2” stockpile plan;

Build dozens of new design, testing, and production facilities, to cost tens of billions of dollars; and

Require ever-rising spending at warhead production sites and labs, from about $8 B today up to about $14 B annually by 2038. 

But, points out LASG Director Greg Mello himself:

… the plan is silent regarding the deeply troubled relationship between the federal government and the management and operating (M&O) contractors which actually run the nuclear warhead complex and its laboratories on a for-profit, cost-plus basis.   

Furthermore, he says of this “profoundly nostalgic product”:

Official protestations aside, this is a Cold War plan, one that aims to perpetuate indefinitely the prerogatives and staffing levels enjoyed by nuclear weapons contractors at the same time as it perpetuates tensions with Russia. … This plan would establish a policy of planned warhead obsolescence, creating much work where little is needed.

For

Without new warheads, the weapons labs especially would have much less work to do. This plan solves that "problem" by loading the entire warhead complex with so much work and so many ambitious, simultaneous projects that it is very difficult to imagine their successful completion. Despite its claim, the plan is very unlikely to be "executable.” 

In fact

We can state confidently that the delivery systems necessary to carry all these warheads will not be built.

As for President Obama, Mello recommends that he

… “execute” this plan, fire those most responsible for it, and make another plan that is more realistic, much cheaper, and in harmony with U.S. treaty obligations, the conscience of humanity, and the realities of diplomacy today. 

Finally, Mello says

Perhaps the most unfortunate aspect of this plan is not the financial waste involved but the misdirection of national attention away from our truly urgent crises.