[Senate Hearing 107-677]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 107-677
EXAMINING THE NUCLEAR POSTURE REVIEW
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
MAY 16, 2002
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Relations
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.access.gpo.gov/congress/
senate
U. S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
81-670 WASHINGTON : 2002
___________________________________________________________________________
For Sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office
Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512-1800; (202) 512-1800
Fax: (202) 512-2250 Mail: Stop SSOP, Washington, DC 20402-0001
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
JOSEPH R. BIDEN, Jr., Delaware, Chairman
PAUL S. SARBANES, Maryland JESSE HELMS, North Carolina
CHRISTOPHER J. DODD, Connecticut RICHARD G. LUGAR, Indiana
JOHN F. KERRY, Massachusetts CHUCK HAGEL, Nebraska
RUSSELL D. FEINGOLD, Wisconsin GORDON H. SMITH, Oregon
PAUL D. WELLSTONE, Minnesota BILL FRIST, Tennessee
BARBARA BOXER, California LINCOLN D. CHAFEE, Rhode Island
ROBERT G. TORRICELLI, New Jersey GEORGE ALLEN, Virginia
BILL NELSON, Florida SAM BROWNBACK, Kansas
JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER IV, West MICHAEL B. ENZI, Wyoming
Virginia
Antony J. Blinken, Staff Director
Patricia A. McNerney, Republican Staff Director
(ii)
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Biden, Hon. Joseph R., Jr., U.S. Senator from Delaware, prepared
statement...................................................... 1
Cirincione, Joseph, senior associate and director, Non-
Proliferation Project, Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace, Washington, DC.......................................... 44
Prepared statement........................................... 48
Feingold, Hon. Russell D., U.S. Senator from Wisconsin, prepared
statement submitted for the record............................. 3
Foster, John S., Jr., Ph.D., former director, Lawrence Livermore
National Laboratory; former director, Defense Research and
Engineering, Department of Defense, Washington, DC............. 6
Prepared statement........................................... 10
Owens, Admiral William A., U.S. Navy (Ret.), former Vice Chairman
of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; co-CEO and vice chairman,
Teledesic LLC, Bellevue, WA.................................... 13
Prepared statement........................................... 16
Thompson, Loren B., Ph.D., chief operating officer, Lexington
Institute; adjunct professor of Security Studies, Georgetown
University, Washington, DC..................................... 38
Prepared statement........................................... 42
Weinberg, Steven, Ph.D., winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics
(1979), professor of Physics, University of Texas, Austin, TX.. 27
Prepared statement........................................... 33
(iii)
EXAMINING THE NUCLEAR POSTURE REVIEW
----------
WEDNESDAY, MAY 16, 2002
U.S. Senate,
Foreign Relations Committee,
Washington, DC.
The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:51 a.m., in
room SD-419, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Joseph R.
Biden, Jr. (chairman of the committee), presiding.
Present: Senators Biden, Lugar and Hagel.
The Chairman. The hearing will come to order. I apologize
for being late, and I, quite frankly, should have had Senator
Lugar start the hearing. I was on an Amtrak train that was
delayed 25 minutes. But lest you think Amtrak's in trouble,
just think of every time you fly. All you've got to do is think
about flying, and then you'll feel better about Amtrak.
I'm going to put my statement in the record and I would
just like to suggest that there's three key points I'm
interested in. One is, despite some of the rhetoric surrounding
the Nuclear Posture Review [NPR], it seems to me that it
affirms more existing policy than it does break new ground.
And, second, is that the NPR's conclusions--the concern I have
is that they threatened--may threaten to lead the resumption of
U.S. nuclear testing that could unravel nuclear
nonproliferation regimes. And the third concern I have is the
development of new nuclear weapons, including low-yield earth
penetraters that could blur the traditional firewall between
the conventional and nuclear weapons and, hence, make nuclear
war more likely. They're things that I'm going to want to speak
to with our witnesses.
I'd ask unanimous consent that my entire statement be
placed in the record.
[The prepared statement of Senator Biden follows:]
Prepared Statement of Senator Joseph R. Biden, Jr.
Today the Senate Foreign Relations Committee holds a rather unusual
hearing, one in which the subject is a Department of Defense document.
The reason is that, especially in the realm of strategic policy,
decisions regarding the structure and possible use of our nuclear
arsenal are fraught with foreign policy implications.
For 57 years, the strategic and foreign policies of the United
States have been crafted in the shadow of the bomb. The overwhelming
challenge has been to deter our enemies from attacking us or our
allies, while also avoiding a conflict in which many millions of
innocent people--indeed, whole societies--could perish.
In the post-cold war era, our enemies and our fears have changed
markedly. Today, a nuclear Armageddon is more likely to result from
accident than from any intentional march to war. While the context has
changed, however, our post-cold war strategic objectives remain the
same: to deter others, but also to avoid a nuclear catastrophe.
The United States and Russia no longer control other countries'
actions to the degree that we did during the cold war. As a result, our
non-proliferation efforts have become an increasingly important element
in our foreign policy. We can no longer be confident that a minor power
with weapons of mass destruction will heed our advice not to use those
weapons. So it becomes ever more important to prevent the spread of
those weapons.
Four months ago, the administration sent to the Congress--and
briefed to the media--its Nuclear Posture Review, a classified,
legislatively mandated document in which the Department of Defense and
the Department of Energy set forth a strategy for the maintenance and
possible use of our nuclear forces. In March, large portions of the
Review were made public when they were leaked to the press. This
document affords us a vital window into the thinking of our top defense
officials on strategic policy.
The Nuclear Posture Review has prompted much public discussion in
the last two months, and I have questions about it as well. My concerns
may not always parallel those raised by the press. For example, I was
not surprised to read that we would consider targeting countries other
than Russia or China, or that we would maintain our traditional
ambiguity on whether we might use nuclear weapons in response to an
attack involving non-nuclear weapons of mass destruction. Those are
actually long-standing U.S. policies.
The Nuclear Posture Review did cause me some concern, however, for
the following reasons:
1. It isn't forthright. This document was sent to the
President and Congress, both of whom have vital national
security functions. The authors ought to have made clear how
much it ratifies existing policy--on issues ranging from
potential nuclear targets to the force reductions that the
Pentagon supports--and how little is really new. I worry that
our defense officials may believe their rhetoric about putting
the cold war and mutual deterrence behind us, when--to me, at
least--the Nuclear Posture Review does not really do that.
I think that much of the vaunted ``new Triad'' of forces is based
on hypothetical capabilities that we may not achieve for decades. I
worry that basing our strategic policy upon such a distant horizon may
cause our defense officials to overlook short-term risks and
opportunities.
2. It threatens to lead to new nuclear testing that would
unravel the nuclear non-proliferation regime. That's because it
opens the door to developing new nuclear weapons that would
require such testing. If we were to test because we had
discovered a fault in existing weapons that could only be cured
through testing, the world would be upset--but nuclear non-
proliferation would survive. If we test to develop new weapons,
however, the message will be that we value those weapons more
than we do non-proliferation. And other countries will take
their cue from us.
3. These new weapons could make nuclear war more likely--
thereby making us all less secure, rather than more so. Some of
the new weapons discussed in the Nuclear Posture Review would
be intended to reduce collateral damage or to strike deeply
buried targets. While those are understandable objectives, such
weapons could blur the distinction between conventional and
nuclear war, making it more likely that we would ``go nuclear''
next time.
One important way in which we have deterred the use of nuclear
weapons for over half a century is by maintaining their character as
weapons of mass destruction. We made it clear, both to our enemies and
to ourselves, that once a nuclear response was undertaken or invited,
all bets were off as to where it would end. The Nuclear Posture Review
seems to flirt with changing that approach.
Should we be the first country in two generations to use nuclear
weapons? Would that lead others to use nuclear weapons as an
``equalizer'' to counter our conventional superiority? Would the war-
fighting advantage that we gained from more usable nuclear weapons
really justify destroying the firewall against nuclear war that we and
the world have maintained since the end of World War II?
To me, treating nuclear weapons as a handy military tool, rather
than as weapons of retaliation or last resort, seems profoundly unwise.
That is why I have convened a group of truly esteemed witnesses to
help us understand the Nuclear Posture Review and its implications for
our strategic and foreign policy.
We certainly have witnesses of great experience and wisdom today,
and I am delighted to welcome all of you.
Our first panel will feature two of the most important strategic
thinkers of our day. Admiral Bill Owens, retired Vice Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff, gave us the ``revolution in military affairs''
that brought information-age technology onto the battlefield. From the
gulf war to Bosnia and Kosovo, and most recently in Afghanistan, we
have seen new vistas in the use of precision-targeted military force.
Admiral Owens--who now is co-CEO of Teledesic--will speak both as a
war-fighter and as one who has looked carefully at the future of war.
Dr. John Foster, former Director of the Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratory, served also as Director of Defense Research and
Engineering. In recent years, he has headed important expert panels on
the state of our nuclear Stockpile Stewardship Program and on our
readiness to resume nuclear testing. His recommendations have prompted
political debate, and I hope he will explain to us what an increased
test readiness program can realistically achieve, why we need it, and
why, in his view, it is nothing to be feared.
Our second panel will begin with a most distinguished scientist,
Professor Steven Weinberg of the University of Texas. In 1979,
Professor Weinberg won the Nobel Prize in physics. Throughout his
career, he has combined cutting-edge work with an ability to explain
modern science to the rest of us. His books The First Three Minutes and
Dreams of a Final Theory have been best-sellers.
Professor Weinberg has also dealt before with the military and
policy implications of modern physics. He is a former member of Jason,
and he was at one time a consultant to the U.S. Arms Control and
Disarmament Agency.
The second witness on our second panel will be Dr. Loren Thompson,
chief operating officer of the Lexington Institute. Dr. Thompson wrote
an interesting piece recently for the Wall Street Journal, in which he
argued essentially that critics of the Nuclear Posture Review should
calm down, because all the proposals in it were really aimed at
buttressing nuclear deterrence. I look forward to any reassurance he
can provide.
Our final witness will be Joseph Cirincione, director of the Non-
Proliferation Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace. Mr. Cirincione is a man of many talents who has been a frequent
witness before this committee and who was once a staff member of the
House Armed Services Committee. He specializes in the nexus between
military and foreign policy, and we will count on him to draw together
the many points of view that will be expressed this morning.
I understand that Dr. Foster will have to leave early, so after
Senator Lugar makes his opening statement, I turn the floor over to Dr.
Foster and then Admiral Owens. Following their presentations, I hope we
can focus our initial questions on Dr. Foster so as to get the maximum
benefit from his presence today.
[The prepared statement submitted by Senator Feingold
follows:]
Prepared Statement of Senator Russell D. Feingold
Mr. Chairman, thank you for calling this hearing. The
congressionally-mandated Nuclear Posture Review gives us an opportunity
to rethink the role of nuclear weapons in our overall strategic
framework.
The horrific events of September 11 brought into sharp focus that
the threats of the 21st century are far different from the threats of
the last century. During the 20th century, our adversaries were easily
named and contained within defined national borders. The forces that
our men and women in uniform are currently fighting belong to mobile,
well-financed terrorist cells that do not have a centralized structure
and exist in the shadows around the world, and even in our own country.
This new kind of enemy challenges our conception of traditional warfare
and demands a different kind of response, and a different strategic
framework.
I am concerned that the Nuclear Posture Review we will discuss
today does not adequately address emerging threats. We must ensure that
we adopt the best approach for the 21st century.
I welcome the President's announcement of a preliminary agreement
between the United States and Russia to reduce the nuclear weapons
stockpiles of the two countries. And I am pleased that this important
agreement will be contained in a binding treaty rather than in a less
formal agreement between the two Presidents. I urge the administration
to include provisions regarding destruction of these deadly weapons and
verification of such destruction in the treaty before sending it to the
Senate. Only by dismantling and destroying these weapons can we truly
achieve the goal of meaningful nuclear arms reduction. As a member of
this committee, I look forward to reviewing the provisions of this
treaty when it is submitted to the Senate for its advice and consent.
While I applaud these reductions, I remain concerned that the
overall theme of the Nuclear Posture Review seems to point to increased
reliance on nuclear weapons. I am particularly concerned about
proposals for so-called ``mini-nukes,'' which could be fired at smaller
targets or be used to penetrate bunkers buried deep beneath the Earth's
surface.
The United States should not be in the business of making nuclear
weapons the preferred alternative on the battlefield. Nuclear weapons
loom as the weapon of last resort. Mini-nukes threaten to dangerously
blur the line between conventional and nuclear warfare by potentially
lowering the threshold for a decision to use these devastating weapons.
By developing mini-nukes, the United States could well launch another
arms race as other countries seek to match or exceed our new
capabilities. And we should consider the possible negative health
effects that such weapons could have on our men and women in uniform,
who would be forced to serve in an environment polluted by nuclear
radiation.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. And I yield to the Senator from Indiana,
Senator Lugar.
Senator Lugar. Thank you, Mr. Chairman..
Senator Lugar. Mr. Chairman, the strategic environment
during the cold war was characterized by high-risk but low-
probability of ballistic-missile exchanges in the use of
weapons of mass destruction. Today, however, is the opposite
case. We live in a lower-risk but higher-probability
environment with respect to ballistic-missile exchanges and the
use of weapons of mass destruction.
Whereas, previous strategic calculations assumed almost
limitless offensive nuclear weapons systems but more or less
rational actors, experiences with Saddam Hussein, Osama bin
Laden, and others make this assumption less plausible today.
President Bush has correctly pointed out that the cold war
nuclear strategy is not appropriate for the current threat
environment. While nuclear weapons will continue to play a role
in United States defense policies, they will not be our primary
form of deterrence. We must continue to move the world, while
we exercise necessary care and prudence, away from nuclear-
dependent deterrence.
I agree with the Nuclear Posture Review's conclusion that,
``The United States will no longer plan, size, or sustain its
forces as though Russia presented a smaller version of the
threat posed by the former Soviet Union.'' Instead, we must
configure a force to deter a number of different threats
emanating from many sources. Our nuclear triad must undertake
the same metamorphosis as our conventional forces. We must be
lighter, quicker, more able to adapt to the changing
environment which characterizes the post-cold war era. By
moving to a smaller nuclear-force posture, we must have a very
high level of confidence in the safety and security of our
stockpile. The safe maintenance and storage of these weapons is
of the utmost concern. We cannot allow them to fall into
disrepair or permit their safety to falter. As our force
shrinks, this reliability must grow if we are to maintain full
confidence in our nuclear deterrence.
On Monday, President Bush announced that the United States
and Russia had reached an agreement to lower the number of
deployed warheads to between 1,700 and 2,200. And the treaty
will be signed on May 24 during the United States-Russia
summit. I believe this treaty marks the step toward a safer
world. I plan to work closely with Chairman Biden and Senator
Helms in seeking a swift ratification of this important
milestone. I understand the administration tends to submit the
treaty to the Senate promptly, and I've proposed, respectfully,
Mr. Chairman, that the committee aim to report the treaty to
the floor in an expeditious manner so that ratification might
occur prior to adjournment this year.
Senate ratification before the end of the year will show
leadership on this important matter. The Russian Duma and the
world will be watching and studying our enthusiasm and our
commitment to securing ratification. This agreement is an
important achievement, but the agreement and others like it are
only successful if they are fully implemented by both sides.
Only then will the security and stability we seek be enhanced.
Unfortunately, the benefits of the treaty are not assured.
Russia cannot afford to dismantle their weapons system through
resources currently available. The Nunn-Lugar Cooperative
Threat Reduction Program is the means by which the United
States assists Russia in meeting its dismantlement obligations
under the START I Treaty. The need for dismantlement and
assistance will continue.
Under the START I Treaty, the former Soviet Union
identified 13,300 offensive warheads. To date, Nunn-Lugar has
deactivated 5,896 of these weapons. In addition, the program
has destroyed 1,200 missiles, more than 900 missile launchers,
100 long-range bombers, and 22 missile submarines. As important
as the crucial role that the legislation has played in
implementing the recently announced treaty, some in Congress
continue to drag their feet in giving the President the power
to carry out these efforts. Each year, the administration is
required to certify that Russia is committed to arms control
goals. Complete Russian accountability and transparency in the
chemical and biological arenas have been lacking. As a result,
the administration has now requested a waiver from that
certification as a part of the current supplemental
appropriation legislation. In the meantime, although existing
programs may continue, no new activities to dismantle or
destroy weapons of mass destruction can be started and no new
contracts can be finalized.
Some in Congress oppose granting the President a permanent
waiver authority in order to implement Nunn-Lugar, but, absent
congressional passage of a waiver, Russian treaty
implementation will lag far behind, and our common security
goals will be in jeopardy. As President Bush is concluding and
signing a treaty with Russia to take nuclear weapon levels down
to near 2,000, some in Congress are actively working to stymie
the efforts to ensure timely and complete dismantlement of
those same Russian weapons stockpiles.
In sum, I believe the No. 1 national-security threat facing
the United States is the nexus of terrorism and weapons of mass
destruction, and there is little doubt that Osama bin Laden and
al-Qaeda would have used weapons of mass destruction on
September 11 if they had possessed them. It's equally clear
they made an effort to obtain them. This treaty, although not a
silver bullet to the threats that confront us, is a tremendous
step forward in meeting our obligations under the
nonproliferation treaty and reduces the chances of nuclear war.
But equally important, Congress must provide the President
with the authority to carry out, with the Russian's
cooperation, the necessary destruction of weapons in Russia.
Absent such action, our President and our Nation's good
intentions will fail, because Congress refused to grant the
President the authorization to see his and our goals through to
conclusion.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you. Senator Hagel, did you want to
make----
Senator Hagel. No, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Let me just make two brief--not responses,
but points with regard to your efforts, Senator Lugar to
enhance, not see diminished, the cooperative threat-reduction
efforts, I just want you to know you have my full cooperation
and, I think, of the vast majority of the Members of Congress.
Second, it is my intention, as I told the President
yesterday when I saw him at the Police Memorial, to move on the
treaty as rapidly--as soon as it's submitted. In his usual
folksy way--he's a really engaging guy--we walked up on the
stage, walking by, and he said, ``Well, it's a treaty, Biden,
you owe me,'' or something to that effect.
And so obviously, if I didn't move on it quickly, because,
as you know, you and I were very straightforward about the need
for there to be a treaty. But at any rate, so I assure you we
will move that as rapidly as we possibly can.
Our first panel will feature two of the most important
strategic thinkers of our day. Admiral Bill Owens, retired Vice
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, gave us the, quote,
``revolution of military affairs'' that brought information-age
technology into the making of war. For the gulf war, Bosnia,
and Kosovo, and, most recently, Afghanistan, we've seen new
vistas in the use of precision-target military force that I
think Admiral Owens is most responsible for. He is now the co-
CEO of Teledesic, which he will speak both as a warfighter and
one who has looked carefully at the future of war.
And Dr. John Foster, a former Director of Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratory, served also as the Director of
Defense Research and Engineering. In recent years, he's headed
important expert panels on the state of our Nuclear Stockpile
Stewardship Program and in our readiness to resume nuclear
testing. Dr. Foster's recommendations have prompted a political
debate, and I hope he'll expand on that and explain to us what
an increased test-readiness program can realistically achieve
and why we need it and why, in his view, there is nothing to be
feared by such a test--such a proposal.
Dr. Foster, I understand you have a time constraint. Is
that correct?
Dr. Foster. Yes, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Admiral Owens, would you mind if we begin
with Dr. Foster?
Admiral Owens. Not at all, Senator.
The Chairman. Dr. Foster, the floor is yours.
STATEMENT OF JOHN S. FOSTER, JR., PH.D., FORMER DIRECTOR,
LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY; FORMER DIRECTOR,
DEFENSE RESEARCH AND ENGINEERING
Dr. Foster. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, members of
the committee. In 1999, Congress established the Panel to
Assess the Reliability, Safety, and Security of the United
States Nuclear Stockpile. This prepared statement represents
the views of my fellow panel members, Dr. Harold Agnew, Dr.
Sydell Gold, Mr. Stephen Guidice, and Dr. James Schlesinger.
The panel observed the nuclear weapon program for 3 years.
We issued our third and final report last March. In performing
our assessments, the panel used as a benchmark the longstanding
commitment of this and previous Presidents that sustaining
confidence in U.S. nuclear deterrent capabilities is a supreme
national interest. Our work has focused on the steps necessary
to manage the weapons stockpile and its supporting program
accordingly.
You've invited me to comment on issues related to the
Nuclear Posture Review. The NPR addresses questions involving
both technical and policy considerations that go beyond the
scope of the panel's charter. There are, nevertheless, several
areas in common. And in those areas, the panel found the NPR to
be quite constructive. Many of the programs and initiatives in
the NPR address the panel's concerns that the Nation needs to
do better if we are to do the best we can to sustain confidence
in the stockpile without nuclear tests.
My remarks today will cover those common areas. The panel
did not address issues related to the size of the stockpile,
either active or inactive. We did not assess the logic of the
proposed new triad or strike capabilities, defensive
capabilities, and infrastructure; nor did the panel examine
specific requirements for new weapons. But major challenges
remain.
I begin with the context. The panel and the NPR describe
the current situation with the weapons program in much the same
way. The program is entering a very challenging new phase that
will challenge the Nation's ability to sustain the existing
stockpile.
Weapons are aging. Some mainstay weapons, such as the W76
Trident warhead, are already reaching their 20-year design
life. Several weapons are showing disturbing signs of
deterioration and other problems. Owing to improvements in our
assessment tools, we now are discovering that we had been
overconfident in assessing some of our existing weapons. The
W87 ICBM warhead is being refurbished. Last year the decision
was made that three more warhead types, the W76, the W80, and
the B61 bomb, will undergo extensive refurbishment in the
coming decade.
Sustaining high confidence in these complex systems as we
introduce different components, new materials, and new
production methods, make design changes to warheads, and
utilize a new generation of people, assessment tools, and
refurbished facilities, is an unprecedented technical challenge
for the laboratories and the production complex. Under these
difficult circumstances, I don't think that anyone should be
surprised that the confidence in the nuclear test pedigree is
deteriorating. Stewardship must adapt.
To sustain confidence in the face of these challenges
requires a transformation of the weapons program. The necessary
tasks ahead demand capable tools, people, and facilities, as
well as the most rigorous available processes for designing,
assessing, certifying, and manufacturing our nuclear warheads.
The panel outlined intiatives in six areas. Each of these areas
was addressed to some degree in the NPR.
First, it is imperative that we strengthen stockpile
surveillance, assessments, and certification. These processes
are the day-to-day foundation for understanding stockpile
safety and reliability. They also will be critical for judging
our confidence in the warheads that will be refurbished over
the next decade. As the technical challenge of maintaining the
stockpile grows, these processes must be as rigorous and
probing as the responsible stockpile stewards know how to make
them. Decision makers need to be apprised of all the viable
options for sustaining confidence. Key to this is sustaining
the competition of ideas between the nuclear design
laboratories, which has been a critical foundation for the
weapons program for five decades and is the raison d'etre for
two such laboratories.
The panel recommends that the annual certification process
entailed the identification of issues that may undermine
confidence as an assessment of the relevant alternative options
for sustaining confidence at each level of the assessment
process--that is, the technical and the military and then the
national.
We also recommend broadening the scope of annual
certification reporting to encompass issues concerning the full
spectrum of capabilities necessary to sustain confidence. This
would require significant changes to current practices
affecting several executive branch activities and, the panel
believes, national level guidance is needed to shape the needed
process. The panel urges Congress to support our proposals for
processes that would engage the laboratories, DOE, and DOD in
obtaining an unvarnished and complete assessment of stewardship
issues and options.
Second, the administration and Congress need to articulate
and fund a balanced, forward-looking weapons program and
allocate resources to the highest priority deliverables. Such a
program would meet requirements for weapons refurbishment while
at the same time adequately supporting the exploration of
advanced concepts and maintaining leading capabilities in
weapons-relevant science and technology.
NNSA, the National Nuclear Security Administration must
provide the leadership by creating a program that defines the
essential deliverables for stockpile stewardship and that shows
how resources are allocated to provide these deliverables. A
renewed focus on deliverable products is essential to drive the
need for restoring the weapons complex and training a new
generation of stockpile stewards and for assessing longstanding
management deficiencies.
This committee is well aware that other nations continue to
maintain and adapt their nuclear arsenals and that there is
continuing proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and
their delivery methods. Technological surprise has occurred in
the past and is something that we must guard against. The work
on future concepts and technologies is needed to assess
intelligence information, to avoid technical surprises, as well
as to train stockpile stewards, and to provide alternative
options for addressing any problems that may arise. The panel
also emphasizes that it is essential for Congress to be kept
apprised of developments in foreign weapons programs and their
potential implications for U.S. security.
Third, to sustain the nuclear stockpile, we must restore an
adequate weapons complex. Today, many capabilities are missing
or deficient. As you know, the United States is the only major
nuclear power that is unable to manufacture the nuclear
components for its nuclear weapons. Restoring these
capabilities can take a decade or more. In the meantime, we run
serious risks.
A plan is needed to explain, and we need to get started
now. The adequacy of the production complex is a critical
factor in determining the appropriate size of the inactive
reserve and of weapons and the pace of dismantlements. With the
necessary capacity to repair or produce weapons, the United
States can relieve our dependence on an inactive reserve.
Fourth, test readiness needs to be addressed much more
realistically. This is not because a need to test is imminent,
but because prudence requires that every President have a
realistic option to return to testing should a technical or
strategic events make it necessary. Our current readiness to
return to testing is 2 to 3 years. The panel recommends the
administration and Congress support test readiness of 3 months
to a year, depending on the type of test. When the Senate
rendered its advice and consent to the START II Treaty, its
resolution of ratification stated that the United States would
commit to readiness to allow testing to resume within 1 year.
Fifth, NNSA needs to provide the strong leadership Congress
sought when it created that organization in 1999. The NNSA
inherited an extremely difficult situation when it was created.
DOE experienced large budget cuts in the early 1990s and was
never able to establish a coherent long-range vision for the
program that was consistent with the available resources. NNSA
was created to address these challenges and to rectify other
longstanding DOE management weaknesses. NNSA needs to establish
clear lines of authority, responsibility, and accountability.
Laboratory directors and plant managers should be tasked and
enabled to meet the requirements, standards, time lines, and
budgets established by the NNSA leadership.
The panel reviewed NNSA's recent report on its proposed new
organizational structure. In principle, the proposed approach
can be made to work. It is now time for decisions,
communication, and disciplined implementation.
Sixth, while the panel's focus has been mainly on the NNSA
weapons program, we also considered the related nuclear program
activities in the DOD. Three specific actions are recommended.
One, strengthening the Defense Threat Reduction Agency's
programs for understanding weapons effects. Two, creating in
DOD a systematic annual assessment of its delivery platforms
and integrated nuclear systems that parallels the process for
the weapons stockpile. And, three, reassessing the need for
certain weapon requirements in view of the NPR, especially
those relating to hostile environments.
Expectations. The coming year will be critical in
transforming the weapons program to meet the coming challenges.
We should expect specific actions in several areas. Within this
year, NNSA should complete its reorganization, resolve
organizational relationships with DOE headquarters and develop
a plan for reducing unnecessary administrative burdens. The
Secretary of Energy should complete a review of DOE orders and
directives and remove all unnecessary duplication of staffs.
NNSA should clarify program management roles, responsibilities,
and authorities. NNSA should create a future-years program plan
and budget defining deliverables, priorities, and resources for
meeting NPR objectives. This should include a credible program
plan for reestablishing all of the capabilities needed for
production of currently deployed warheads.
Within the next 2 years, NNSA should implement new
certification procedures that fully exploit the strengths of
the national laboratories. Concurrently, there should be
significant progress in reducing surveillance backlogs of
critical items. Both NNSA and DOD should demonstrate test-
readiness of 3 months to a year, depending on the kind of test.
DOD should publish a funded program plan for weapons-effects
phenomenology, simulation, and test readiness that should
complete at least one cycle of a new annual assessment process
in which there is enhanced rigor in DOD surveillance and
assessment.
There remains an urgent need for NNSA to address the
fundamental problems that Congress created it to correct. The
startup phase is now over. If NNSA is unable to accomplish its
tasks, Congress should take positive action to further
strengthen the mandate and support needed to adequately manage
the Nation's nuclear capabilities.
Mr. Chairman, it's been this panel's privilege to address
this vital national security concern. I thank you for providing
me with this opportunity to share the panel's views, and I
welcome any questions that the members may have.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Foster follows:]
Prepared Statement of John S. Foster, Jr., Panel to Assess the
Reliability, Safety, and Security of the United States Nuclear
Stockpile
Mr. Chairman, Members of the Committee. In 1999, Congress
established the Panel to Assess the Reliability, Safety, and Security
of the United States Nuclear Stockpile.\1\ My prepared statement
represents the views of my fellow Panel members: Dr. Harold Agnew, Dr.
Sydell Gold, Mr. Stephen Guidice, and Dr. James Schlesinger. The Panel
observed the nuclear weapons program for three years. We issued our
third, and final, report in March. In performing our assessments, the
Panel has used as a benchmark the long-standing commitment of this, and
previous, Presidents that sustaining confidence in U.S. nuclear
deterrent capabilities is a supreme national interest. Our work has
focused on the steps necessary to manage the weapons stockpile and its
supporting program accordingly.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The 1999 Strom Thurmond National Defense Authorization Act
created the Panel to review and assess (1) the annual process for
certifying stockpile reliability and safety, (2) the long-term adequacy
of that process, and (3) the adequacy of the criteria to be provided by
the Department of Energy for evaluating its science-based Stockpile
Stewardship Program.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
You have invited me to comment on issues related to the Nuclear
Posture Review. The NPR addresses questions involving both technical
and policy considerations that go beyond the scope of the Panel's
charter. There are, nevertheless, several areas in common, and in those
areas the Panel found the NPR to be quite constructive. Many of the
programs and initiatives in the NPR address the Panel's concerns that
the Nation needs to do better if we are to do the best we can to
sustain confidence in the stockpile. My remarks today will cover those
common areas. The Panel did not address issues relating to the size of
the stockpile, either active or inactive. We did not assess the logic
of the proposed new ``triad'' of strike capabilities, defensive
capabilities, and infrastructure. Nor did the Panel examine specific
requirements for new weapons.
major challenges remain
I will begin with the context. The Panel and the NPR describe the
current situation with the weapons program in much the same way: The
program is entering a very challenging new phase that will stress the
Nation's ability to sustain the existing stockpile. Weapons are aging.
Some mainstay weapons, such as the W76 Trident warhead, are already
reaching their 20-year design life. Several weapons are showing
disturbing signs of deterioration and other problems. Owing to
improvements in our assessment tools, we now are discovering that we
had been overconfident in the past in assessing some of our existing
weapons. The W87 ICBM warhead is being refurbished. Last year the
decision was made that three more warhead types (the W76, the W80
cruise missile warhead, and the B61 bomb) will undergo extensive
refurbishment in the coming decade.
Sustaining high confidence in these complex systems is an
unprecedented technical challenge for the Department of Energy, the
laboratories and the production complex. We will be introducing
different components, new materials, and new production methods; making
design changes to warheads; and utilizing a new generation of people,
assessment tools, and refurbished facilities. Under these difficult
circumstances, I do not think that anyone should be surprised that the
confidence in the nuclear stockpile, which is based on the nuclear-test
``pedigree,'' is deteriorating.
stewardship must adapt
To sustain confidence in the face of these challenges requires a
transformation of the weapons program. The necessary tasks ahead demand
capable tools, people, and facilities--as well as the most rigorous
available processes--for designing, assessing, certifying,
manufacturing, and maintaining our nuclear warheads. The Panel outlined
initiatives in six areas. Each of these areas was addressed to some
degree in the NPR.
First, it is imperative that we strengthen stockpile surveillance,
assessments, and certification. These processes are the day-to-day
foundation for understanding stockpile safety and reliability. They
also will be critical for judging our confidence in the warheads that
will be refurbished over the next decade. As the technical challenge of
maintaining the stockpile grows, these processes must be as rigorous
and probing as the responsible stockpile stewards know how to make
them. Decision makers need to be apprised of all the viable options for
sustaining confidence. Key to this is sustaining the competition of
ideas among the nuclear design laboratories. This has been a critical
foundation for the weapons program for five decades, and it is the
raison d'etre for two such laboratories.
The Panel recommends that the Annual Certification Process entail
the identification of issues that may undermine confidence, and an
assessment of the relevant options for sustaining confidence--at each
level of the assessment process (i.e., technical, operational military,
and national). We also recommend broadening the scope of Annual
Certification reporting to encompass issues concerning the full
spectrum of capabilities necessary to sustain confidence. This would
require significant changes to current practices affecting several
executive branch activities, and the Panel believes national-level
guidance is needed to shape the needed process. The Panel urges
Congress to support our proposals for processes that would engage the
laboratories, DOE, and DOD in obtaining an unvarnished and complete
assessment of stewardship issues and options.
Second, the Administration and Congress need to articulate a
balanced, forward-looking weapons program, and allocate resources to
the highest priority deliverables. Such a program would meet
requirements for weapons refurbishments, while at the same time would
adequately support the exploration of advanced concepts and maintain
leading capabilities in weapons-relevant science and technology. NNSA--
the National Nuclear Security Administration--must provide the
leadership, by creating a program that defines the essential
deliverables and that clearly defines the resources allocated to
provide these deliverables.
A renewed focus on deliverable products and delivery schedules is
essential to drive the need for restoring the weapons complex, for
training a new generation of stockpile stewards, and for addressing
long-standing management deficiencies.
This Committee is well aware that other nations continue to
maintain and adapt their nuclear arsenals, and that there is a
continuing proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and their
delivery methods. Technological surprise has occurred in the past and
is something we must guard against. The work on future concepts and
technologies is needed to assess intelligence information, to avoid
technical surprises as well as to train stockpile stewards, and to
provide alternative options for addressing any problems that may arise.
The Panel also emphasizes that it is essential for Congress to be kept
apprised of developments in foreign weapons programs and their
potential implications for U.S. security.
Third, to sustain the nuclear stockpile we must restore an adequate
weapons complex. Today, many capabilities are missing or deficient. As
you know, the United States is the only major nuclear power that is
unable to manufacture the nuclear components for its nuclear weapons.
Restoring these capabilities can take a decade, or more. In the
meantime we run serious risks. A plan and program are needed to restore
capabilities in the weapons complex, and we need to get started now.
The adequacy of the production complex is a critical factor in
determining the appropriate size and state of readiness of the inactive
reserve of weapons and the pace of dismantlements. If we had the
necessary capacity to repair or produce weapons, the U.S. could relieve
our dependence on an inactive reserve.
Fourth, test readiness needs to be addressed much more
realistically. This is not because a need to test is imminent, but
because prudence requires that every President have a realistic option
to return to testing, should technical or strategic events make it
necessary. Our current readiness to return to testing is two to three
years. The Panel recommends the Administration and Congress support
test readiness of three months to a year, depending on the type of
test. The Panel recalls that when the Senate rendered its advice and
consent to the START II Treaty in 1996, its Resolution of Ratification
stated that the United States should maintain the Nevada Test Site at a
level that would allow testing to resume within one year following a
national decision to do so.\2\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ Congressional Record--Senate. January 26, 1996, S461.
Resolution of Ratification. Treaty with the Russian Federation on
Further Reductions and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms (The
START II Treaty). Paragraph (12), subparagraph (F).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fifth, NNSA needs to provide the strong leadership Congress sought
when it created that organization in 1999. NNSA inherited an extremely
difficult situation when it was created in 1999. DOE experienced large
budget cuts in the early 1990s, and was never able to establish a
coherent long-range vision for the program that was consistent with the
available resources. NNSA was created to address these challenges, and
to rectify other long-standing DOE management weaknesses.
NNSA needs to establish clear lines of authority, responsibility,
and accountability. Laboratory directors and plant managers should be
tasked and enabled to meet the requirements, standards, timelines, and
budgets established by the NNSA leadership. The Panel reviewed NNSA's
recent report on its proposed new organizational structure. In
principle, the proposed approach can be made to work. It is time now
for decisions, communication, and disciplined implementation.
Sixth, while the Panel's focus has been mainly on the NNSA weapons
program, we also considered the related nuclear program activities in
DOD. Three specific actions are recommended: 1) strengthening the
Defense Threat Reduction Agency's programs for understanding weapons
effects; 2) creating in DOD a systematic annual assessment of its
delivery platforms, command and control, and other systems needed to
perform a nuclear mission, that parallels the process for the weapons
stockpile; and 3) reassessing weapon requirements in view of the NPR.
expectations
The coming year will be critical in transforming the weapons
program to meet the coming challenges. We should expect specific
actions in several areas.
Within this fiscal year:
NNSA should complete its reorganization, resolve
organizational relationships with DOE headquarters, and develop
a plan for reducing unnecessary administrative burdens. The
Secretary of Energy should complete a review of DOE orders and
directives, and remove all unnecessary duplication of stafff.
NNSA should clarify program management roles,
responsibilities, and authorities.
NNSA should create a future years program plan and a
transparent budget defining deliverables, priorities, and
resources for meeting NPR objectives, with a clear connection
between resources and deliverables. This should include a
credible program plan for reestablishing all of the
capabilities needed for production of currently deployed
warheads.
Within the next two years:
NNSA should implement new certification processes that fully
exploit the strengths of the weapons laboratories.
Concurrently, there should be significant progress in reducing
surveillance backlogs of critical items.
Both NNSA and DOD should demonstrate test readiness of three
months to a year, depending on the kind of test.
DOD should publish and implement a funded program for weapon
effects phenomenology, simulation, and test readiness, and
should complete at least one cycle of a new annual assessment
process in which there is enhanced rigor in surveillance and
assessment of DOD assets.
There remains an urgent need for NNSA to address the fundamental
problems that Congress created it to correct. The start-up phase is now
over. If NNSA is unable to accomplish its tasks, Congress should take
positive action to ensure that the nation's nuclear capabilities are
adequately managed.
Mr. Chairman, it has been this Panel's privilege to address this
vital national security concern. Thank you for providing me with this
opportunity to share the Panel's views. I welcome your questions.
The Chairman. Thank you very much, doctor. I'm going to go
to Admiral Owens now, and then if--I hope you are able to stay
for questions. If you can't, we understand. We'll submit them
to you in writing. But I'm fearful, after consulting with Mr.
Lugar, that there may be a vote on the floor, and I want to
give Admiral Owens a chance to get his full statement in before
that happens, if it does occur.
STATEMENT OF ADM. WILLIAM A. OWENS, U.S. NAVY (RET.), FORMER
VICE CHAIRMAN OF THE JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF; CO-CEO AND VICE
CHAIRMAN, TELEDESIC LLC, BELLEVUE, WA
Admiral Owens. Well, thank you, Senator. It's a great
pleasure to be here with you and to be a co-panelist with a
gentleman I admire very much, John Foster. I would ask that I
not read the full statement. I'd like to give you 4 or 5
minutes of an overview, if I may, and leave time for
discussion, if that's OK?
The Chairman. Without objection, your entire statement will
be placed in the record.
Admiral Owens. Thank you, sir.
I'd like to just comment that it's trite at this point in
the history of our country to say that the world is a different
place. And so, in light of the fact that there are so many
dramatic changes around us in this world of terrorism and
weapons, et cetera, it seems to me that the mandate is for
change. And I wonder, if we look back on the year 2002 from the
year 2012 or 2017, and we evaluate what has happened to us in
the last 10 or 15 years, if we won't ask ourselves if we
thought seriously and broadly enough about this whole range of
nuclear weapons. And so I'd offer a few observations.
First--and these will be very brief--I see no real threat
of large-scale nuclear attack against this Nation. Second, I
think we're all well aware that there are literally thousands
of nuclear weapons in Russia, not only the strategic ones, but
the tactical ones, and they are dispersed in 40 facilities
around the Russian countryside. Arguably, those 40 dispersed
facilities are more or less secure, but one has to wonder if it
is in our best interest to have large numbers of nuclear
weapons stored in those facilities. In that regard, I couldn't
offer stronger support for the cooperative threat reduction
efforts of Senator Lugar and Senator Nunn. I think they're
enormously important, and I hope that the beat goes on, in
terms of supporting them.
Tactical nuclear weapons seem to be a marginal discussion.
I can't imagine why. We read in the Washington Post and every
other newspaper in this country about the strategic nuclear
weapons reductions and going to 1,700 to 2,200 in the year
2012, but where is the discussion of tactical nuclear weapons,
the thousands that the Russians have versus the many hundreds
that we have, and are they not important? My view would be that
those are the most proliferable of nuclear weapons, and there
should be a keen focus on those tactical nuclear weapons.
I think another area that is being only marginally
addressed is the area of cruise missiles with nuclear weapons
onboard. And surely that has to be of great concern. As we look
at the next 9/11, is it not very probable that it could come in
the form of cruise missiles readily available on the world
market whether it has a nuclear weapon or otherwise onboard? We
need to be looking at that capability. And, of course, national
missile defense doesn't provide an answer for that problem. So
those missiles with a nuclear weapon are clearly of great
concern.
I would offer that many solutions are not timely enough,
that as we look back 15 years from now we'll ask ourselves if
we couldn't have done it faster. And so while I salute this
administration for its efforts to reduce the nuclear weapons
and bringing the treaty to this body for approval, and I think
it's definitely a step in the right direction, I believe that
it should happen much faster than 2012. And if there are ways
that we can do it faster, we should try to find those ways.
I'm concerned about ``dirty'' nuclear weapons, and that's a
big issue, as we all know. The simple weapon--conventional
explosives, with very radioactive, contaminating material in
it--is a great threat to this Nation as we look at terrorist
attacks in the future.
And it's, for me, very difficult to see how we have a use
for several thousand nuclear weapons, whether it's the 2,000
with a significant responsive force--I don't know what the
possible use for those nuclear weapons is today or in the
future for that number. Is it--I can't imagine, unless it is
some fear of what happens in Russia. And so we must maintain a
readiness to deal with that. But, at the same time, it seems to
me, as a Nation, we should be leading, in terms of trying to
reduce the number of weapons below the numbers that are
presently on the table.
Likewise, I think it's very problematical about what the
use is for the U.S.-NATO nuclear capability. It has been seen
in years past as an element of melding NATO together. And yet
today, I think it stands in the way of addressing directly the
tactical nuclear weapons inventory on the Russian side. And so
we hear very little discussion of the U.S. tactical nuclear
capability in Europe, and I think it's very important.
And, finally, I question whether the use of nuclear weapons
as an answer--as a deterrent for the use of biological and
chemical weapons makes sense. Would we not want to be the ones
who are leading the answer to deterence against those kind of
weapons with other kinds of responses, rather than suggesting
that we would respond with a nuclear weapon as a direct
capability of this Nation?
So I think we need real change. And let me just mention
three or four areas of significant--I would call them ``bigger-
picture changes'' that we might entail in this Nation that
should be a part of the discussion. I'm certain these are not
the right answers, but I'm also certain that we need to think
about this much more broadly than we have in the past.
So, first of all, the issue of when changes could occur. Is
it possible that we could look at a third-country storage area
where we could put excess nuclear weapons from this country and
from the Russian inventory in a very secure, monitored storage
which the Russians and we monitored and was monitored by an
international body of some sort? One could conjecture on where
that might be, and it's probably wrong to say where it could
be, but I think that it is possible, and that might allow us
not to get to a lesser number of nuclear weapons a few years
from now, but next year! And we should look seriously at
permanent storage under the surveillance of trusted parties,
including ourselves and the Russians, in another nation.
I think that we have an enormous capability in the world of
the revolution of military affairs information-technology data
links to be able to put an ``American information umbrella''
over suspect parts of the globe, be that the facilities in Iraq
or the facilities in North Korea, and to monitor them 24 hours
a day, real time, all weather--the unmanned aerial vehicles,
Global Hawk/Predator, many airplanes, tactical sensors, all
data linked, give us a capability to see the ground in many
ways that I think many may not fully appreciate--and then to
have a deterrence structure built around that information
umbrella.
And it may have become time to think of the information
umbrella as a serious part of our deterrence strategy as
opposed to the nuclear umbrella. It applies to North Korea. It
applies to Iraq. And it could apply to many other areas. You
could easily see that if you had such an umbrella, there are
many things we could say, in terms of diplomatic absolutes, to
an offender, ``Don't do x or we will do y,'' that make enormous
good sense to me and, I think, have had very little discussion.
I think we could find a way with the Russians to absolutely
and transparently control what happens after we destroy a
nuclear weapon. When it's destroyed, there is still material.
It is weapons grade. In some instances it is diluted weapons
grade, and there is a lot of waste material. And we need to be
able to address those issues. That's not a part of the
discussion today. We need to be able to address those kinds of
issues in a transparent, accountable way, because they are very
much subject to being proliferated.
I support strongly the Nunn-Lugar Threat Reduction Program,
and we should fund it and fund it and fund it.
I think we should find a way to develop a very good
business with the Russians for safe, secure, transparent,
transportable capability for nuclear weapons and nuclear waste
around the world. When it is transported, it is a huge problem
that we're all aware of, political in every nation in this
world. And we and the Russians own the technologies to allow
the safe, secure, accountable transportation of all of those
kinds of materials, and we should get on with finding a way to
do that as a cooperative scheme with the Russians. We need to
put a lot of focus on tactical nuclear weapons.
And that brings us to the issue of NATO. And we have to
question seriously whether the new NATO, the expanded NATO, is
best served by having a continued nuclear umbrella as a part of
it, and yet the discussion there is not present.
Finally, the cruise-missile threat, I think it does need to
be a part of these discussions.
And, in overview, I think this is a new world. Relevant
new-world thinking needs to be brought to this whole area. And
I know many of you are sponsoring much of that, and I salute
you for that.
And it's been my privilege to talk to you here this
morning.
[The prepared statement of Admiral Owens follows:]
Prepared Statement of Adm. William A. Owens, U.S. Navy (Ret.), former
Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; co-CEO and Vice Chairman,
Teledesic LLC, Bellevue, WA
This testimony is primarily focused on the need for substantive
CHANGE. Military institutions are by nature conservative, cautious of
fads, and hesitant to rush headlong into change. Their conservatism is
founded on experience, for they have learned, often very painfully,
what can happen when they make the wrong changes and that they could be
expected to deliver weapons while in the ``midst of change.'' So, while
the risks of being defeated in mankind's deadliest competition (WAR)
drive militaries to innovate, those same risks inhibit accelerated
change and rapid innovation. History suggests that there rarely are
revolutions in the way we conduct national defense, and that is even
more true in the matters of nuclear weapons, their doctrine, and the
theory of use. It has now been over a decade since the demise of the
bipolar world, for which we built our nuclear forces. Our hesitation to
boldly change stems from many factors. But, I propose that in the face
of a vastly different set of world conditions, we must change
significantly, and we must include in that change the entire area of
nuclear forces and deterrence.
There has been considerable discussion about the Nuclear Posture
Review, about Strategic Nuclear weapons reductions, about the ABM
treaty and how it has been handled, about the Non-Proliferation Treaty,
the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the National Missile Defense
capability, and about the demise of the Russian nuclear capability. I
want to try to stay away from too much of the detail of these very
important subjects and try to provide some context for discussion (or
argument), for it's my belief that unlike the normal approach to
military planning, e.g. be very cautious or we might break something,
the most negative approach we could now take would be to NOT undertake
significant change. First a set of observations:
There is no real threat of large scale nuclear attack from
any country (unless there was a complete failure of government and a
very unstable leadership developed in Russia).
There are literally thousands of nuclear weapons
(strategic and tactical) in about 40 dispersed facilities in Russia,
which arguably over the last decade have had questionable security. The
officers overseeing them are often poorly paid, living in remote areas,
and poorly equipped with available modern security capabilities. There
have been occasional reports of hunger strikes at a few of these
facilities.
Tactical nuclear weapons numbering in the ``several
thousands'' for the Russians vs. ``many hundreds'' for the U.S. are
generally UNADDRESSED, or at least only marginally noted, in most of
the current rhetoric, treaties, and discussions. Note: These weapons
are not too different in destructive power from those used in Hiroshima
and Nagasaki. These, arguably are the weapons over which the Russians
have had less control in terms of inventories, security procedures,
etc.
Cruise missiles with nuclear warheads are also in the
``marginally addressed'' category. These weapons are considerably
easier to build, much more accurate, and much less visible to
intelligence sources. They also are not addressed by our National
Missile Defense initiative, except in footnotes. They could be the
essence of a future 9/11 attack, but think about a dozen or so of them
precisely targeted on particular places; the West Wing, the Speaker's
office, several industry leaders, etc.
Many ``solutions'' are not timely, envisioned to take
place not over months, but over many years, and in some cases the ``cow
has been out of the barn'' for a decade.
America is unquestionably unapproachable in nuclear
weapons capability, not only for the present, but as best as most of us
can see, for many decades. In this regard, our reputation in the world
and the future of nuclear weapons will depend upon how we ``handle
ourselves,'' what we do, what we say, what our budget funds, and how we
deal with other world powers. Article VI of the NPT obligated each
Party ``to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures
relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to
nuclear disarmament.'' We must be careful that our actions do not cause
others to doubt our sincerity and to take actions that would spur on
either an unhealthy arms race or worse in generations ahead lead to the
availability of capability which others could use to threaten our
Country.
``Dirty Nuclear Weapons'' are little addressed in terms of
substantive policy direction or initiatives. There is considerable
evidence that non-weapons grade materials are available and well known
to terrorist organizations. There has been reference to an incident of
Cesium-137/Strontium 90 use in a Moscow park in 1995. General Dudayev,
the former head of the Chechyen Independence movement noted that this
was only a ``scant portion of the radioactive substances which we have
at our disposal.''
It's very difficult to imagine what possible use we could
have for several thousand offensive nuclear weapons. If our new
relationship with Russia is indeed built on a new trust (like that we
have with France or Great Britain?), and if we are indeed not to target
them, it is hard to imagine what ``requirement'' we have for the
present number of strategic nuclear weapons in our arsenal or the
planned numbers for the future, including the fully diluted year 2012
number of 2000 operational nuclear weapons, let alone the ``response
force'' of several thousand more. We should remember that this
capability costs this nation significant taxpayer dollars, dollars
which might go to some of the threats mentioned above or to other
important national defense priorities. Even more importantly, the
perception of our Country as not being sincere about reducing the
viability of nuclear weapons and fostering a continuing arms race is
damaging.
In light of the above it is also difficult to ascertain
the purpose of the U.S.-led NATO/European nuclear capability.
If there is a perceived use of nuclear weapons for
deterring the use of chemical or biological weapons, it would appear to
be weak at best. We have a very convincing conventional force which is
likely to be a much more effective deterrent, and we do have an ability
to use it pre-emptively when we know that such a capability is being
developed. Are we not better to take a position against the use of
nuclear weapons for such deterrence. . . . ``Use Chemical or Biological
weapons against us or our allies, and your life will not be the same.
We have the ability to eliminate those who would use or sponsor such a
use, and we do NOT need to use nuclear weapons!''
So, could I give you some thoughts on big ideas? Let me suggest
just a few for consideration:
First, There is a real issue with WHEN changes occur.
Could we and the Russians reach agreement to put large numbers of
excess strategic and tactical nuclear weapons in third country
``permanent storage'' under the surveillance of ``trusted parties,'' in
which complete transparency and security of the weapons is maintained?
Such a plan could be implemented in months vs. years, and could be the
basis for true downsizing without the threat of loss of control of the
weapons in the ensuing years. It could also include OTHER nations and
be the basis for real confidence in general global downsizing.
Second, we could develop Information Umbrella(s) which
could be used to provide information to support nuclear deterrence,
perhaps information about precisely what is happening in Iraq around
the CBW facilities?, or in North Korea around the missile facilities?,
or in Iran around suspected nuclear development sites? Or ?? Such
information umbrellas would be developed from sensors on satellites,
unmanned aerial vehicles, and a number of other aircraft in our present
inventory. All information could readily be ``fused'' to provide a 24
hour a day, real-time, all weather accurate picture of the entire area
(country?). We could readily put 5 or 6 of these in place around the
world positioned optimally to give America the best strategic picture
of crisis areas. And could we develop deterrent strategies using that
information, e.g. ``don't do . . . or we will . . . (such message for
public or private delivery). Is this a more effective plan than the
Nuclear Umbrella which we have provided for our NATO or Japanese or
Korean allies?
Third, with the Russians we could find ways to absolutely
and transparently account for and control (1) the nuclear materials
which remain after the destruction of nuclear weapons, and (2) nuclear
waste which results from commercial or military nuclear plants as well
as other nuclear residue (remembering the dirty nuclear weapon threat).
Fourth, continue with a much more aggressive Nunn-Lugar
Cooperative Threat Reduction program with a focus on both strategic and
tactical nuclear weapons. It might be the best money we spend to help
the Russians destroy their nuclear arsenals. How much is too much to
spend on such an important program?
Fifth, develop U.S/Russian cooperative programs which
could make money for cooperating businesses from both countries which
allow for transparent, safe, constantly monitored (modern
communications/GPS/etc.), accountable, and secure global transportation
of both weapons grade and diluted weapons grade nuclear materials, as
well as nuclear waste. Note that the U.S. has purchased 500 MT of
``blended-down'' nuclear weapons grade materials for use in our
commercial nuclear power plants. This is big and very important
business and could be critical for the absolute control of these
nuclear materials. There is a potential market of a few billion dollars
of revenue in this business, and there is no focus for the activity
today. As a matter of policy and implementation we should proceed with
this kind of initiative now.
Sixth, put some focus on tactical nuclear weapons where we
are faced with thousands of Russian weapons (as compared to a few
hundred for us). And the Russian weapons are arguably controlled far
less rigorously than their strategic weapons. This would require a
focus on our nuclear policy as it relates to NATO. NATO and the
bilateral security treaties we maintained during the Cold War had a
sublime logic based on mutual utility. They reconciled our desires to
gain both tangible and political support from our allies, with our
allies' desires to influence and control the views, and, more
importantly, the actions of the United States, the superpower with
which they were allied. NATO and our alliance with Japan offset the
Soviet military threat. But it also provided an internal balance in the
face of the profound military-technical disparity represented by our
nuclear weapons. Germany and Japan, and for a while France, agreed to
forego developing nuclear weapons in exchange for an American nuclear
umbrella. We promised, in turn, to deter Soviet military action by the
threat of nuclear escalation and backed our promise by forward
stationing American forces on the territory of our allies. Our allies,
in exchange, acquiesced to American alliance leadership. We, in
exchange, agreed to procedural and institutional constraints on our
freedom to act unilaterally. NATO and our alliance with Japan deterred
a common threat. But equally important, they assured a mutually
beneficial balance among the members, a balance that was greatly
unbalanced in terms of their military power and ours. But Europe and
the Russian threat has changed. Arguably the threat of Russian tactical
nuclear weapons is much more important than is the possession of a
small NATO nuclear force. That nuclear force hardly melds the alliance
in this new world, and it is very likely that the security of Europe
would be greatly enhanced if both we and the Russians eliminated all
tactical nuclear weapons. A good case could be made that a U.S./NATO
Information Umbrella mentioned above could be an important element of a
replacement strategy. The key, of course, would be our willingness to
share the U.S. information edge. This would mean opening access to our
national technical capabilities wider than we have been willing to do
in the past and sharing the fruit of those and our other capabilities
more broadly than we have done before. But like the nuclear umbrella
before it, a U.S. ``information'' umbrella could reinforce a mutually
beneficial relationship between the United States and our allies.
Seven, address the cruise missile threat. If there is a
plausible pseudo-military threat to our Country it is this one. These
missiles are inexpensive, accurate, fly several hundred kilometers, are
relatively easy to acquire, and can deliver nuclear, chemical or
biological weapons. The ability to put together ``systems of systems''
(space, air, and ground sensors, computer networks, and bandwidth
communications) to address this critical threat would be of vast
benefit to the protection of our Country and our allies. It needs
dedicated focus and considerable funding.
It is my conclusion that original new-world-relevant thinking is
more necessary now than it has ever been. There will be many better
ideas than those addressed above. But it seems that there is a mandate
to truly change in a World which is truly changed.
The Chairman. Thank you very much, Admiral Owens. We are--
doctor?
Dr. Foster. Mr. Chairman, I apologize very much to this
committee, but I must leave at this moment. I wanted very much
to be able to take your questions while I'm here, but I can't.
And I look forward to any questions you would----
The Chairman. We'll submit them in writing. As you're
getting up to leave, I'll ask you one--I thought you were
nodding in agreement with the first several recommendations of
Admiral Owens. Was I correct?
Dr. Foster. Yes, I agree with many of the points he made.
The Chairman. I thank you, and you are excused. And with
your permission, we will submit some questions to you.
Dr. Foster. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you for being here, and I apologize for
starting late.
Admiral, I don't want to ruin your reputation, but your
testimony is music to my ears and I think to many here.
Now, that may hurt you. I am not at all certain. But if
Senator--I noticed Senator Lugar nodding, as well, so that may
help you, and I suspect Senator Hagel shares some of the same
admiration for what you've had to say.
If you will allow us, it would be--we all three have a
keen, keen interest in what you had to say. And rather than do
what we usually do, is one of us leave and go vote and the
others come, all three of us are very much interested. Would
you indulge us, and we'll recess for 10 minutes, run over and
vote and come back, because----
Admiral Owens. Sure, Senator.
The Chairman [continuing]. We very much want to speak to
you. OK?
Admiral Owens. Thank you.
The Chairman. Thank you. We'll recess for 10 minutes.
[Recess.]
The Chairman. The hearing will come to order. Since Senator
Lugar got back here first, why don't you begin with the
questions?
Senator Lugar. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Admiral Owens, the suggestions that you have made and that
the chairman has already commented on received many assenting
nods and I think they are a good collection of suggestions from
which to proceed. I want to ask about two or three of them.
First of all, you talked about the transparency through
monitoring from satellites from--in a real-time situation.
Could you provide more detail on your views on how this might
work.
Let us say, for example, that our government had a list of
countries with weapons-of-mass-destruction and associated
laboratories and materials. As I understand your proposal, we
would do our best, through national tactical means, rather
intelligence means, to divine where these places are and what
they are doing. Ideally, we would have cooperation with Russia
in that respect and maybe other countries, who, in the same
spirit of the current war effort, are sharing intelligence,
because this is the heart of the matter with regard to success
in the war against terrorism.
So let us say we get this cooperation. How would we
accomplish this task? Can you actually launch enough satellites
to maintain real-time imagery in a way that, as you've
suggested, the whole world monitors what is going on, and can
detect telltale signs that could lead to action based upon the
evidence that is produced.
Admiral Owens. Right, Senator. Well, I think it is at the
crux of the issue on the information umbrella. It is really in
this Nation's capability today to do much more with information
technology than we do in DOD and in our other agencies. The
information umbrella, I think, can be constructed of existing
technology. It's not a future kind of thing, but it is a
different cultural kind of thing. It is to lead with our
information strength--not to lead with ships and tanks and
airplanes, but to lead with information technology. And I think
what that means is, yes, there are satellites, and, of course,
they are orbiting and passing, and so you don't get continuous
information, but we do have these remarkable new technical
capabilities of unmanned aerial vehicles, the Global Hawk, at
70,000 feet above an area, pretty much out of the range of most
surface-to-air missile systems and, if used wisely, can be kept
outside of the range of missile systems. We have Predators, and
we have long-range systems that have the ability to detect
moving targets on the ground with what we call ``MTI sensors.''
If you put these various sensors together--and we have
companies in the commercial marketplace in this country that
can do that readily with new software--Java, C++--tying
together data links and sensor links, and then being able to
deliver the 24-hour-a-day, real-time, all-weather picture of a
large area. A hundred-mile diameter I think is very doable. And
if you knew four or five places in the world that were
suspect--maybe it's Pyong Yang, North Korea; maybe it is Iraq,
and we know pretty much, I think, where those facilities might
be--then we could lead with the information umbrella, establish
with our friends and allies in the region that this is meant to
be a deterrent position, and deliver demarches to the Iraqis to
the extent--or the North Koreans or whoever the suspect country
is--that, ``Here is a list of things you may not do. You may
not move vehicles from one facility to another. You may not
have people going in or out of that facility. And the answer to
your getting this new kind of sanctions lifted is to allow
full-time inspectors on the ground.''
I think much of that could be dealt with either quietly, in
diplomatic circles, or openly. We have the technical ability to
do this in several areas around the world. It is our great
strength, this information technology, and I think this is the
kind of thing that might make for real deterrence for someone
who is considering doing some bad things with weapons of mass
destruction.
The Chairman. Does the Senator mind if I intervened? I
think you're dead right. It's one of those ideas that seems to
be so self evident that it would make sense to do it--I always
wonder why we don't. But you indicated the need for
surveillance systems that are out of the range of surface-to-
air missiles. It would seem to me that that wouldn't matter,
that obviously, if someone uses a surface-to-air, by
definition, there is a problem, and we should be able to build
that in.
Admiral Owens. Senator, I agree. There is this issue that--
with the advent of unmanned aerial vehicles and, therefore, the
ability to preclude loss of life when one of them is shot down,
that as soon as someone shoots at one, you know from whence the
missile came, and you can put a missile quickly onto that spot,
and at least that missile site won't shoot down the next
unmanned aerial vehicle. So I think there are some very
interesting deterrent policies that can be built around that
kind of capability.
The Chairman. Excuse me for interrupting.
Senator Lugar. No, that's all right. But let me carry this
further. Now, this is not hypothetical, because we're in a war
against terrorism, and a good number of us have suggested that
this means seriously making certain that every area that has
weapons of mass destruction or materials is secure. Now, we
would ask, for example, of our friends in Pakistan and India to
make certain that--whatever they have, that it's secure. It is
imperative as far as we're concerned, and the rest of the
world, that these weapons do not fall into the wrong hands.
Now, at some point, we may run into somebody who seriously
objects to this--perhaps the Iraqis, who would say, ``Well,
it's none of your business.'' Now, at this point, it's been
proposed by some that we would ultimately get into a military
conflict over the access to their suspected WMD sites. If what
you're saying follows through--for example, you issue
demarches. You say, ``You cannot run a truck up to the plant,
or people cannot come and go.'' Well, let's say the Iraqi
leader says, ``Let's test the system.'' And so, in fact, two
trucks drive up. Now, at this point, there is a big difference,
obviously, between an all-out war against Iraq and what might
be called a ``surgical strike'' in which the two trucks are
eliminated. In other words, to follow this through, you have
maybe a different kind of tactic for a successful war against
weapons of mass destruction, proliferation, interdiction of all
of this.
Am I moving well beyond the curve of the doable? You start
with diplomacy, but the information may also lead to military
action, and it could be very specific. In the same way that, in
Afghanistan, we tried very hard to have no collateral damage
through precision guided munitions and command, control, and
communication capabilities combining ground, air, and naval
forces. And is this doable as we get into this larger situation
of multiple nations and many threats of proliferation?
Admiral Owens. Well, Senator, I think you raise a number of
interesting points. I do believe that--and when I was the Vice
Chairman, I did a number of studies inside the JROC environment
and the joint warfare capability assessments that, with the
fusion of these many sensors, you really can see very, very
clearly with very high resolution the area that you are looking
at. Probably some of those technologies we shouldn't talk about
in open hearing, but there is a great capability to integrate
SIGINT and HUMINT and IMINT, imagery intelligence, and MASINT,
the sum of all of the INTs, if you will, into a fused picture
of that area.
We do have the ability to do that, but we don't do it for
some reason, because one platform belongs to one agency or
service and another one belongs to another, and the data links
don't work together, and the COM structure doesn't work
together. So, for some reason, we haven't quite gotten to the
stage where we could do it, but that's not because of lack of
technology, it's because of the culture in which we live.
Now, if we saw information technology as truly being our
great strength, then I think we have the ability to do the
kinds of things that you suggest. And we have also the great
precision and flexibility to tune the policy to the situation.
If, in fact, Saddam Hussein started to drive trucks with women
and children down the road, we may find a way to deal with this
that isn't to target every truck, but you could make it very
public that we are going to do this, and then if he does it, it
is he who is responsible, not we.
So I just think that there is an enormous capability here,
in our country and no other country, that we should take
advantage of strategically. And, you know, if we're worried
about the North Koreans launching a ballistic missile, then we
should have this kind of information umbrella over that launch
erector. And when they erect, that would be the one thing we
say, ``Do not take a missile to the launch pad, and do not
erect.'' And----
The Chairman. And if you do----
Admiral Owens [continuing]. If you do, then we will A, B,
and C. And, of course, we have an ability with a range of
precision weapons to be able to respond quickly. I think of the
Army ATACMS as a great weapon for putting together with the
information umbrella. As you know, it's the only conventional
ballistic missile, like the Scud, in the American inventory;
except, for us, it works. And it goes very quickly, because
it's ballistic. It gets there in a matter of one fifth or less
the time that a cruise missile or an airplane would take. And
so you can respond very precisely and very quickly to things
that are happening that America doesn't want to see happen.
And I think you could build a real coalition among our
allies around such concepts, where it's doing good for the
right reasons. So I believe it's technically possible. I think
it's very, very much doable.
Senator Lugar. Mr. Chairman, I'll not belabor this issue,
but I would just say that both of us have shared, throughout
the past few months, both anxiety and exasperation as we've
tried to examine why the agencies of our government couldn't
track the money or actions of terrorists. And again and again,
you run through all the jurisdictional hassles, the computers
that don't work, the people who don't cooperate.
These are tough tasks institutionally. Our government
really wasn't organized to handle these threats. But
nevertheless, intelligent Americans have got to try to get over
these barriers and put these things together, because an awful
lot depends upon it. And I just appreciate your taking this
time, first, to raise the issue and then, second, in a very
concise way, from your expertise, to say that it's doable. And
our problem is, I suppose, to spur on our leaders to do it and
to keep raising those questions and trying to have that
platform.
Mr. Chairman, as just an exit question--and it's really
more than that--but I'd just simply note that Admiral Owens
mentioned again the problem of the tactical missiles. And the
fact is that the Russians have never really wanted to engage in
talking about tactical missiles. It's a subject that, as soon
it comes up, it moves away.
On the other hand, whether they want to or not, I'm just
want to ask the witness, from his own experience, and maybe
you've found some Russians to be more forthcoming. If not, how
do we really get into this in a big way? Because otherwise, as
you say, we've dealt with the large-missile warhead
predicament, but the thousands of tactical weapons, many in
Russia, at least as I understand their point of view, are a
substitute for that. The maintenance of the old stuff and the
big stuff is costly, even dangerous. As maintenance declines,
then an accident might happen. Whereas, the tactical weapons
are perceived as something else, that, as you downsize
ambitions and downsize your program, you maybe downsize the
size of the weapon. And that sort of fits the scope.
Do you have any comment as to what the steps are to proceed
to get more activity there?
Admiral Owens. Yes, sir. Well, I think that, you know, that
roles have shifted after the end of the cold war, with now the
Russian military being conventionally inferior to what the NATO
armies would be. It used to feel the other way around. And so
we and our NATO allies thought it was very important to have
tactical nuclear weapons to offset the conventional strength of
the Russian military--the Soviet military.
Today, it feels the other way to the Russians. And I
suspect they're holding onto the tactical nuclear weapons as a
hedge against our conventional strength. But as we move, as the
administration seems to be, to a new kind of relationship with
the Russians, both in the nuclear world, as well as the
conventional world, and we start, I hope, to see the Russians
more like England and France than like the old Soviet enemy,
then we should have very much on the table this issue of
tactical nuclear weapons, as you said, and really get to the
core of getting rid of them if we can.
A part of that is our own problem, I think, which is that
many policymakers in our country believe that the NATO nuclear
force is critical to holding NATO together and to having a
genuine capability--against what, I'm not sure, unless it's the
Russians. But then again, we're together with the Russians. And
now we have the new agreement with the Russians to actually be
much more present with us in NATO.
So in that regard, it just seems to me that we should find
a way that we, ourselves, come to grips with the fact that NATO
does not need a nuclear force, a nuclear umbrella. An American
umbrella of some kind that is used to protect Europe--against
what, again, I would ask. And that should be step one in
leading us to a decision that we should undertake serious,
serious dialog with the Russians to go to zero on tactical
nuclear weapons and dramatically affect the business of
proliferation.
And again, this brings us back, then, when you go to zero,
and while we're getting more Nunn-Lugar money to help us truly
destroy the weapons, what do we do with them? And I would find
a place to store them under U.S.-Russian-international
control--where there is transparency and security--while we're
getting ready to destroy them.
Senator Lugar. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Admiral, you're doing today what you did when
you were at the Pentagon, and that is you're forcing people to
think a little out of the box here.
One of my great disappointments after 30 years in this
committee is we all used to use the phrase you used earlier--I
can't remember exactly what you said--but ``it's trite to
say''--I think you were referring to ``this is a new world.''
It really is drastically different, but I don't think,
including the Nuclear Posture Review, that we've really--
there's any really fundamentally new thinking. And the thinking
that's taking place, it concerns me it's going in the opposite
direction that we should be thinking about.
Let me explain what I mean by that, and I'm going to ask
you to comment on this. With regard to the notion of having 24-
hour eyes watching suspect sites in countries, you've
testified, and others have privately briefed me, that that's
fully within our capability. It costs a lot of money. It's
fully within our capability to do that. And yet we're talking
about dealing with those suspect sites as the rationale for
spending a minimum of a hundred billion. And if it's a layered
system, it could be a trillion, depending on what they mean by
``layered,'' for a national missile defense. When, in fact, the
ultimate national missile defense is taking it out before it's
fired. I mean, it seems to me that's the ultimate national
missile defense.
Second, it doesn't require a nuclear weapon to take it
out--``it,'' whatever ``it'' is--before ``it'' is fired. And
yet we seem to be moving in a direction--and this crosses party
lines--where the answer to the emerging threat is another
incredibly cumbersome and expensive and highly technical system
that has incredible limitations once you get beyond ballistic
missiles. As you said, cruise missiles sitting off the shore
is--I mean, any missile defense is absolutely useless to deal
with that--I mean, national missile defenses.
At the same time, the thing that concerns me about the--
even though there's not much that's fundamentally new in the
NPR--is it seems to--in another--to steal a phrase from a
totally different context, teaching constitutional law--it
seems to ``squint toward'' nuclear testing and new nuclear
weapons.
So it seems what we're doing is--we have two gigantic
advantages relative to the rest of the world. One is our
conventional capability--gigantic advantage. I can't think of
any time in American history where, relative to any other
single nation or combination of nations, our conventional
capability was as disparately disproportionate, in terms of
capability. And, second, our technology capability to look and
see what's going on.
And we seem to be taking those two gigantic advantages and
cashing them in, in a sense, or not cashing them in, for two
areas that are our biggest disadvantage, although we have a
great advantage, in relative terms. Why the hell would we want
to have a conflict on the nuclear side of the equation and
encourage nations to conclude they had to beef up that
capability or acquire it, when, in fact, that could do us,
notwithstanding our superiority on the nuclear side of the
equation, great damage; whereas, if we, in effect, were to
downplay or foreswear--``foreswear'' is too strong a word--move
in the opposite direction of making it much more difficult for
anyone to acquire, either by justifying their actions relative
to ours or by us and the rest of the world allowing them to
gain that capacity, we yield an advantage. I mean, I don't
understand what--and I realize this is--I'm talking in broad
trends, but am I missing something here?
Am I missing something about the trend that seems to be
continuing, which is--and it's not just this administration;
the last administration never got off this wicket, either--of
we've got to figure out better tactical nuclear weapons, earth-
penetrating nuclear weapons, weapons that have a different
capacity, intercept capability in, you know, mid-course,
possibly weaponizing space, et cetera, when, in fact, it seems
the answer lies in our incredible existing advantages in the
two areas where no one's realistically going to be able to
compete with us in the near term. I'm not being facetious when
I say--am I missing something here?
Admiral Owens. Well, Senator, that's a big question, and--
--
The Chairman. I'm probably--I'm missing a lot, I'm sure,
but, I mean, in terms of these broad strokes, am I right about
the direction we seem to be going, relative to the direction we
should be going?
Admiral Owens. You know, sir, our culture doesn't allow us
to be very radical in the way we change. We seem to have been
built around the force that was designed, in an organizational
and cultural sense, by Napoleon, and we have a lot of
difficulty getting away from that.
When you start from that and say it's not a matter of the
technology or the capability or what smart people would do,
it's a matter of things like the Army-Navy game or West Point
or Annapolis, wonderful institutions, and should we put naval
people into West Point for a year, and West Pointers into
Annapolis for a year. And the answer to that is always,
``Absolutely not.'' I can't imagine why the answer is
``absolutely not,'' but it's the same answer that causes your
frustration with this issue, because it's culture. It is the
Army-Navy game, and we all love the Army-Navy game and the
culture of it and the battle between services.
But it's also true that when I became a commander, at 20
years in the service, I knew nothing about the Army, and I knew
navies around the world much better personally and
professionally than I knew the American Army. And so that kind
of culture doesn't help us with the quandary that you have
articulated.
I think that we do have an ability to change radically, and
we must, as you said, because the world has changed. I agree
with you. I think that it doesn't cost a lot of money to put in
place these new technologies of information umbrellas if we
were able to simply take all of technologies we have today and
put them together. It's not--this is not multi-billion-dollar
kind of stuff, I think.
The national missile defense issue, I am sympathetic with
your position. We need to do a lot of testing and a lot of R&D.
The deployment of these national systems, I think, is
problematic. It takes a long time. It's questionable
technology. But the regional technology, to strike in the boost
phase or, as we talked before, with an information umbrella, to
put a conventional weapon precisely on that spot, is not Flash
Gordon stuff, and it needs to be very much part of our arsenal.
So I'm very much in agreement with you on most of your
points. I do think that Secretary Rumsfeld has been trying very
hard to institute real transformation and change, but there is
a great resistance inside the system. There are bureaucracies
two or three levels down that preclude this kind of movement.
And you've know them better than I. But whatever we need now,
it's leadership from the top to really make for substantive
change in these areas.
The Chairman. Well, let me ask two specific questions. In
my experience, and especially in the last 3 or 4 years, dealing
with, meeting with, heads of state, Foreign Ministers, Defense
Ministers, one of the things that I've concluded is--part of
our dilemma internationally is I don't ever recall our allies
questioning our motives as often as occurs now. And in my
estimation, one of the ways to deal with that is to, in effect,
use it in a different context, have more transparency, in that
being able to make the case to our allies why we're taking the
action that we're taking and why we're suggesting the action
we're suggesting.
And on the issue of being able to unify our intelligence
capability in a way that would be able to give us real-time
observation, I'm of the view that that would be greeted with an
overwhelming positive response, particularly by our allies and
many others, and it would have an ancillary impact, which is
that it would fundamentally impact on their view of our
motivation and hegemony and all the things that they second
guess about our various actions or our assertions.
Now, I am not so naive, as having done this this long, to
think that this would be easy to do. But as I understand what
you're suggesting, in terms of the intelligence capability that
you're talking about unifying, is that this would be something
that would be open and shared with other nations, as opposed to
us having these ``eyes in the sky,'' if you will, intersected
with all other INTEL that we have and then us, after the fact,
sharing this information. It would be nice----
At any rate, what is your assessment of the likelihood of
other nations greeting positively this notion were we to embark
on such an effort?
Admiral Owens. Well, Senator, I think that most nations, as
you said, are looking for transparency. They want to do the
right things. They want to stand by our side. And often the
issue is whether they know as much as we know.
They do have some capabilities in these areas, both
satellite and other sensors. They could be a part of this, or
not, and we share the information. But I am grandly in favor of
sharing much more information with our friends. We can be very
selective about the kinds of things that we can share without
giving up critical national capabilities. But we're out there
around the world today with the British and the Australians and
the Canadians, and they are as though we are one force. And the
more we can be open with them, in my view, the better off we're
going to be.
It's not unusual, in some instances, to find your wing man
being from one of those very close allied countries. And if
your son is flying in that airplane, you want to make sure that
the wing man has every bit of technology that he can have to
work with us. And so I think that transparency of information
is very important, and it adds a lot to our credibility in this
world.
I might also add that, you know, the world of commercial
telecoms and IT makes this all easier to share. We've all
worried about how we're getting in front of our allies, how
they are falling behind. But, indeed, much of this is moving
toward a Web-based TCP, IP, high-bandwidth, commercial
technology, T1 kind of--all these new terms--world in which we
can tie ourselves together with new kinds of integrating
software that weren't there 5 years ago, some of the Java, the
VB, the C++ kinds of software that allow us to tie legacy
systems together, and that means tie our systems together with
our allies in ways we never thought possible. So there are ways
we can do some very interesting things using the commercial
technologies that are at the heart of this Nation's great
strength right now responsible for much of the productivity of
our Nation and could be responsible for the productivity of our
foreign policy and for our military capability, as well.
The Chairman. Well, Admiral, I have so many more questions,
as I'm sure Senator Lugar does. I'd like to ask your permission
if we could submit several to you in writing and ask whether
you'd be willing to come, either in a public or in a private
setting, to discuss some of these ideas with us further.
Admiral Owens. It's a pleasure, Senator. Thank you very
much for having me here today.
The Chairman. I particularly am going to submit some
questions relative to what I refer to as the ``China factor,''
in terms of our U.S. strategic posture, if I may, but that
would take us onto another half hour, I'm afraid. So, Admiral,
thank you very, very much. Again, it's been illuminating and
encouraging.
Admiral Owens. Thank you, sir.
The Chairman. Our next panel will begin with a most
distinguished scientist, Professor Steven Weinberg, of the
University of Texas. In 1979, Professor Weinberg won the Nobel
Prize in Physics. Throughout his career, Professor Weinberg has
combined cutting-edge work with an ability to explain modern
science to the rest of us. His books, ``The First Three
Minutes'' and ``Dreams of a Final Theory,'' have been
bestsellers, at least by standards applied to works on physics
and big galaxies and tiny particles. Professor Weinberg has
also dealt before with the military and political policy
implications of modern physics. And he's a former member of
JASON, and he was a one-time consultant with the Arms Control
and Disarmament Agency.
Our second witness in the second panel will be Dr. Loren
Thompson, chief operating officer of the Lexington Institute.
Dr. Thompson wrote an interesting piece recently in the Wall
Street Journal in which he argued essentially--I hope I'm
characterizing it correctly--that critics in the Nuclear
Posture Review should basically calm down, because all the
proposals in it were really aimed at buttressing nuclear
deterrence. And I'm looking forward to being reassured.
And our final witness has come back again and again for us,
Joe Cirincione, director of the Nonproliferation Project at the
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He's a man of many
talents who's been a frequent witness before this committee,
and he was once a staff member of the House Armed Services
Committee. He really specializes in the nexus between military
and foreign policy, and we will count on him to draw together
many of the points of view that will be expressed this morning.
And so can we begin in the order that you've been called?
And, Dr. Weinberg, it's an honor and privilege to have you
here.
STATEMENT OF STEVEN WEINBERG, PH.D., WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE
IN PHYSICS (1979), PROFESSOR OF PHYSICS, UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS,
AUSTIN, TX
Dr. Weinberg. Thank you, Chairman Biden and Senator Lugar.
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to comment on some of
the issues raised by the Nuclear Posture Review.
In the review, the Bush administration announces plans to
reduce the number of operationally deployed nuclear weapons
from the roughly 6,000 figure we have today to between 1,700
and 2,200 in about 10 years from now. But this number, even
after this reduction, would be still vastly more than could be
used in retaliation for any other country's use of weapons of
mass destruction. And, furthermore, the administration plans to
retain about 7,000 intact weapons in various reserves, overhaul
and so on. And this is about half the rate of reduction of our
nuclear weapons arsenal that would have been called for by the
START II and START III agreements. I would say that this isn't
liquidating the legacy of the cold war, but desperately hanging
onto it.
There was a rationale for maintaining a very large nuclear
arsenal during the cold war. We had to be sure that the Soviets
would be deterred from any sort of surprise attack on the
United States by the certainty that enough of our arsenal would
survive to allow us to deliver a devastating response. And that
rationale is now obsolete.
There is, however, another possible use of a large nuclear
arsenal, which is not entirely obsolete, and that is to launch
a preemptive attack against Russian strategic weapons. I say
Russia here, because the large size of our arsenal would be
irrelevant for a preemptive attack against any other power.
But, on the other hand, even if we were unable to neutralize
the Soviet deterrent during the cold war, now, as the Russian
nuclear forces become increasingly immobile, with their
missile-launching submarines tied up at docks and their mobile
land-based missiles in fixed garrisons, our nuclear arsenal is
large enough to put Russian nuclear forces at risk to a
preemptive U.S. first strike. Now, I'm not saying we would do
that, but one has to think about the implications of this.
It might be thought that the ability to launch a preemptive
strike against Russia's strategic nuclear force is a pretty
good one to have. But, in fact, it poses enormous dangers, and
to us as well as to Russia. The Russians can count missiles as
well as we, and as ``prudent'' defense planners, they're likely
to rate our chances of a successful preemptive attack more
highly than we would. I'm not worried about them getting angry
with us or breaking off relations with us. I'm worried about
what they may do. The cheap and easy thing for them to do is to
keep their forces on a hair-trigger alert, posing the danger to
the United States of a massive Russian attack by mistake. This
danger will be further increased if the United States proceeds
with a national missile defense that might be perceived, and I
think would be perceived, by the Russians to have some
capability against a ragged Russian second strike, or, if we
follow the recommendation of the Nuclear Posture Review that
the United States should develop real-time intelligence
capabilities of a sort that would allow us to target even
mobile Russian missiles on the road.
Even though this threat of a large Russian mistaken attack
caused by their high state of alert is not an acute one, it's
chronic. It's with us all the time, and it's also the only
threat we face that could destroy our country beyond our
ability to recover. I don't agree that terrorism is now the
greatest threat we face. The threat of a Russian mistaken
attack is a threat we face year in and year out. It's the only
one that can destroy us, and it's the one that gives me cold
sweats when I wake up in the middle of the night.
This brings me to the one real value our large nuclear
arsenal has. We can trade away most of our arsenal for
corresponding cuts in Russian forces, and this is what we
should be doing. And I don't mean cuts to about 2,000 deployed
weapons with 7,000 in various reserves, but as a first step to
not more than 1,000 nuclear weapons of all sorts, including
those in various reserves, as was called for by a 1997 report
of the National Academy of Sciences. In this way, the danger of
a mistaken Russian launch wouldn't be eliminated, but the
stakes might be millions or tens of millions of lives rather
than hundreds of millions of lives.
It would also greatly reduce the danger of diversion of
Russian nuclear weapons or weapons material to criminals or
terrorists. We shouldn't be seeking the maximum future
flexibility for both sides in strategic agreements we make with
the Russians. We should be seeking the greatest possible
irreversibility and transparency on both sides based on binding
ratified treaties. I'm awfully glad that Senator Biden was able
to bring his influence to bear to get the reduction, such as it
is, in the form of a treaty.
For this reason, I've joined some other scientists in a
statement calling for an accelerated reduction of our nuclear
arsenal and other steps to improve our security. And, with the
committee's permission, I'd like to include that statement in
the published text of my testimony, but not read it here.
The Chairman. It will be included in the record.
Dr. Weinberg. Thank you.
It's not only that we're not moving fast enough in the
right direction, not remotely fast enough, but, in some
respects, the Bush administration seems to be moving in just
the wrong direction. One example is the abrogation of the 1972
treaty limiting anti-ballistic missile systems. Another
example, which I want to talk about here briefly, is the
resurrection of the idea of developing nuclear weapons for use
rather than for just deterrence. For instance, the Nuclear
Posture Review calls for the development of low-yield earth-
penetrating nuclear weapons for attacks on underground
facilities.
Now, this doesn't make much sense, technically. You can't
drive a missile down below a certain depth before it crumples
and will not perform its task. The depth of penetration--I
think a reasonable maximum, according to calculations I've gone
over, is about 80 feet in rock or concrete. That's just
considering the crumpling of the missile. The actual maximum
depth is likely to be considerably less than that because of
the vulnerability of electronics in the missile to the great
deceleration that you would be having.
Now, that is enough of a depth to convert the missile's
energy into a destructive underground blast wave. But even so,
it would only destroy tunnels that are at depths considerably
less than 300 feet, so it would have no effect against really
deep targets. And the precise depth to which it would be
effective wouldn't known anyway, because it would depend on
geological details that we couldn't know.
To have confidence that the underground target had been
destroyed, if we developed such a weapon and used it, we'd
still have to have troops on the ground. As Loren Thompson said
in an article in the Wall Street Journal, ``We would need
American boots on the ground moving site to site, eliminating
all weapons and facilities.'' So with American troops on the
ground, it's not clear that, even with such a weapon, that we
would find a need for using it.
There's a great reason for not using it, and that is the
radiation effects it would produce. Experience in the series of
underground nuclear explosions in Project Ploughshare showed
that in order to keep the cavity containing a lot of
radioactive debris below the surface, a one-kiloton explosion
would have to be kept below about 300 feet. The depth for
smaller yields decreases very slowly with the yield. There's no
way we're going to drive an earth-penetrating weapon down to
below 300 feet. It's just not possible unless someone takes it
down in an elevator.
In order to avoid the fallout from a nuclear explosion at
the greatest depth I think we can reach, about 80 feet, you'd
have to reduce the yield to the equivalent of 19 tons of TNT.
It's not much more than you could achieve anyway with
conventional explosives.
In any case, the experience on which the figure I
mentioned, of 300 feet, is based, the experience in the
Ploughshare test, had to do with explosions in underground
cavities that were excavated, but without a shaft going to the
surface. But our earth-penetrating weapon would create such a
shaft from the surface down to where the explosion occurs, a
very nice way of producing a tremendous plume of radioactive
material, which we would not be happy about.
And it's not just a question of not wanting to cause
collateral damage to innocent civilians. Those civilians may be
people we're trying to get over on our side, as we have been in
Afghanistan. They may be our own troops going from site to site
checking whether or not we've actually destroyed these
underground facilities. This is not the cold war, as we keep
being told. We have to worry about the damage we do to people
on the ground near where the attack is occurring.
The fallout produced by a one-kiloton explosion at a depth
of 80 feet would kill everyone within a radius of about half a
mile, and that's if the wind isn't blowing. If the wind is
blowing, God knows where the fallout goes. It might land on one
of our allies.
There are other signs of an increased interest in
developing nuclear weapons for actual use. There's a statement
by William Schneider--this, as far as I know, was not in the
Nuclear Posture Review, but it's another straw in the wind--the
chairman of the Defense Science Board, that announced a renewed
study of nuclear armed missile defense interceptors. In a
sense, I find this perversely welcome, because it verifies what
critics of missile defense systems have been saying all along,
that the decoy problem will prevent you from being able to
launch a successful exo-atmospheric interception. I think there
are severe problems with nuclear interceptors also, but I won't
go into them, as this wasn't part of the Nuclear Posture
Review.
Now, for the dubious advantages of such nuclear weapons, we
would be paying a very high price. One item on the bill, as has
been mentioned by a number of people--I think, Senator Biden,
you mentioned it--was the pressure for resumed testing of
nuclear weapons. Just think, for example, of relying on
underground, deep-penetrating nuclear weapons and not knowing
whether that shaft that the weapon itself digs from the surface
down to where it explodes is going to provide a highway for the
fallout to come out. I don't see how we can know that without
carrying out testing--testing, in fact, which has a good chance
of producing fallout in the atmosphere. How can we know that a
missile defense system, based on nuclear interceptors, would
work in a realistic engagement without testing it in a
realistic way?
The resumption of nuclear testing would be a dangerous
break with the past. We haven't carried out even underground
tests since the previous Bush administration, and neither has
Russia or China, which is very much in our interest. It would
violate our commitment under the Nonproliferation Treaty to de-
emphasize the role of nuclear weapons, and it would have
terrible effects on proliferation throughout the world.
And, furthermore, of course, the programs to develop
nuclear weapons for use would stand in the way of what I think
is so essential to let us all get through the night without
terrible fears about a mistaken Russian attack. It would stand
in the way of a massive mutual reduction of nuclear arms. In
fact, I'm not sure whether a massive reduction of nuclear
weapons is being passed over in order for us to be able to
continue these weapons programs, or whether it's the other way
around, the weapons programs are being proposed in order to
slow down cuts in our nuclear arsenal. It's probably something
of both.
I remember the days of the debate about the first test ban
treaty, when one of the arguments against ratifying the test
ban treaty is that it would force us to stop work on wonderful
opportunities, like Project Orion, which was to build a
spaceship that would be propelled by continual nuclear
explosions, or Project Ploughshare, digging canals with nuclear
weapons.
This is a great moment of opportunity. Now, for the first
time, we have a President of Russia who is anxious to have good
relations with the United States, anxious to reduce forces,
anxious to decommission nuclear weapons, and, furthermore, who,
unlike President Yeltsin, has the power to bring this about in
his own country. And it seems to me we're letting this
opportunity slip away.
But, of course, the proposals for new nuclear weapons are
much more dangerous than Ploughshare or Orion were. We are, as
Senator Biden said, the world's leader in conventional
weaponry, and it's terribly in our interest to preserve a
somewhat mystical taboo against the use of nuclear weapons, a
taboo that has grown steadily stronger since 1945.
I'm not worried whether our developing nuclear weapons is
going to make other countries not like us, but I'm worried
about its effect on what they do. I know that previous nuclear
programs, like that of India, might have been stopped if it
were possible to have a comprehensive test ban with Russia
early enough.
Is it unlikely that the same kind of decisionmaking will
apply in Egypt or Iran or Japan? Is it likely that the
nonproliferation treaty will survive at all when the United
States is developing and testing nuclear weapons for actual
use?
Now, it's very often argued that the future is uncertain,
and that we can't tell what enemies we might face in coming
years, and, therefore, we should retain a maximum capability to
use our nuclear arsenal in whatever way may prove necessary.
Well, it is true the future is uncertain. But we may increase
rather than decrease uncertainty by maximizing our nuclear
capabilities. We can't tell what enemies we may face, it's
often said. Well, that's true. We also can't tell what crisis
may occur in Russian-U.S. relations that may put us at risk
from a mistaken launch on their part. We can't tell what
terrorists may appropriate part of the Russian arsenal. We
can't tell what dangers we may face from a large Chinese
arsenal built to preserve their deterrence from the threat of
an American first strike backed up by a missile defense system.
We can't tell what countries may be tipped toward a decision to
develop nuclear weapons by new U.S. weapons programs or resume
nuclear testing. There's no certainty, whatever we do.
We have to decide what are the most important dangers. And
these dangers may be increased rather than decreased by other
countries' responses to our nuclear weapons programs. As far as
I know, the Nuclear Posture Review does not even engage the
question of what the programs it calls for will have on the
actions of other countries. We don't have the last move.
And, now, Senator Biden, you asked why would we hang on to
this enormous nuclear arsenal and develop this incredible
national missile defense system of dubious effectiveness? As a
partial answer, I'd like to tell a little story. It may be
already to familiar to you and others in the room.
At the beginning of the 20th century, Britain was in very
much the same position we are now, but with regard to naval
strength. Just as we are today overwhelmingly the most powerful
country as far as conventional weapons are concerned, they were
then overwhelmingly the world's greatest naval power. Then in
1905, Admiral Sir John Fisher, the First Sea Lord, pushed
forward the construction of a new type of battleship which
would have all big guns--12-inch guns, the largest that could
be made at the time. It would be very fast, greatly superior to
any battleship that existed. The prototype was named after one
of Nelson's ships, the ``Dreadnought.''
Dreadnoughts really were superior to all previous
battleships. And suddenly what counted in naval arms races were
not the size of a country's fleet, in which Britain was already
supreme, but the number of its dreadnoughts. Other countries
could now compete with Britain by building dreadnoughts. A
naval arms race began between Britain and Germany, in which
Britain stayed ahead only with great expense and difficulty.
There were complaints about this at the time. Admiral of
the Fleet, Sir Frederick Richards, complained in Parliament
that, ``The whole British fleet was morally scrapped and
labeled obsolete at the very moment when it was at the zenith
of its efficiency and equal not to two, but practically all the
other navies in the world combined.''
This sounds very familiar, very strangely similar to what
we have now. So national security is not always best served,
and certainty is not always built, by building the best weapons
we can imagine.
As a scientist, I can recognize some of the motivation for
this, though probably not the whole motivation. There's a kind
of technological restlessness at work, which we see from the
building of the Dreadnought to this year's Nuclear Posture
Review. Going back to Fisher, years before the Dreadnought was
built, when he was a newly appointed captain in charge of the
Royal Navy's Torpedo School, Fisher explained that, ``If you
are a gunnery man, you must believe and teach that the world is
safe by gunnery and will only be saved by gunnery. If you are a
torpedo man, you must lecture and teach the same thing about
torpedoes.'' Well, this is not a corrupt or an unpatriotic
attitude, but we don't have to be guided by it.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Weinberg with an attachment
follows:]
Prepared Statement of Dr. Steven Weinberg, Winner of the Nobel Prize in
Physics (1979), Professor of Physics, University of Texas, Austin TX
Chairman Biden, Senator Helms, and members of the Committee, I am
grateful to you for giving me the opportunity to express my views on
issues raised by the recent Nuclear Posture Review. My research has
mostly been on elementary particle physics and cosmology, which does
not give me any special credentials for commenting on strategic issues,
but I worked actively on military technology in the 1960s and 1970s as
a member of the JASON group of defense consultants, and less
intensively in recent years as a senior advisor to this group. I have
also served as a consultant to the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament
Agency, and have written about defense matters from time to time.
Because this hearing is open to the public I have not asked to see the
full classified version of the posture review, but I have read the
unclassified briefing on the posture review by Assistant Secretary
Crouch and the transmittal letter by Secretary Rumsfeld, as well as
excerpts from the posture review that have appeared in the press. On
this basis I think I can comment on the general issues surrounding the
posture review, if not on the details of the review itself.
The U.S. is now in possession of an enormous nuclear arsenal, left
over from the days of the cold war. We have about 6,000 operationally
deployed strategic warheads today, far more than could possibly be
needed for deterrence against any conceivable enemy. The Bush
administration plans to reduce this number, but very slowly, to about
3,800 in 2007 and ultimately to about 1,700 to 2,200 in 2012, but this
would still be far more than could be used in retaliation for any other
country's use of weapons of mass destruction. Furthermore, the
administration's plans call for the retention of about 7,000 intact
warheads in overhaul, tactical nuclear warheads, and the ``inactive
reserve'' stockpile and other reserves, not to mention a large number
of plutonium pits and other weapon components. Taking into account the
different counting rules, the rate of reduction of our nuclear arsenal
proposed by the Bush administration is about half the rate that would
have been called for by the START II and START III agreements. This is
not liquidating the legacy of the cold war, but hanging on to it.
There was a rationale for maintaining a very large nuclear arsenal
during the cold war: We had to be sure that the Soviets would be
deterred from a surprise attack on the U.S. by their certainty that
enough of our arsenal would survive any such attack to allow us to
deliver a devastating response. I don't say that U.S. strategic
requirements were actually calculated in this way, but the need for a
survivable deterrent at least provided a rational argument for a large
arsenal.
This rationale for a large nuclear arsenal is now obsolete. No
country in the world could threaten our submarine-based deterrent, and
even with an implausibly rapid missile development, for decades to come
no country except Russia will be able to threaten more than a tiny
fraction of our land-based deterrent.
There is, however, another possible use of a large nuclear arsenal:
to launch a preemptive attack against Russian strategic weapons. I say
``Russian,'' because the large size of our arsenal would be irrelevant
for a preemptive attack against any other power. If we ever found that
a hostile ``rogue'' state were about to deploy a few dozen nuclear-
armed ICBMs, and if we could locate them, then they could be destroyed
by only a tiny fraction of our nuclear arsenal, and in fact even by
conventionally armed cruise missiles. On the other hand, even if we
were unable to neutralize the Soviet deterrent during the cold war, now
as Russian nuclear forces become increasingly immobile, with their
missile launching submarines tied up at dockside and their land-based
mobile ICBMs kept in fixed garrisons, our large nuclear arsenal may put
Russian nuclear forces at risk to a preemptive U.S. strike.
It might seem that the ability to launch a preemptive strike
against Russian strategic nuclear forces is a pretty good one to have,
but in fact it poses enormous dangers, and to us as well as to Russia.
The Russians can count missiles as well as we, and as ``prudent''
defense planners they are likely to rate our chances of a successful
preemptive attack more highly than we would. The cheap and easy defense
from this perceived danger will be for the Russians to keep their
forces on a hair-trigger alert, posing the danger to the U.S. of a
massive Russian attack by mistake. (According to Russian sources, it
now takes 15 seconds for the Russians to target their ICBMs, and then
2-3 minutes to carry out the launch.) This danger is exacerbated by the
gradual decay of Russian surveillance and control capabilities, which
has already led them on one occasion to mistake a Norwegian research
rocket for an offensive missile launched from an American submarine in
the Norwegian sea. The danger will be further increased if the U.S.
proceeds with a national missile defense, that might be perceived by
the Russians to have some capability against a ragged Russian second
strike, or if we follow the recommendation of the Nuclear Posture
Review, that the U.S. should develop real-time intelligence
capabilities of a sort that would allow us to target even mobile
Russian missiles on the road.
Even though the threat of a large Russian mistaken attack is not
acute, it is chronic. It is also the only threat we face that could
destroy our country beyond our ability to recover. Compared with this
threat, all other concerns about terrorism or rogue countries shrink
into insignificance.
This brings me to the one real value of our large nuclear arsenal:
we can trade away most of our arsenal for corresponding cuts in Russian
forces. I don't mean cuts to about 2,000 deployed weapons, but as a
first step to not more than a thousand nuclear weapons of all sorts,
including those in various reserves, as called for by a 1997 report of
the National Academy of Sciences. [A detailed proposal for the size of
an adequate deterrent that I find reasonable has been given in ``Toward
True Security: A Nuclear Posture for the Next Decade,'' a joint report
of the Federation of American Scientists, the National Resources
Defense Council, and the Union of Concerned Scientists.] In that way,
although the danger of a mistaken Russian launch would not be
eliminated, the stakes would be millions or tens of millions of
casualties, not hundreds of millions. It would also reduce the danger
of diversion of Russian nuclear weapons or weapons material to
criminals or terrorists. Instead of seeking the maximum future
flexibility for both sides in strategic agreements with the Russians,
we should be seeking the greatest possible irreversibility and
transparency on both sides, based on binding ratified treaties. For
this reason I have joined the distinguished scientists Hans Bethe,
Richard Garwin, Marvin Goldberger, Kurt Gottfried, and Walter Kohn in a
statement calling for an accelerating reduction of our nuclear arsenal
and other steps to improve our security. With the Committee's
permission, I would like to include that statement in the published
text of my testimony.
Not only are we not moving fast enough in the right direction--in
some respects the Bush administration seems to be moving in just the
wrong directions. One example is the abrogation of the 1972 treaty
limiting anti-ballistic missile systems. [For my comments on missile
defense, see ``The Truth About Missile Defense,'' in The New York
Review of Books XLIX, No. 2, 41-47 (February 14, 2002).] Another
example is the resurrection of the idea of developing nuclear weapons
for use, rather than for just deterrence.
For instance, the Nuclear Posture Review calls for the development
of low yield earth penetrating nuclear weapons for attacks on
underground facilities. There are great technical difficulties here,
which might prevent our using such a weapon even if we had it.
Calculations by Robert W. Nelson of Princeton University show that an
earth-penetrating weapon cannot be driven down to a depth greater than
about four times its length in concrete. Increasing the velocity of
impact beyond a certain point just causes the weapon to crumple, so
that the depth of penetration decreases rather than increases. This
sets an upper limit on the depth of penetration of about 80 feet for a
weapon that is twice the length of our present B61-11 earth-penetrating
nuclear weapon. The actual depth that may be reached in practice may be
considerably less, because the velocity of penetration must be kept low
enough to preserve the weapon's electronics. Now, an 80 foot depth is
sufficient to put most of the energy of the explosion into a
destructive underground blast wave, but even so a 1 kiloton explosion
would only destroy tunnels that are at depths considerably less than
300 feet, with the precise range sensitive to geological details that
we are not likely to know. To have confidence that the underground
target had been destroyed we would have to have troops on the ground
anyway, so that a missile attack might not even be necessary.
Particularly worrisome are radiation effects. Experience in the
series of underground nuclear explosions in Project Plowshare showed
that to keep the cavity produced by the explosion below the surface, a
one-kiloton explosion would have to be kept below 300 feet, with the
depth for smaller yields decreasing only as the one-third power of the
yield. To avoid fallout from a nuclear explosion at a depth of only 80
feet it would be necessary to reduce the yield to 19 tons, not much
more than could be delivered using conventional explosives. I don't
believe that there is any way for a nuclear weapon to penetrate to
hundreds of feet without someone carrying it down in an elevator, so
that using nuclear weapons to attack underground targets is bound to
produce radioactive fallout. In any case, the penetration of a weapon
through the earth would create a shaft to the surface, something that
did not exist in the Plowshare tests, so the depth required to avoid
fallout is bound to be even larger than indicated by these tests.
The fallout produced by a one-kiloton explosion at a depth of 80
feet would kill everyone within a radius of about half a mile. This is
for still air; wind can carry the fallout for tens of miles. We could
be killing not only the local population, which (as in Afghanistan) we
might be trying to enlist on our side, but also whatever forces we or
our allies have on the ground.
There was another sign of increased interest in developing nuclear
weapons for actual use in a recent statement by William Schneider, the
chairman of the Defense Science Board, announcing a renewed study of
nuclear-armed missile defense interceptors. In one sense I almost find
this welcome, because it confirms what critics of missile defense
(including myself) have been saying, that the non-nuclear ``hit-to-
kill'' mid-course interceptors of the planned National Missile Defense
system could be defeated by decoys or other penetration aids. Of
course, nuclear-armed missile defense interceptors would have technical
and political problems of their own, problems that have led to the
abandonment of nuclear-armed interceptors as components in missile
defense since the administration of Ronald Reagan.
For the dubious advantages of such nuclear weapons, we would pay a
high price. One item on the bill is the pressure for resumed testing of
nuclear weapons. As I mentioned, calculations indicate that any nuclear
weapon that would be effective against underground targets would
release large quantities of radioactivity. Even if the depth of
penetration of a nuclear weapon were somehow increased and the yield
decreased enough so that no fallout was expected, how without testing
these weapons in action would you ever have confidence that fallout
would not escape, especially after our weapon has created its own shaft
to the surface? And how would anyone have confidence in a missile
defense system based on nuclear-armed interceptors without tests that
involve nuclear explosions in or above the atmosphere?
The resumption of nuclear testing would be a dangerous break with
the past. We have not carried out even underground tests since the
previous Bush administration. Neither has Russia or China, which is
very much in our interest.
The development of new nuclear weapons for war-fighting would in
itself violate our commitment under the Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT)
to de-emphasize the role of nuclear weapons and to work toward their
total elimination. The resumption of nuclear testing for this purpose
would make this violation concrete and dramatic, and would thereby do
terrible damage to the effectiveness of the NPT in discouraging nuclear
weapons programs throughout the world.
The worst thing about programs to develop nuclear weapons for use
is that they stand in the way of a massive mutual reduction of nuclear
arms. In fact, I'm not sure whether massive reductions in nuclear
weapons are being opposed in order for us to be able to continue such
weapons programs, or whether the weapons programs are being proposed in
order slow down cuts in our nuclear arsenal. Probably something of
both. Back in the days when the first test ban treaty was being
debated, one of the arguments against it was that it would stand in the
way of Project Plowshare, the use of nuclear weapons to do things like
digging canals, and Project Orion, the development of a spacecraft
propelled by nuclear explosions. The development of nuclear weapons for
attacking underground facilities or for missile defense may be today's
Orion and Plowshare.
But the current proposals for new nuclear weapons are much more
dangerous than the Plowshare or Orion programs. As the world's leader
in conventional weaponry, it is very much in our interest to preserve
the taboo against the use of nuclear weapons, a taboo that has grown
steadily stronger since 1945. Developing and testing new nuclear
weapons for actual use teaches the world a lesson that nuclear weapons
are a good thing to have. This is not entirely a rational matter. I
remember that once in the late 1960s I had lunch at MIT with the chief
scientific adviser to the government of India. I asked about India's
plans for developing and testing nuclear weapons, and he said that it
all depended on whether the U.S. and USSR could reach an agreement
banning all future nuclear testing. I said that that seemed irrational,
because it was not the U.S. or the USSR that presented a military
threat to India, and even if such a threat did develop, American and
Soviet nuclear forces would in any case be so much greater than India's
that it would not matter to India if the U.S. or the USSR had stopped
testing or gone on testing. He answered that politics is not always
based on rational calculations, that there would be great political
dissension in Indian governing circles over whether to develop nuclear
weapons, and that the spectacle of continued testing of nuclear weapons
by the U.S. or the USSR would strengthen the hands of those in India
who favored developing nuclear weapons. Is it unlikely that the same
will apply to decisions about nuclear weapons in countries like Egypt,
or Iran, or Japan? Is it likely that the Non-Proliferation Treaty will
survive when the U.S. is developing and testing nuclear weapons for
actual use?
It is sometimes argued that the future is uncertain, that we cannot
tell what enemies we may face in coming years, and that therefore we
should retain a maximum capability to use our nuclear arsenal in
whatever way may prove necessary. [For an example, see ``Rationale and
Requirements for U.S. Nuclear Forces and Arms Control,'' Keith B.
Payne, study director, National Institute for Public Policy, 2001.] It
is true that the future is uncertain, but we may increase rather than
decrease uncertainty by maximizing our nuclear capabilities. We cannot
tell what crisis may occur in U.S.-Russian relations, which may put us
at risk from a mistaken launch on their part. We cannot tell what
terrorists may appropriate part of the Russian arsenal. We cannot tell
what dangers we may face from a large Chinese arsenal, built to
preserve their deterrent from the threat of an American first strike
backed up by a missile defense system. We cannot tell what countries
may be tipped toward a decision to develop nuclear weapons by new U.S.
weapons programs or resumed nuclear testing. There is no certainty
whatever we do--we have to decide what are the most important dangers--
and these dangers may be increased rather than decreased by other
countries' responses to our own weapons programs.
To illustrate this and close my testimony, I'd like to tell a
little story, which may already be familiar to many of you. At the
beginning of the twentieth century Britain was overwhelmingly the
world's greatest naval power, much as the U.S. is today the world's
leader in conventional arms. Then in 1905 Admiral Sir John Fisher, the
First Sea Lord, pushed forward the construction of a new design for a
fast battleship armed solely with 12-inch guns, the biggest guns then
available. The prototype was named after one of Nelson's ships, the
Dreadnought. Dreadnoughts really were superior to all previous
battleships, and suddenly what counted was not the size of a country's
fleet, in which Britain was supreme, but the number of its
Dreadnoughts. Other countries could now compete with Britain by
building Dreadnoughts, and a naval arms race began between Britain and
Germany, in which Britain would stay ahead only with great expense and
difficulty. Admiral of the Fleet Sir Frederick Richards complained in
Parliament that ``The whole British fleet was morally scrapped and
labeled obsolete at the moment when it was at the zenith of its
efficiency and equal not to two but practically to all the other navies
of the world combined.'' Like Dreadnoughts, nuclear weapons can act as
an equalizer between strong nations like the U.S. with great economic
and conventional military power, and weaker countries or even terrorist
organizations. Evidently national security is not always best served by
building the best weapons.
As a scientist, I can recognize a kind of technological
restlessness at work, from the building of the Dreadnought to this
year's Nuclear Posture Review. Years before the Dreadnought, as a newly
appointed captain in charge of the Royal Navy's torpedo school, Fisher
explained that ``If you are a gunnery man, you must believe and teach
that the world is saved by gunnery, and will only be saved by gunnery.
If you are a torpedo man, you must lecture and teach the same thing
about torpedoes.'' There is nothing corrupt or unpatriotic about such
attitudes, but we don't have to be guided by them.
______
Scientists Statement on the Moscow Summit--May 13, 2002
President Bush, at the forthcoming Moscow Summit, has the
opportunity to reduce two supreme dangers to our security and lives:
the threat that nuclear weapons or weapons usable material
in Russia could be stolen and sold to terrorists or hostile
states and used as nuclear explosives to destroy American
troops abroad or hundreds of thousands of our citizens at home;
the threat of a massive attack by Russian nuclear-armed
missiles due to false warning of a U.S. nuclear strike, which
would put at risk the very survival of our nation.
We applaud the cuts in deployed nuclear warheads that are to be
agreed to by Presidents Bush and Putin at the Moscow Summit. But the
pace with which the administration proposes to carry out the cuts
should be accelerated. Furthermore, it remains unclear whether these
cuts will be structured and implemented in a manner that would minimize
the threats above.
The serious proliferation threat posed by the Russian nuclear
weapons complex will only be reduced if the warheads removed from
Russian launchers are placed in secure storage, dismantled and the
nuclear materials rendered unusable. President Bush, however, appears
to be seeking an agreement that would not compel Russia to make its
undeployed warheads invulnerable to proliferation. The administration
apparently wants to retain its undeployed warheads in a ``responsive
reserve force'' that could be used to reload bombers and missiles on
relatively short notice. An agreement allowing this would, of course,
give Russia the freedom to also do as it pleases with its weapons.
The administration argues that the responsive force is needed to
address unspecified contingencies in the indefinite future. The
deployed force of roughly 2,000 U.S. strategic warheads that would
remain after the proposed cuts are completed will, however, more than
suffice to meet any threat that can be envisaged. It would be folly to
hedge against contingencies that cannot even be foreseen, by taking a
step now that would exacerbate an urgent and present danger.
To eliminate the threat of a catastrophic Russian launch resulting
from its deteriorating warning system, President Bush should advocate
that both states adopt postures and procedures such that their nuclear
weapons could only be fired after a delay of some days, so that Russia
would not maintain its forces in a launch-on-warning posture. Such a
posture would not compromise the U.S. capability for retaliation as the
bulk of our strategic forces would, without question, survive any
attack.
The administration's position concerning strategic nuclear forces
shows little regard for the obligations of the United States under the
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty--obligations undertaken because of
enlightened self-interest, not altruism. In the context of the Summit,
these obligations call for much swifter and deeper cuts, and for a
reduced reliance on nuclear weapons as instruments of national policy.
The administration's proposed cuts and its intention to keep withdrawn
warheads at the ready implies that this reliance is not abating. When
the state with by far the most powerful conventional forces asserts
that it can only protect its vital interests with an undiminished
reliance on nuclear forces it is undermining the global effort to stem
nuclear proliferation.
In the light of these facts and observations, we urge President
Bush to propose an agreement to President Putin that would formally
commit both states to:
accelerate the current reductions, and to not return
warheads removed from the deployed forces under this agreement
to active service;
a far more rapid, clearly specified and transparent process
for dismantling all undeployed warheads and for rendering their
nuclear materials unusable, accompanied by a commitment for
increased U.S. and Allied financial support to Russia;
replace their existing prompt-launch nuclear postures by
postures within which retaliation to an attack would be
delayed, and to adopt transparent measures to that end.
Dr. Hans Bethe
Nobel Laureate; Emeritus Professor of Physics, Cornell University; Head
of the Manhattan Project's Theoretical Division
Dr. Richard Garwin
Senior Fellow for Science and Technology, Council on Foreign Relations;
IBM Fellow Emeritus; consultant to the Sandia National Laboratory,
former consultant to Los Alamos National Laboratory
Dr. Marvin Goldberger
President Emeritus, California Institute of Technology; member, Council
on Foreign Relations, National Academy of Sciences, American Academy of
Arts and Sciences
Dr. Kurt Gottfried
Emeritus Professor of Physics, Cornell University; Chairman of the
Board, Union of Concerned Scientists
Dr. Walter Kohn
Nobel Laureate; Emeritus Professor of Physics and Research Professor,
University of California, Santa Barbara
Dr. Wolfgang K. H. Panofsky
Director Emeritus, Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, Stanford
University; Recipient of National Medal of Science and Lawrence and
Fermi Awards of the Department of Energy
Dr. Steven Weinberg
Nobel Laureate; Jack S. Josey-Welch Foundation Chair in Science,
Regental Professor, and Director, Theory Research Group, University of
Texas
The Chairman. Thank you very much. Senator Lugar had to
leave because he had to meet with the Secret Service about
another matter, and so he asked me to apologize, but he said he
will read the statement. And knowing Senator Lugar, he will
read the statements. It's often said by Senators, but not often
done.
I would say, as we go to you, Dr. Thompson, to Dr.
Weinberg, I remember when we were having a debate on the issue
of the strategic stockpile and whether or not we should scrap
the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which I think was a
gigantic mistake. But, at any rate, that's another issue. And a
former Secretary of Defense sat before us and said, ``I didn't
fully understand,'' and I think he was right. And although we
may very well develop the technology to be able to, through
simulation, determine the readiness and capability of the
existing stockpile, that we are going to lose the young
scientists who would participate in that capability being
sustained, because, ``They like to see things go boom,'' and he
was very serious. He wasn't joking. That was one of his--that
was his trump-card argument as to why we needed to be able to
resume nuclear testing in order to maintain the interest of
young scientists--brilliant young scientists who participate in
the program. And so I thought your comment about one of the
motivations of--as a scientist is--although you said it
somewhat facetiously, I suspect there's some truth to that
assertion.
Dr. Weinberg. Right, Senator. We should give them the
opportunity for instance to do elementary particle physics in
addition to their work in the Nuclear Stewardship Program.
The Chairman. Well, I think that's true, but apparently
it's not as glamorous, according to one of the scientists. And
I am way above my pay grade here.
Dr. Thompson, welcome. It's a delight to have you here.
STATEMENT OF LOREN B. THOMPSON, PH.D., CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER,
LEXINGTON INSTITUTE; ADJUNCT PROFESSOR OF SECURITY STUDIES,
GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY, WASHINGTON, DC
Dr. Thompson. Thank you, Senator Biden. Thank you for
inviting me to offer my views on the administration's views on
the Nuclear Posture Review.
I'd like to spend a few minutes this afternoon explaining
why the findings of the review are valid and, if they are
implemented, will bolster the Nation's security. But before
doing so, allow me to provide some historical context. This
month marks the 40th anniversary of a major development in
American nuclear strategy. On May 5, 1962, Defense Secretary
Robert McNamara revealed, in a secret meeting with NATO allies
in Athens, that the Kennedy administration was replacing the
Eisenhower strategy of massive retaliation.
The nuclear plan the new administration had inherited
contained only one option, an all-out attack on every city in
Russia, China, and Eastern Europe that would have killed
between 360 and 425 million people. There were no provisions
for withholding a strategic reserve, no provisions for
preserving control over forces once a war began, and no
provisions for trying to induce restraint in Soviet behavior.
McNamara thought massive retaliation was lunacy, dangerous
and unbelievable. So in the spring of 1962, he approved a new
war plan that focused on limiting the damage from a nuclear
exchange. The new plan contained several options, including
that of avoiding attacks on Russian cities with the intention
of encouraging similar restraint on the part of the Soviets.
Although today we remember Robert McNamara as the father of
mutual assured destruction, the possibility of restraint
reflected in his 1962 war plan remained national strategy for
the remainder of his tenure and beyond.
When President Nixon directed a revision of nuclear
strategy in 1969, he added additional warfighting options aimed
at controlling escalation and limiting damage, a practice
followed by every subsequent administration.
Now, why do I mention these matters today? For two reasons.
First of all, to demonstrate that major revisions in nuclear
strategy are nothing new. And, second, to argue that the
findings of the Nuclear Posture Review are fully consistent
with the values and the goals of past administrations. The
Nuclear Posture Review is the beginning of a long-term effort
to modernize the Nation's strategy and its forces so that they
remain effective in a radically transformed global security
environment. But its goals are identical to those of past
strategic revisions: to minimize the likelihood of massive
attack on the United States and its allies, and to limit the
damage if such attacks occur.
How does it do that? It begins by acknowledging the changes
that have occurred in the security environment since our
current nuclear posture came into being during the cold war.
The Soviet Union is gone, and the nuclear forces that its
democratic successors inherited are shrinking fast. In the 8
years since the Clinton administration conducted the first post
Soviet nuclear review, 4,000 warheads and 800 nuclear delivery
vehicles have been removed from the Russian operational force.
That's about a 40 percent reduction.
The motivation of Russian leaders has changed also. Their
empire, the ideology have ebbed away to be replaced by the
normal concerns that any nation would have about sovereignty
and security. U.S. military planners today are more concerned
about Russian nuclear accidents or theft than they are about
deliberate aggression.
But while the defining threat of the cold war has
disappeared, new dangers have emerged. They are more diverse,
and we understand them less well. These include half a dozen
rogue states with programs to develop weapons of mass
destruction and terrorist movements such as al-Qaeda, which may
be able to secure the means of mass murder and global commerce.
Some of the new aggressors are beyond the reach of traditional
deterrence. Some of them are accident prone. And all of them
have access to weapons options that did not occur or exist for
earlier adversaries.
With the political and technological landscapes changing
rapidly, the Nuclear Posture Review came to the obvious
conclusion that many of the assumptions of cold war nuclear
strategy may no longer be valid.
Recognizing the unpredictability of challenges, even in the
near term, the review abandons the traditional threat-driven
approach to nuclear planning in favor of a more flexible
capabilities-based approach. Now, what does that mean? What it
means is that the review identifies military capabilities
necessary to cope with the widest range of hypothetical
adversaries. In the words of the Quadrennial Defense Review,
those capabilities include the capacity to reassure allies, to
dissuade competitors, to deter potential aggressors, and to
defeat actual enemies.
Because the spectrum of actors that must be influenced is
very large, the required capabilities are correspondingly
diverse. First, the United States must have offensive nuclear
forces suitable for surviving surprise attack, and then
responding in a measured way to many different contingencies.
Second, it must have non-nuclear offensive forces that can hold
at risk key enemy assets when a nuclear response would be
disproportionate to the provocation, or counterproductive.
Third, they must have active and passive defenses, including
homeland defenses, to blunt the consequences of an attack on
America and its allies. Not just to cope with the failure of
deterrence, but also to bolster deterrence itself. Fourth, it
must have a resilient command network to maintain control over
all of its forces under the most trying circumstances. Fifth,
it must have an intelligence system that can find and target
the most elusive elements of an enemy's military capabilities.
And, finally, as if all this were not enough, it must meet
these requirements while facilitating the further shrinkage of
the Russian nuclear arsenal, which, even today, represents the
vast majority of nuclear weapons outside the United States.
The force posture derived from these requirements has been
called a ``triad,'' but it bears little resemblance to the
collection of planes and missiles that made up the cold war
nuclear triad. Only one of its three legs is offensive weapons.
The other two legs are defensive measures and a revitalized
nuclear infrastructure. Moreover, the offensive leg consists
partly of conventional strike systems, with the remaining
nuclear weapons representing only a small fraction of the cold
war force.
And just as the Bush administration prefers to develop a
tiered or multi-layered approach to missile defenses, so it
proposes a tiered offensive approach consisting of three
layers: operationally deployed weapons, reserve weapons that
can be returned to operational duty within months or years, and
inactive weapons awaiting destruction that could be
refurbished.
The existence of a large reserve that acts as a hedge
against unforeseen dangers enables the Nuclear Posture Review
to embrace major reductions in the nuclear arsenal. As agreed
to by the Russians earlier this week, the review envisions
reducing the current operational force of 6,000 warheads by a
third over the next 5 years, and by two thirds over the next 10
years.
Whether these reductions actually occur will depend on
security trends. But recent progress in the development of
precision-guided conventional munitions suggest that nuclear
cuts might proceed even if threats do not diminish. For
example, the Air Force is considering development of a
satellite-guide glide bomb that could penetrate 60 feet of
extremely hardened material, reducing the need for nuclear
weapons in attacking deeply buried bunkers.
As of today, the United States actually has no plans to
develop new nuclear munitions, and it is proceeding with plans
to eliminate whole classes of delivery systems from nuclear
service, such as the MX missile and the B-1 bomber.
The force structure recommended by the Nuclear Posture
Review will materially enhance global security. First, it will
preserve a stable structure of nuclear deterrence while
facilitating huge reductions in the U.S. and Russian arsenals.
Second, it will reduce reliance on deterrence by acquiring
offensive and defensive capabilities for coping with accident-
prone or irrational adversaries. Third, it will provide future
Presidents with the widest possible range of options, both
nuclear and non-nuclear, for meeting emergent security needs.
And, finally, it will retain the flexibility to restore nuclear
capabilities, if necessary, by establishing a strategic reserve
and revitalizing the nuclear infrastructure. I guess I would
say parenthetically that, although I hope Professor Weinberg's
view of the future is valid, that, in fact, there is no
conceivable reason for needing more nuclear forces than we
entertained in the NPR. I think that is more an expression of
faith than physics. There's simply no way of knowing what the
future holds.
With regard to this latter issue, it's important to bear in
mind that the end state the administration envisions for
offensive nuclear forces would, on a typical day, consist of
only 8 ballistic-missile submarines at sea and no more than 500
single-warhead Minuteman missiles on alert. The rest of the
land-based missile force would be gone. Virtually all of the
bombers would be dedicated primarily to conventional missions.
And many of the 14 subs would be in port.
We may decide in the future that such a force is simply too
small, so it is necessary to maintain a reserve force,
especially until we rebuild our more abundant nuclear
industrial base. Senator Biden, that comment you had at the
beginning about losing the young scientists, it's come true.
The average scientist now in this system is my age, half a
century old.
The Chairman. You don't look it.
Dr. Thompson. I feel older.
For the time being, though, I think that the Bush
administration has fashioned a prudent and a progressive
posture that reflects a fair amount of optimism about the
future of world politics.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Thompson follows:]
Prepared Statement of Loren B. Thompson, Ph.D., Chief Operating
Officer, Lexington Institute and Adjunct Professor of Security Studies,
Georgetown University
the nuclear posture review: a necessary evolution in national strategy
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee, thank you for inviting
me to offer my views on the administration's Nuclear Posture Review.
I'd like to spend a few minutes this morning explaining why the
findings of the review are valid, and if implemented will bolster the
nation's security.
Before doing so, though, allow me to provide some historical
context.
This month marks the 40th anniversary of a major development in
American nuclear strategy.
On May 5th, 1962, defense secretary Robert McNamara revealed in a
secret meeting with NATO allies that the Kennedy Administration was
replacing the Eisenhower strategy of ``massive retaliation.''
The nuclear war plan the new administration had inherited contained
only option--an all-out attack against every major city in Russia,
China and Eastern Europe that would kill between 360 and 425 million
people.
There were no provisions for withholding a strategic reserve, or
preserving control over forces once war began, or trying to induce
restraint in Soviet behavior.
McNamara thought massive retaliation was lunacy--dangerous and
unbelievable--so in spring of 1962 he approved a new war plan that
focused on limiting the damage from a nuclear exchange.
The new plan contained several options, including that of avoiding
attacks on Russian cities to encourage similar restraint on the other
side.
Although today we remember Robert McNamara as the father of
``mutual assured destruction,'' the possibility of restraint reflected
in his 1962 war plan remained national strategy for the rest of his
tenure, and beyond.
When President Nixon directed a revision of nuclear strategy in
1969, he added additional warfighting options aimed at controlling
escalation and limiting destruction, a practice followed by every
subsequent administration.
I have two reasons for mentioning these matters today--
first, to demonstrate that major revisions in nuclear
strategy are nothing new; and
second, to argue that the findings of the Nuclear Posture
Review are fully consistent with the values and goals of past
administrations.
The Nuclear Posture Review is the beginning of a long-term effort
to modernize the nation's nuclear strategy and forces so that they
remain effective in a radically transformed global security
environment.
But its goals are identical to those of past strategic revisions:
to minimize the likelihood of massive attack on the United States and
its allies, and to limit the damage if such attacks occur.
How does it do that?
Step One: Defining the Threat
It begins by acknowledging the changes that have occurred in the
security environment since our current nuclear posture came into being
during the Cold War.
The Soviet Union is gone, and the nuclear force inherited by its
democratic successors is shrinking fast.
In the eight years since the Clinton Administration conducted the
first post-Soviet nuclear review, 4000 warheads and 800 delivery
vehicles have been removed from the Russian operational force--roughly
a 40% reduction.
The motivation of Russian leaders has changed too--their empire and
ideology have ebbed away, to be replaced by the normal concerns that
any nation has about sovereignty and security.
U.S. military planners today are more concerned about Russian
nuclear accidents or theft than they are about deliberate aggression.
But while the defining threat of the Cold War has disappeared, new
dangers have emerged that are more diverse and less understood.
These include half a dozen rogue states with programs to develop
weapons of mass destruction, and terrorist movements such as Al Qaeda
that may be able to secure the means of mass murder in global commerce.
Some of the new aggressors are beyond the reach of traditional
deterrence; some are accident-prone; and all have options afforded by
new technology that were not available to earlier enemies.
With the political and technological landscapes changing rapidly,
the Nuclear Posture Review concluded that many of the assumptions of
Cold War nuclear strategy may no longer be valid.
Step Two: Determining Requirements
Recognizing the unpredictability of challenges even in the near-
term, the review abandons the traditional threat-driven approach to
nuclear planning in favor of a more flexible, capabilities-based
approach.
In other words, it identifies the military capabilities necessary
to cope with the widest range of hypothetical adversaries.
In the words of the Quadrennial Defense Review, those capabilities
include the capacity to reassure allies, dissuade competitors, deter
potential aggressors and defeat actual enemies.
Because the spectrum of actors that must be influenced is large,
the required capabilities are correspondingly diverse.
First, the U.S. must have offensive nuclear forces suitable for
surviving surprise attack and then responding in a measured way to many
different contingencies.
Second, it must have non-nuclear offensive forces that can hold at
risk key enemy assets when a nuclear response would be disproportionate
to the provocation, or counter-productive.
Third, it must have active and passive defenses to blunt the
consequences of an attack on America and its allies, both to bolster
deterrence and cope with its failure.
Fourth, it must have the resilient command networks necessary to
maintain control over all of its forces under the most trying
circumstances.
Fifth, it must have an intelligence system that can find and target
the most elusive elements of an enemy's military capabilities.
And finally, as if all this were not enough, it must meet these
requirements while facilitating the further shrinkage of the Russian
nuclear arsenal--which even today represents the vast majority of
nuclear weapons outside the U.S.
Step Three: Delineating a Posture
The force posture derived from these requirements has been called a
``triad,'' but it is very different from the collection of planes and
missiles that made up the Cold War nuclear triad.
Only one of its three legs is offensive weapons; the other two legs
are defensive measures and a revitalized nuclear infrastructure.
Moreover, the offensive leg consists partly of conventional strike
systems, with the remaining nuclear weapons representing only a small
fraction of the Cold War force.
And just as the administration prefers to develop a tiered or
multilayered approach to missile defenses, so it proposes a tiered
offensive force consisting of three layers:
operationally deployed weapons;
reserve weapons that can be quickly returned to operational
duty; and
inactive weapons awaiting destruction that could be
refurbished.
The existence of a large reserve that acts as a hedge against
unforeseen dangers enables the Nuclear Posture Review to embrace major
reductions in the nuclear arsenal.
As agreed to by the Russians earlier this week, the review
envisions reducing the current operational force of 6000 warheads by a
third over the next five years, and by two-thirds over the next ten
years.
Whether these reductions actually occur will depend on global
security trends, but recent progress in the development of precision-
guided conventional weapons suggest nuclear cuts might proceed even if
threats do not diminish correspondingly.
For example, the Air Force is considering development of a
satellite-guided glide-bomb that could penetrate 60 feet of extremely
hardened material, reducing the need for nuclear weapons in attacking
deeply buried bunkers.11As of today, the U.S. has no plans to develop
new nuclear munitions, and is proceeding with plans to eliminate whole
classes of nuclear delivery systems such as the MX missile and B-1
bomber.
Assessing the Advantages
The force structure recommended by the Nuclear Posture Review will
materially enhance global security.
First, it will preserve a stable structure of nuclear deterrence
while facilitating huge reductions in the U.S. and Russian arsenals.
Second, it will reduce reliance on deterrence by acquiring
offensive and defensive capabilities for coping with accident-prone or
irrational adversaries.
Third, it will provide future Presidents with the widest possible
range of options, both nuclear and non-nuclear, for meeting emergent
security needs.
And finally, it will retain the flexibility to restore nuclear
capabilities if necessary by establishing a strategic reserve and
revitalizing the nuclear infrastructure.
In the latter regard, it is important to bear in mind that the end-
state the administration envisions for offensive nuclear forces would,
on a typical day, consist of only eight ballistic-missile submarines at
sea and 500 single-warhead Minuteman missiles on alert.
The rest of the land-based missile force would be gone, the bombers
would be dedicated primarily to conventional missions, and many of the
subs would be in port.
We may decide in the future that such a force is too small, so it
is necessary to maintain a reserve force, especially until we rebuild
our moribund nuclear industrial base.
For the time being, though, the Bush Administration has fashioned a
prudent and progressive posture that reflects a fair amount of optimism
about the future of world politics.
The Chairman. Thank you very much. Joe.
STATEMENT OF JOSEPH CIRINCIONE, SENIOR ASSOCIATE AND DIRECTOR,
NON-PROLIFERATION PROJECT, CARNEGIE ENDOWMENT FOR INTERNATIONAL
PEACE, WASHINGTON, DC
Mr. Cirincione. Yes, Senator. Time is short. We all want to
have lunch. I want to thank you very much for allowing me to--
--
The Chairman. Well, I'm fine. Don't worry about me. I don't
want to trespass on your time, though. You have all the time
you want. I'm anxious to hear what you have to say.
Mr. Cirincione. That's a dangerous thing to say, Senator.
Thank you very much.
The Chairman. You've never disappointed me.
Mr. Cirincione. Thank you very much for the honor of
testifying here, and thank you, Senator Lugar and Senator Hagel
and the other members of the committee. I'll just summarize my
statement and submit the written statement for the record, with
your permission.
Let me start off with some things that are not in my
statement, because they actually weren't in the Nuclear Posture
Review, and that is any mention of the Cooperative Threat
Reduction programs that the United States has been implementing
successfully for the last 10 years with Russia. The posture
review puts forth the idea of a new triad of strategic nuclear
forces, advanced conventional munitions, and ballistic missile
defenses. It says that this new triad will reduce the risk to
the Nation as it draws its nuclear forces down.
I don't really think much of this concept. I think it
represents a consultant's viewgraph more than a valid strategic
vision. But if the President is going to adopt this, he should
be strongly urged to add a fourth leg to this three-legged
stool, and that would be the Nunn-Lugar programs. It's critical
to see these as integral to our efforts to reduce the nuclear
risks, not as something external to them. Whenever we talk
about agreed reductions in strategic forces, we should
immediately follow that with discussion of secure storage for
those warheads and verifiable elimination of those warheads. If
you only do the first step, you are not appreciably increasing
the national security of this country or reducing the risk from
nuclear attack. I commend Senator Lugar for the leadership that
he has taken and continues to take in this field.
I disagree with my colleague, Loren Thompson, here, and am
in strong agreement with Admiral Owens and Dr. Weinberg. I
think the Nuclear Posture Review is a deeply flawed document
and, if adopted as national policy, could cause irreparable
harm to the national security of the United States. I take some
comfort in the fact that this document, as far as I know,
remains simply the recommendations of the Department of Defense
with the participation of the Department of Energy, that the
President has not yet taken any policy actions based on this
posture review. He has not yet issued, and, I understand,
probably will not issue, Presidential decision directives based
on this review.
I'm speaking now way above my pay grade, and I would
encourage the committee to investigate this matter forward.
What actions does the President anticipate taking, based on
this review? It may not be too late to affect the President's
decisions.
When I say this is a flawed document and could do
irreparable harm, I mean that, although, as you've pointed out,
Senator, that many of the recommendations in this review
incrementally adapt policies begun in previous administrations,
taken as a whole, the proposals represent a radical change in
our current nuclear weapons policy totally disproportionate to
the threat. I think that the proposed policies could make the
use of nuclear weapons by the United States or other nations
more likely.
In an issue that might directly concern this committee, I'm
fearful that adoption of these policies could be construed by
some as a material breach of the United States' 30-year
commitment to article VI of the nonproliferation treaty. If the
United States, as recommended by this review, maintains 10,000
nuclear warheads for the indefinite future, develops new
nuclear weapons, and new-use doctrines against non-nuclear
targets, and ends the negotiated arms-control process, then
many will say that our Nation has, in fact, abandoned its
commitment to, ``pursue negotiations in good faith on effective
measures relating to the cessation of the nuclear arms race at
an early date and to nuclear disarmament.'' This may encourage
other nations to reconsider their commitments to the treaty.
This would greatly complicate U.S. nonproliferation goals and
President Bush's campaign against weapons of mass destruction.
For me, the single greatest disappointment in this study is
its failure to break with cold war doctrines. The review
advocates maintaining a substantial force of high-alert nuclear
weapons for the indefinite future. This encourages other
nations, particularly Russia, to construct larger forces than
they otherwise would. It, therefore, increases the danger of
nuclear-weapon accidents, miscalculations, and the threat of
diversion of weapons into terrorist hands.
The most pernicious aspect of this review, however, is the
great leap backward that it takes to the discredited nuclear
policies of the 1950's. The review puts forward a nuclear
weapon as simply another weapon, part of a continuum of
military options merging seamlessly with advanced precision-
guided munitions. The U.S. Army, the U.S. Navy, have long ago
abandoned and dismantled their nuclear artillery, landmines,
bazookas, rockets, torpedoes, and depth charges conceived and
developed in this earlier nuclear age. Most officers know, and
Admiral Owens has testified to this just earlier, that we now
have more than adequate conventional weapons alternatives for
any conceivable mission.
As Secretary of State Colin Powell wrote in his biography,
``No matter how small the payload, we would still be crossing a
threshold if we were to use a nuclear weapon.'' ``Using
nukes''--he wrote in his book, ``My American Journey''--``at
this point would mark one of the most significant political and
military decisions since Hiroshima.'' He was speaking then
about tactical nuclear weapons used in Europe. I believe that
observation is still valid today. If the United States were to
use a tactical nuclear weapon, no matter how small, on an Arab
or an Asian nation, it would still mark the most significant
political and military decision that we have made since
Hiroshima. The consequences would be enormous.
If the most powerful nation in the world--if the most
powerful nation that the world has ever known--insists that it
needs to use nuclear weapons to protect itself from chemical
attack or to destroy an underground bunker, then why doesn't
any nation? Why doesn't Iran need nuclear weapons? It, after
all, has actually been attacked by chemical weapons. This is an
extremely dangerous message to be sending to the rest of the
world.
And the dreadnought analogy that we just heard from Dr.
Weinberg is well-taken here. Why on earth would we go in this
direction? When we're at the peak of our power, why on earth
would we be developing these other weapons, legitimizing their
use, telling other nations, ``Gentlemen, start your engines. If
you've been thinking about going in this direction, go right
ahead, 'cause we're going there''?
This is the most difficult part of this Nuclear Posture
Review for me to understand unless you understand the nature of
this review, its extremely limited base. Who did this review?
If you ask the Army if they need a new artillery piece, you
know what the answer is going to be. If you ask the nuclear
laboratories and the nuclear military command structure if they
need new nuclear weapons, you know what the answer is going to
be. That's why this is exactly the wrong way to do a review.
You don't ask the people who have the most vested interest in
the systems to recommend what to do with those systems. You
include them in the review. You want their experience. You want
their understanding. You want their technical expertise. But
you want to merge that with the expertise of a broader military
and scientific spectrum.
So I would encourage the committee to do two things based
on your review of this review. The first is to take Vice
President Cheney at his word that this review is not
extraordinary, that it's just part of the normal routine of
doing business, that these kinds of things are done every few
years. He said that in London shortly after the report was
leaked to the press. I think he was mistaken about that. We
actually don't do these reviews very often. But if he was
articulating the desire of this administration to do it that
way, let's take him up on it. I think we should conduct a new
review next year that includes a broader range of foreign-
policy expertise, military expertise, and technical expertise
to help us guide a more balanced nuclear posture for the 21st
century.
In the short term, one of the greatest missing aspects of
this review is its lack of threat assessment. What are the
2,000 nuclear weapons for? If you notice, in the earlier part
of my statement, I said that the United States is going to
maintain an arsenal of 10,000 nuclear weapons. Some may wonder
what I'm talking about. I provided a chart at the end of my
statement based on an analysis done by the Nuclear Resources
Defense Council of what the U.S. nuclear arsenal will look like
in 2012, at the end of the reduction process articulated by the
President and the treaty that he will sign with President Putin
in just a few days. The strategic nuclear weapons are just the
tip of the nuclear iceberg. Beneath them are a thousand
tactical nuclear weapons. Beneath them, thousands of warheads
in storage. Beneath them, thousands of plutonium pits. And
beneath that, tons of nuclear material.
One has to ask what these weapons are for, what exactly is
the threat they're meant to deter? And this, I think, is one of
the essential points of this posture review, although Secretary
Rumsfeld states in his foreword to this review, that we have
broken with cold war doctrine. In fact, the posture recommended
by this review continues in place the systems, all of which
were conceived, designed, and developed during the cold war,
for one mission and only one mission, to deter and, if
necessary, fight a global thermonuclear war with the Soviet
Union. That mission is gone. The weapons remain.
Our relationship with Russia will truly change not when we
no longer sign arms control agreements, but when we no longer
maintain a force that targets thousands of Russian political,
military, and industrial facilities. It's not the arms control
treaties that are relics of the cold war. It's the nuclear
weapons. As long as we have thousands of nuclear weapons, we
will need to negotiate the fate of those weapons, the purpose
of those weapons. There is no conceivable military utility for
2,000 strategic deployed nuclear weapons, except to attack
Russia.
I would encourage the committee to ask the administration
for a clarification. Is this, in fact, still the main
justification for maintaining 2,000 high-alert deployed
strategic weapons? If it is not, then what is, beyond
uncertainty? That is no way to base a weapons system. You don't
base it on uncertainty.
In my day, we always started off with a threat assessment.
Here are the Soviet tanks. Here's how they'll come through the
Fulda Gap. Here are tanks we need to stop them. Here's how much
it's going to cost. Here's the foreign policy that will conform
to that Defense policy. We've abandoned that, in a very
disturbing trend, to go from threat-based assessments to
capability-based assessments. That has the effect of justifying
any system, any program that's politically attractive. It's no
way to run a Defense Department. I think we have to get back to
having concrete threat assessments on which we base our force
structure and base our budgets.
I'll conclude with that, Mr. Chairman. I thank you for your
patience.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Cirincione follows:]
Prepared Statement of Joseph Cirincione, Director, Non-Proliferation
Project, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
a deeply flawed review
Thank you, Chairman Biden, Senator Helms and Members of the
Committee for the privilege of testifying before you today. I base my
remarks today on the publicly available excerpts of the Nuclear Posture
Review and on official and press comments on the review.
Summary
The Nuclear Posture Review conducted by the Department of Defense
and submitted to Congress on 31 December 2001 is a deeply flawed
document and if adopted as government policy could cause irreparable
harm to the national security of the United States. Many of the
recommendations in the review incrementally adapt policies begun in
previous administrations. However, taken as a whole, the proposals
represent a radical change in nuclear weapon policy totally
disproportionate to the threat. The proposed policies could make the
use of nuclear weapons by the United States or other nations more
likely.
Adoption of the policies recommended in the review could be
construed as a material breach of United States obligations under
Article VI of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. If the United States
maintains ten thousand nuclear warheads for the indefinite future,
develops new nuclear weapons and new use doctrines against non-nuclear
targets, and ends the negotiated arms control process, then many will
say that our nation has abandoned its thirty-year commitment in the NPT
``to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating
to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear
disarmament.'' This may encourage other nations to reconsider their
commitments to the treaty. This would greatly complicate U.S. non-
proliferation goals and President Bush's campaign against weapons of
mass destruction.
The greatest disappointment in the study is its failure to break
with Cold War doctrines. The review advocates maintaining a substantial
force of high-alert nuclear weapons for the indefinite future. This
encourages other nations, particularly Russia, to maintain or construct
larger forces then they otherwise would. It therefore increases the
danger of nuclear weapon accidents, miscalculations and theft or
diversion of weapons into terrorist hands.
In a great leap backward to the discredited nuclear policies of the
1950s, the review sees nuclear weapons as simply another weapon, part
of a continuum of military options merging seamlessly with advanced
precision-guided munitions. The U.S. Army and Navy have long since
dismantled their nuclear artillery, landmines, bazookas, rockets,
torpedoes and depth charges conceived and developed in this earlier
nuclear age. Most officers know that we now have adequate conventional
weapon alternatives and, as Secretary of State Colin Powell wrote in
his biography of tactical nuclear weapons use in Europe, ``No matter
how small these nuclear payloads were, we would be crossing a
threshold. Using nukes at this point would mark one of the most
significant political and military decisions since Hiroshima.''
Unfortunately, the Nuclear Posture Review does not, as Secretary of
Defense Donald Rumsfeld asserts in his foreword to the review, put
``the Cold War practices related to planning for strategic force behind
us.'' There is a severe disconnect between the expressed policy goals
of the Administration and the proposed operational force structure.
The secretary claims that ``as a result of this review, the U.S.
will no longer plan, size or sustain its forces as though Russia
presented merely a smaller version of the threat posed by the former
Soviet Union.'' The Secretary may believe this to be true--and it would
be consistent with the expressed aim of the president--but the force
structure detailed in the review remains configured for large-scale,
counter-force attacks against a broad array of targets in Russia.
There is no strategic justification for maintaining thousands of
weapons on high alert and a reserve force of thousands more weapons
ready for re-deployment other than to target Russia. Other target sets
are added on to, not substituted for, the Russian targets. The real
mark of a new relationship with Russia will not be when we no longer
sign arms control agreements, but when we no longer maintain elaborate
plans to target and destroy Russian military, political and industrial
sites--and when Russia no longer does the same for U.S. targets.
The Nuclear Posture Review and the new treaty that President Bush
will sign shortly with President Putin, will unfortunately not
``liquidate the legacy of the Cold War,'' as the president has said.
The review and the treaty do not liquidate any weapons. Ten years from
now, when the treaty expires, the large deployed nuclear forces we
inherited from the Cold War will still be very much with us. The
posture review perpetuates this Cold War posture. As these systems--
conceived, designed and built to deter or wage global thermonuclear war
with the Soviet Union--reach the end of their operational lives, the
review calls for the production of a new generation of missiles,
bombers and submarines.
Rather than breaking with Cold War rationales for the size and
purpose of the nuclear force, the review leaves them in place,
downsizing and rationalizing the force, and adds in new nuclear
missions. The review basically carries forward nuclear reductions
already planned for and approved by the Joint Chiefs of Staff under the
START I and START II treaties and announced as the goals of the START
III treaty in 1997. In addition, the review expressly advocates the use
of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear targets in states that do not
possess nuclear weapons, such as Syria and Libya.
The review, in summary:
Validates the reductions agreed upon by the United States
and Russia in 1997;
Advocates a new generation of strategic nuclear weapons for
the next 50 years;
Advocates new designs for new types of nuclear weapons;
Advocates new uses for nuclear weapons;
Brings the country closer to testing new nuclear weapon
designs; and
Increases dramatically the funding for and capacity of
nuclear weapon production facilities.
Taken together these represent a dangerous affirmation of the
military utility and necessity of nuclear weapon in conflicts large and
small. It sends a dangerous message to other nations contemplating
development of nuclear weapons. If the most powerful nation in the
world says it needs nuclear weapons to defend against chemical weapon
attacks or to attack underground bunkers, why don't other nations?
The Committee should consider working with the administration to
conduct a new review next year, but one that involves a broader range
of military and strategic thinkers. The nation can never be assured
that we have received the best, most objective review until those
representing a broad range of American national security and foreign
policy expertise perform these reviews from the top down, not from the
bottom-up.
Continuity and Change in the U.S. Nuclear Force
The United States is the most advanced nuclear-weapon state in the
world. It maintains a diverse arsenal of strategic and tactical nuclear
weapons, as well as large stocks of weapons-grade nuclear materials.
After reaching a high point in the mid-1980s, the U.S. nuclear arsenal
has been shrinking as part of a negotiated arms reduction process with
the Soviet Union and, its successor, Russia.
The Nuclear Posture Review outlines plans to continue the
reductions in strategic forces, continue efforts to develop missile
defenses and begin the development of new, low-yield nuclear weapons.
The initial warhead reductions follow those planned during the Clinton
administration. By 2007, the Bush administration plans to reduce down
to approximately 3800 operationally deployed strategic warheads, as did
the previous administration. This will include reductions of 500
warheads from the 50 Peacekeeper ICBMs, 800 from the 96 missiles
carried on four Trident submarines that will be converted to carry
conventional cruise missiles, and 1,000 from the removal of two
warheads from each of 500 Minuteman III ICBMs, as called for under the
terms of the 1993 START II treaty.
The review preserves and continues the majority of the current
operationally deployed nuclear force. Aside from the Peacekeeper ICBM
and the four Trident SSBNs, no additional strategic delivery platforms
are scheduled to be eliminated from strategic service.
By 2012, the administration plans to field 1,700 to 2,200
operationally deployed strategic warheads. This represents a slower
pace of reduction then envisioned by the previous administration. In
1997, the United States and Russia agreed on a reduction goal of 2,000
to 2,500 deployed strategic warheads by the end of 2007. The lower
number proposed by the Bush administration is derived by no longer
counting warheads on submarines or bombers in overhaul as
``operationally deployed.'' Two Trident submarines, with 192 warheads
each, are usually in overhaul at any given time, as are several bombers
with dozens of weapons, thus allowing lower numbers without changing
existing nuclear force plans. (The number of warheads on each Trident
missile will decrease over the next 10 years.)
The warheads will be deployed on:
14 Trident SSBNs,
500 Minuteman III ICBMs,
76 B-52H bombers, and
21 B-2 bombers.
Some warheads removed from delivery vehicles will be dismantled,
but the majority will be maintained in the active stockpile for
potential return to delivery systems on short notice (weeks or months).
This ``responsive force'' of stored warheads could be redeployed,
should strategic conditions change. There are almost 8,000 warheads in
the active stockpile today, stored apart from delivery vehicles but
maintained in a ready-for-use configuration with tritium and other
limited life components installed. There is also an inactive stockpile
of warheads that do not have limited life components installed, and may
not have the latest warhead modifications. These warheads are kept as
possible replacements for active warheads and as a ``hedge'' against
the discovery of a problem with a large number of active warheads.
The exact size of the future active stockpile or responsive force
has not yet been decided but it would apparently number in the
thousands. These are needed, according to the review, to augment the
operational deployed force to meet potential contingencies. The
potential contingencies are categorized as ``immediate, potential or
unexpected.'' The review identifies specific countries that could be
involved in these nuclear contingencies, including Russia, China, North
Korea, Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Libya.
The Missing Threat Assessment
One of the goals of the proposed START III treaty, however, had
been to require warhead dismantlements to make future reductions
transparent and irreversible. It appears this is no longer a U.S. goal.
The review does not explain why thousands of deployed nuclear weapons,
augmented by thousands of additional nuclear weapons in reserve, would
be needed to respond to a military engagement with Syria or Libya or
any of the other nations. The lack of any concrete threat assessment is
a glaring weakness in the review. The review picks up a disturbing
trend in other defense department programs--to abandon a ``threat-
based'' planning in favor of ``capabilities-based'' planning. This
essentially allows for the development of any size force or any weapon
system that is politically attractive, whether or not the threat
justifies these capabilities.
Russia is Still the Target
The sole justification for maintaining a large, dispersed force of
nuclear weapons on high alert has always been and remains the need to
target military, industrial and political sites in Russia. The
Committee should ask the administration to clarify this matter. If
Russia is not still the target of U.S. nuclear plans, then what is the
rational for the large size of the force? If Russia still is the
targeted, then would negotiations for deeper reductions in Russian
nuclear weapons, such as those offered by President Putin, allow the
United States to further reduce its forces, saving funds for other,
more pressing military needs?
In the most authoritative public statement on the rational for
maintaining large numbers of deployed forces configured as they were
during the Cold War, then-commander-in-chief of the Strategic Command,
Admiral Richard Meis, argued in July 2001 that burden of proof fell on
those who advocate reductions to demonstrate exactly how and why such
cuts would serve to enhance U.S. security. ``There is a tyranny in very
deep numerical reductions that inhibits flexibility and induces
instability in certain situations,'' he said. ``We must preserve
sufficient deterrent capability to respond to future challenges, to
provide a cushion against imperfect intelligence and surprises, and to
preserve a reconstitution capability as a hedge against unwelcome
political or strategic developments.''
Maintaining and Modernizing the Current Force
These views apparently prevailed in the Nuclear Posture Review. The
Defense Department concluded that there will be a need to maintain
thousands of deployed nuclear weapons in a triad of bombers, submarines
and land-based missiles for the indefinite future. The diversity is
required to ``complicate any adversary's offensive and defense planning
calculations while simultaneously providing protection against the
failure of a single leg of the triad,'' according to Mies.
Admiral Mies does not mention Russia by name, but Russia is the
only country that has the potential, if not the desire, to launch a
sudden, large nuclear attack on the United Statess. Thus, U.S. forces
must remain capable of withstanding a first-strike and responding after
the attack with an overwhelming and devastating nuclear counter-attack.
Meis explained:
``Intercontinental ballistic missile continue to provide a
reliable, low cost, prompt response capability with a high
readiness rate. They also promote stability by ensuring that a
potential adversary takes their geographically dispersed
capabilities into account if contemplating a disarming first
strike . . .
``[T]he strategic submarine force is the most survivable leg
of the triad, providing the United States with a powerful,
assured response capability against any adversary . . . The
United States must preserve a sufficiently large strategic
nuclear submarine force to enable two-ocean operations with
sufficient assets to ensure an at-sea response force capable of
deterring any adversary in a crisis . . .
``Strategic bombers . . . allow force dispersal to improve
survivability and aircraft recall during mission execution. The
low-observable technology of the B-2 bomber enables it to
penetrate heavily defended areas and hold high-value targets at
risk deep inside an adversary's territory . . . the B-52 bomber
can be employed in a standoff role using long-range cruise
missile to attack from outside enemy air defenses.''
As current forces reach the end of their operation lives, a new
generation of systems would be built to replace them. The posture
review calls for the development of a new ICBM to be operational in
2018, a new strategic submarine and a new submarine-launched ballistic
missile (SLBM) to be operational in 2029, and a new heavy bomber to be
deployed in 2040. This recommendation is strongly endorsed by the
current commander-in-chief of the Strategic Command, Admiral James
Ellis, in his February 2002 testimony to the Senate Armed Service
Committee:
The first finding [of the Nuclear Posture review] I'd like to
highlight is the recognition of a pressing need for investment
across the full range of our strategic capabilities. As we work
to reduce deployed strategic nuclear warheads, this investment
is needed to sustain and improve our aging operating forces, to
recapitalize our infrastructure, which has atrophied over the
last ten years, and to refine and enhance current systems.
Expanded Nuclear Production
The review details plans to expand the capacity and capability of
the Pantex Plant in Texas to meet the planned workload of some 600
warheads (assembled or dismantled) per year, up from the current
capability of 350 warheads per year.
The review also notes plans to expand the capacity and capability
of the Y-12 Plant in Tennessee to meet the planned workload for
replacing warhead secondaries, and other uranium components. It further
argues for the new modern production facility to deal with the large-
scale replacement of components and new production of plutonium
``pits.''
New Weapon Designs
As a result of the review, the Department of Energy's National
Nuclear Security Administrations (NNSA) will undertake several
initiatives in the design and development of new nuclear weapons. The
NNSA will reestablish advanced warhead concepts teams at each of the
national laboratories and at the headquarters in Washington to explore
options including:
possible modifications to existing weapons to provide
additional yield flexibility in the stockpile;
improved earth penetrating weapons to target hardened and
under ground facilities;
low-yield warheads that reduce collateral damage.
Preparing to Restart Nuclear Testing
To test some of these designs, the review also recommends
shortening the time required to restart nuclear testing. Currently it
would take an estimated 2 to 3 years to resume underground testing of
nuclear weapons after a decision to do so. The posture review finds
this unacceptable. Shortening the time needed to test, the review
argues, will enable the United States to initiate research into whether
there is a need to develop an entirely new capability--one that is not
a modification of an existing weapon--in time to counter any surprise
development. The review says this will also better guard against any
problems that might develop in existing warheads. The study recommends
substantial funding increases for the nuclear laboratories to enhance
test readiness, train new and existing personnel, conduct new field
experiments and a variety of other projects it terms urgent.
Negative Impact on Non-Proliferation Efforts
Taken together as a whole, the steps called for in the Nuclear
Posture Review make the use of nuclear weapons by the United States
more likely, even in response to non-nuclear threats or attacks. The
review states that the United States must rely on nuclear weapons to
deter and respond to threats from weapons of mass destruction, defined
in the review to include not only nuclear weapons, but chemical and
biological weapons, and even conventional explosives.
Within the new nuclear use policy, there are few if any military
contingencies that might not allow the United States to respond with
nuclear weapons. This policy raises concerns that, by threatening the
use of nuclear weapons, even against conventionally armed adversaries,
we would actually increase the incentive for states to acquire nuclear
weapons, if for no other reason than to deter the use of such weapons
by the United States.
Another more subtle, but equally important development in the
review is the closer integration of conventional and nuclear force
planning. The review argues that by more closely linking intelligence,
communication and force operational planning for nuclear and
conventional operations, that conventional forces can more easily
replace operations previously limited to nuclear options, making the
use of nuclear weapons less likely. It is possible, however, that this
linking of operational capabilities will also work in the reverse,
making it easier to target and use nuclear weapons in missions
previously reserved for conventional missions.
These changes to operational integration, in combination with more
direct planning to consider the use of nuclear weapons against states
including China, North Korea, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya and others,
reverses the trend of de-emphasizing nuclear weapons and could make the
use of nuclear weapons far more likely and actually encourage, not
discourage, the acquisition of nuclear weapons by additional states.
It remains to be seen what affect, if any, the views of the active
military will have on these policies. Traditionally, the uniformed
military in the United States has widely resisted anything that would
counteract the traditional conventional superiority of the United
States, or that might complicate military planning by forcing troops to
operate in contaminated battlefields (i.e., chemical or biological
weapons or radiation). These concerns have been driving factors in the
development in the United States of advanced conventional capabilities
as opposed to modern, battlefield nuclear weapons. It is possible that
the process of integrating the top down directives of the review will
be difficult and that the position of the uniformed military may lead
to further modification of these policies.
When the review became public in March 2002, senior administration
officials downplayed the significance of the review. Vice President
Dick Cheney said in London that it was a routine review of the type
done every few years. The Committee should consider working with the
administration to conduct a new review next year, but one that involves
a broader range of military and strategic thinkers.
Reviews performed by those with a vested interest in the forces and
requirements under review will inevitably recommend preserving and
expanding those forces and increasing funding for their programs. The
nation can never be assured that we have received the best, most
objective review until those representing a broad range of American
national security and foreign policy expertise perform these reviews
from the top down.
______
United States Nuclear Weapons, from 2012
Category Number of Warheads
Operationally deployed force............................ 1,700-2,200
Missile warheads on 2 Trident Submarines in overhaul.... ~240
Strategic missile and bomber warheads in responsive
force............................................... ~1,350
Non-strategic bombs assigned to U.S./NATO conventional/
nuclear capable aircraft............................ ~800
Non-strategic sea-launched cruise missile warheads
retained in the responsive force.................... ~320
Spare strategic and non-strategic warheads.............. ~160
Intact warheads in the inactive reserve force........... ~4,900
Sub-Total Intact Warheads........................... 9,470-9,970
Stored plutonium and HEU components that could be
reassembled into weapons............................ 5,000
Total of All Warheads and Components................ 14,470-14,970
Source: Natural Resources Defense Council ``Faking Nuclear Restraint''
13 February 2002, analysis of the Nuclear Posture Review.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Chairman. Well, I thank you all for your input.
Let me start with you, Dr. Thompson, if I may. The thing
that--I was somewhat facetious--I was looking for reassurance
in your statement, and you state that there are no new nukes
that are planned or on the horizon. And so let me ask you the
question this way. Do you think there is any need or
justification now for planning for new nuclear weapons, whether
it's an earth-penetrating nuclear weapon or any other?
Dr. Thompson. It depends on how you mean ``now,'' Senator.
At this particular moment in time, no. However, the problem is
that if you look at the recent past, not far beyond the
beginning of my own life, and you just look at the number of
events that have occurred: Pearl Harbor, North Korea's invasion
of the South, the Tet offensive, the Beirut barracks bombing,
the collapse of communism, September 11--we've got an awful
track record on predicting the future. And I might mention
parenthetically that also shows we've got an awful track record
on deterrence. So, given that, it's easy for me to imagine that
we will need to conduct serious planning and maybe even design
work 5 years down the road even though I don't know what the
stimulus for that activity would be.
But the reason I know that we don't have any plan at
present to develop a new nuclear warhead is because we don't
have the capacity to build one. We've lost the ability to
design and build new plutonium pits at Rocky Flats. It would
take 10 years to reconstitute that. We haven't built--we
haven't manufactured tritium in the United States since 1988,
without which you can't do a fusion reaction. And, just in
general, we've got a very decrepit and fragile nuclear
industrial base.
So when we say that we're developing a warhead that is
designed to be a deeply buried bunker penetrator, what we're
really talking about is taking a fairly old warhead and putting
it inside a new casing. That's all this is about.
The Chairman. Do you agree with that, Dr. Weinberg? Did you
happen to hear the answer?
Dr. Weinberg. The problem with having a deep earth-
penetrating nuclear weapon wouldn't be solved if we could
develop a new kind of warhead. The problem is simply that you
can't get down deep enough into the earth to avoid a tremendous
amount of fallout, and that has nothing to do with whether we
have the capability of starting up nuclear-weapon production
lines. So I think it's an irrelevant point.
If I can expand on that, Loren Thompson's testimony is a
very good example of something I've heard again and again: How
can you tell what we will need in the future? Dr. Thompson
said, ``How do you know that we will not need to increase our
deterrent over what we have? It's not a question of physics.
It's a question of judgment.'' He's right. It's not a question
of physics. It is a question of judgment.
Maybe what we need is not to sign this treaty at all, but
to maintain the 6,000 operationally deployed weapons we have
now. How do you know that we won't need them in the future?
Perhaps we are making a terrible mistake.
The fact is, we never know. As Joe Cirincione said, we have
to think about actual threats. I cannot conceive any threat--
maybe I'm wrong, but I can't conceive any threat that would
require the kind of forces that we will have at the end of the
10-year period that's called for in the treaty.
On the other hand, I can conceive of lots of threats which
will be exacerbated by the large size of that force. We've been
over them--mistaken launch, diversion of weapons to terrorists,
bad example to other countries, possibly starting nuclear
programs in other countries.
And I can just as well say to you, ``How do you know that
this won't happen?'' Where does the principle come from that
when you face uncertainty, you always vote on the side of new
weapons or maintaining existing weapons? I mean, what is the
theorem there that says that uncertainty is always met by
maximizing your force? It may not be. It's not a question of
physics. You're quite right. It's a question of judgment.
Dr. Thompson. May I respond?
The Chairman. Please.
Dr. Thompson. I think it's kind of an exaggeration to say
that we are erring on the side of always maintaining our
capabilities. When we started the START negotiations two
decades ago, we had over 10,000 weapons. Today we have less
than 6,000. The plan is to go to less than 4,000 in 5 years.
The plan was to go, quite possibly, below 2,000. Now, it
might----
The Chairman. But how can we afford to do that?
Dr. Thompson [continuing]. Be I'm superficial, but I see a
pattern here.
The Chairman. But----
Dr. Thompson. This is a big reduction.
The Chairman [continuing]. Is it a good pattern or a bad
pattern?
Dr. Thompson. I think the debate here is over the rate at
which the pattern is unfolding. But, I mean, how can you
dispute that the number of weapons is declining?
The Chairman. Well, no, let's assume--obviously, it is. But
the question is: Is that a good pattern or a bad pattern? Go to
the theorem that Dr. Weinberg said. I mean, what is--what makes
you feel secure that we can go from ten to four or two in light
of your point about Tet, Beirut, et cetera?
Dr. Thompson. Well, in fact, the Nuclear Posture Review is
only semi-secure in that judgment. It says that, between now
and 2012, we will pause periodically, take a look around and
decide whether we want to go down that additional increment.
Because here's where we end up at the end of this process. As I
said, the bombers are all off doing something else on a typical
day. They're not on strip alert with nukes in them. We've
reduced our Minuteman force from--well, today we've got about,
what, 2,000 warheads in the ICBM force. We're down to 500, at
most, that are on alert. And we're down to perhaps 8 submarines
at sea on a given day, because there'll be 14 subs. Two are in
overhaul. A third of the remainder are in port. So that's 8
subs and less than 500 ICBMs.
Now, that would have been a wholly inadequate deterrent 20
years ago. I don't understand why it's so hard to imagine
needing more than that, when 20 years ago we were pretty
certain we needed more than that.
The Chairman. Well, 20 years ago, there was a different
world, but let me ask you what--we don't know what threats
we'll face in the future. You have heard Dr. Weinberg and Joe
articulate what they thought some of the downsides were from
maintaining this arsenal and from the Nuclear Posture Review,
as they read it. Now, again, they may very well be wrong, but
they've outlined the threats they think that flow from this
Nuclear Posture Review and the tack being taken now relative to
arms control. What are threats--and can you be as specific--the
threats that you envision as possibly occurring in 2, 5, 10
years that would warrant us needing 7,000 nuclear warheads
again--or 4,000 or 5,000?
Dr. Thompson. Well, I'm--within the timeframe you
mentioned, 7,000 probably wouldn't be required; but more than
2,000 in the operational force, I can readily imagine because
the preponderance of those warheads would be on a handful of
submarines. If we determine that an adversary had acquired the
capability to track those submarines, we might feel that we
needed to proliferate the number of boats that were carrying
the deterrent. We might not even need more warheads. We might
need more ballistic-missile submarines, for example. Those are
the kind of standard concerns that people talked about for two
generations during the cold war.
The Chairman. But tell me some of the other things that
can--and I'm not being facetious here. I'm just trying to--what
I hear from those who are concerned about their view of the
direction we're now going, as opposed to those who think the
direction we're moving now is prudent, are specific delineated
concerns that may or may not be correct--i.e., we nuclear test;
the Chinese, who have great pressure on them now not to nuclear
test--they may anyway--but will have a green light to go ahead
and do something that is--all things being equal, would not be
in our interest for them to be able to test new systems. The
concern about accidental launches, all the concerns that have
been enunciated--I'm not asking you to suggest why you think
they aren't legitimate concerns. I'm asking you to articulate
some of the concerns that lead you to believe that the need to
test should be--for us to test--should be readily available to
us, and, two, the need to maintain significantly more than
2,000 warheads, deployed or not, is necessary, et cetera, et
cetera.
You gave me one, the idea that SLBMs would find themselves
in a position where technology would be acquired by other
states to be able to track them. What are some of the other,
you know, scenarios that have, I assume, the prospect of an
advent of Chinese breakout with a larger nuclear capability.
What are some of the other ones?
Dr. Thompson. Clearly, one possibility--you know, the
problem with speculating on specifics, Senator, is it's--
remember there was a South African labor lawyer who said once
that, ``Every revolution is impossible until it happens; and
after that, it's inevitable.'' Things that look so obvious in
retrospect, like September 11, would have sounded ludicrous to
propose before the event.
The Chairman. But it didn't sound ludicrous. A lot of us
were saying it. I made a speech on September 10 specifically
delineating what I thought was going to happen. A lot of people
thought that. It wasn't ludicrous. There were a lot of people.
We did not carry the day. We did not--just like there's a lot
of people, like Senator Lugar, who are speculating that there
is an overwhelming prospect that terrorists will gain access to
certain materials to allow them to buy--or to build a dirty
nuke and/or--I mean, a radiological weapon and/or a 1- or 2-
kiloton nuclear device that they could build.
So the truth is, there was speculation on every one of the
things you've suggested. Now, it wasn't the preponderance of
the view. It wasn't one of those things--but nothing came out
of the blue. And as we're finding out--and I'm fearful, and I
hope to God it's not--it doesn't happen, but I'm fearful, as we
review the intelligence data we had, we're going to find out
that we knew a helluva lot more than we do.
Dr. Thompson. I have the same concern.
The Chairman. And I am worried about that. I mean that
sincerely. I pray to God that that's not the case, because the
President will be seriously crippled if that turns out to be
the case, in his judgment. And it's not his--I mean, I'm just
very worried about it. I pray to God that we find out that we
didn't know.
Dr. Thompson. Senator, I have the same concern. But the
reason I'm avoiding giving you particulars is because so many
of these threats that actually are going to happen are--would
sound quite implausible today.
You know, when the French held their victory march of the
Arc de Triomphe in 1919, it was unbelievable that Germany would
be back in a generation. But it's really quite possible that
Russia could be back in a generation, because they've been
there before.
The Chairman. See, look, I'm not suggesting--the reason why
I'm looking--I am not nearly--as much as I've tried for 30
years on this particular subject to come as close as a lawyer
can come to mastering the intricacies of strategic doctrine--
and I have tried my best. I have had your colleagues, Dr.
Weinberg, sit with me for hours, literally explaining to me
what makes it go boom, how you construct a nuclear weapon,
because I learned a long time ago----
I'll never forget. I was in a debate with Russell Long on
the issue relating to price controls relating to energy. And
the issue was about stripper wells. And I got on the floor with
Russell Long, and I was debating him on this issue as to why--
and to make a long story short, I was carrying the debate. And
all of a sudden, he looked at me and said, ``Does my friend
from Delaware understand how a stripper well works?''
And I thought, ``Holy God.''
``Holy God.'' And he said, ``Well, does my friend
understand that it's x-feet deep and--x-thousand feet, and that
you have to run a separate shaft, and you have to put in high
pressure steam, da-dah, da-dah, da-dah.'' And it had nothing to
do with my point, but everybody on the floor knew I didn't know
anything about a stripper well, and he won the debate.
Well, I've tried very hard to educate myself through my
staff and the scientists that I've hired and the scientists
I've availed myself of to understand this. But nonetheless, as
a policymaker--that's an exaggeration. I'm just a Senator, and
I'm not being facetious when I say that. We don't make foreign
policy, but we can impact on what American foreign policy is,
and we can impact on the margins of what defense policy is.
And so, as I try to figure these things out, I approach
this maybe too much as a lawyer, constructing syllogisms that
hopefully are able to be borne out. And in order to be able to
do that, I, on the one side of the equation here--I don't want
to mix my metaphors here--but on the one side, I look at what
are the articulated downsides to a particular course of action
and what the threat assessments are relative--and from one
perspective--and whether or not what we're doing enhances or
diminishes our security. And I find specific concerns
articulated by, in this debate--I don't mean just the four of
us--but in this debate, specific in terms articulated about
proliferation, about stability, about access to--not third-
world nations, but to third parties--and so on. And then I go
over on the other side of the equation, and I get from my
friends on--for lack of a better phrase, the center-righter--
the Rumsfeld school, for lack of a better phrase, and I hear,
``We just don't know. We just don't know.'' And that's a little
bit like my saying to my daughter, ``You can't go out.'' And
she says, ``Why?'' ``You just never know.''
And she looks at me and goes, ``OK, right, Dad. Now, let me
explain to you why it's OK to go out to this party.'' ``But,
honey, you just don't know.''
I know that sounds like I'm trying to be facetious. I'm
not. And so it's very helpful--you know, this notion about the
Russians coming back, I don't doubt that possibility. Germany
came back. OK, let's say that's true. I don't know anybody in
the world who is mildly informed--and in foreign policy, I am
informed--I don't know anybody in the world who thinks there's
any possibility of that happening in the next decade. I don't
know of a single solitary human being who suggests that. None.
I always say this at meetings--I say, ``Tell me. Give me a
scenario how a country with a $7.5 billion defense budget with
a $30 billion total budget for the entire nation, and with the
economic circumstances they find themselves in, the places in
the world they're situated at this moment, the direction things
are going, that within the 10-years the bear is back.'' Maybe
the bear is back in 30 years.
Dr. Thompson. Senator, that sounds like a pretty desperate
country. It's easy to imagining a desperate country doing
irrational or desperate things.
The Chairman. I can understand them doing irrational
things, but it plays into the point my friends on the panel are
saying, which is that desperate countries hang onto what they
have now, and maybe desperate countries do things that have
nothing to do with anything other than using systems they now
have, as opposed to----
Dr. Thompson. Senator, if I could make a broader point that
speaks----
The Chairman. Please.
Dr. Thompson [continuing]. Nonetheless directly to what
you're saying, I find that I have a problem on the same issue
across the board in discussing any military modernization
initiative we undertake. If I take, for example, the F-22
fighter, people will tell me, ``Well, the air-to-air threat is
gone. Where is it going to come from? Why do we need it?'' The
problem is, we simply can't know.
Now, your friends, as you put them on the panel, are
describing our concerns today. And our concerns today certainly
would dictate that we could have a much lower nuclear force.
But the concerns at the Washington Naval Conference aren't the
concerns the Navy had 20 years later, and none of us can
foresee what those concerns would be.
So I'm in favor of the administration's policy of going
down, looking around, going down again, if it seems prudent. We
may very well go below 2,000 after a decade, depending on the
world's situation. But this notion that we don't need a reserve
when we lack the capacity to build new ones or that we should
simply start cutting immediately today at a much more rapid
rate, I don't think it's prudent.
The Chairman. OK. Doctor, you had a comment.
Dr. Weinberg. I'd like to clarify one thing that is
obvious, but at this point I think may need to be said, and
that is that no one is proposing that the United States cut to
the levels called for, say, by the National Academy of
Sciences, a thousand weapons of all kinds, deployed or not
deployed, or by the other organizations, the Union of Concerned
Scientists, the Federation of American Scientists, and so on,
that call for similar stringent cuts, just because we want to
save money, or because we think it's nice to have a smaller
arsenal. All of this is in the context of a comparable cut by
the Russians. Yes, the bear may come back. And wouldn't it be
nice if, when the bear came back, the bear had a few hundred
nuclear weapons, and we had a few hundred nuclear weapons,
rather than a few thousand on each side. Wouldn't that be a
better world if the bear came back?
Dr. Thompson. Maybe.
Dr. Weinberg. Oh, maybe? Well, I find it hard to imagine
any circumstance in which that wouldn't be better. You have to
think about what other countries will do. And in this case,
it's obvious. We're talking about mutual cuts. Yes, I agree, we
couldn't justify a reduction to a thousand nuclear weapons
during the height of the cold war because of the size of the
Russian forces. The big thing that's changed is, now we have a
Russia that has much smaller forces and which is eager to
reduce them even more. So why not seize this golden opportunity
to make much more stringent cuts?
Dr. Thompson. I think Dr. Weinberg has just given an
excellent example of what the administration is concerned
about. Let's imagine, for the sake of argument, that we were
down to a few hundred. All right?
The Chairman. And the Russians down to a few hundred?
Dr. Thompson. Exactly. You know, when we've got 6,000, and
they've got 6,000, if they hide a few hundred, it's no big
deal. But when you get down to a hundred, and they have a
hundred, and they've hidden a few hundred, that's a major
strategic advantage. That, in essence, is what their concern
is. It's a concern that by the time you realize the other guy
isn't playing by your rules, if you're low enough, you may have
lost.
The Chairman. Well, I think that's a very good point, and
that's why I'm always surprised by their unwillingness to have
more stringent verification requirements. But that's a
different issue, I realize.
There's so many more things that I want to raise with you
all. Let me just conclude by asking the following and ask you
all three to comment if you wish to, or, if none of you want to
comment, it's OK--express the concern of a non-scientist 30-
year Senator--a Senator who's been here for 30 years. I am less
concerned personally about--assuming we continue to have some
prudent and sound responses to what appears to me be at least
the present leadership of Russia's desire to look West. I mean,
not since Peter the Great has any Russian leader cast his lot
with the West as clearly as this guy has. Now, whether or not
he can sustain it, whether or not he--we do anything to help or
hurt him in doing that is another question.
But I am more concerned that our actions, well-intended,
may very well put China in a position where China concludes
that its own interests dictate that it fundamentally alter its
strategic doctrine in a way of consequence. And so could you
all just speak to me for a second, if you feel that it warrants
it, a little bit about how China fits into this equation?
We're talking about Russia, and we have outlined the
essence of our disagreement about whether the bear comes back
and how and under what circumstance, if it does come back, we'd
rather have it. But speak to me about China for a moment.
And last, about in what is increasingly a circumstance of
diminished--``diminished'' is the wrong word--limited--more
limited resources available for what we're all talking about,
because of--whatever the reason. I don't want to get into a
domestic debate, but there is less money in the near term. In
the next 10 years, there is less disposable income the Federal
Government will have available to us as the consequences of
actions we've taken and circumstances that have occurred than
we would presumably would have available to us and were
projected a year ago. And so I'm not getting into a Democrat/
Republican--just everybody acknowledges we're not talking about
surpluses of--in the $5 trillion area. We're talking about
surpluses a lot less, OK? So that is going to put increased
pressure on domestic budgets, and that's going to put increased
pressure, as we all know, on military budgets, because right
now, in the aftermath of 9/11, there is this willingness
instinctively on the part of the American public to say, ``Yup,
you know, whatever it takes, we will do.'' But, God willing,
and there's not another 9/11 for another couple of years, or--
and hopefully forever, but you'll find that the willingness of
the public to give up prescription drugs and eat into Social
Security and the rest is going to change dramatically, I
predict.
Now, so my generic question is twofold. One, what about
China? And does what we're about to do, the Nuclear Posture
Review, as it is, we think, as has been discussed--does that
diminish or increase the probability that China would do
something different than they might otherwise do, relative to
their nuclear arsenal and their strategic doctrine? And then
maybe they're all going to do everything anyway, so it doesn't
matter. I just want to talk about that a second.
And, second, in terms of what we look down the road and see
the needs--I would argue, by the way, if I were going to make
the argument you're making, Dr. Thompson, that one of the
strongest reasons to keep this reserve is, at the end of the
day it's going to be harder to find the money to do what we may
have to do if, in fact, there's a breakout in other ways, other
places.
But that leads me to the question of--in terms of the
allocation of dollars over the next decade, does it make sense
for us to be putting an increasingly larger share in the
national missile defense system, not--as opposed to in other
defense needs that we see down the road?
So could you just--that's like a seminar question to ask
you both of those, but if you're inclined, would any of you be
willing to comment on those two areas?
Mr. Cirincione. Perhaps I could start. I was just in China
for a conference a few weeks ago, and I was struck by how much
less concerned the Chinese are about U.S. plans to deploy
national missile defense, or missile defenses. And how
increasingly concerned they are about this issue of
weaponization of space, which has moved to the top of their
agenda. I think it relates specifically to the Nuclear Posture
Review.
Let me just describe these two things very quickly. I
believe one of the reasons that the President was able to
withdraw from the ABM Treaty without triggering an
international wave of criticism, in addition to the fact that
we're the most powerful nation in the world and nobody wants to
pick a fight with us--in addition to the fact that he made the
decision while we're at war, and none of our allies were going
to criticize us during that critical juncture, in addition to
the fact that he got Russian agreement to do this--and, as one
of my French colleagues said, ``We couldn't be more Russian
than the Russians''--I think it's the realization that the
Russians and the Chinese and many of our allies now have: while
we may have a world without the ABM Treaty, we probably are
also going to have a world without effective missile defenses.
They've come to the realization, as the President himself has,
that we don't actually have a ready-to-go missile defense
system to deploy that would have an appreciable effect on
regional or global stability. If you look out over the next 8
years, what we're talking about is a few silos in Alaska, some
improvements to the Patriot system----
The Chairman. It can't have any impact on Korea, by the
way, but that's another interesting point.
Mr. Cirincione. There isn't going to be a sudden breakout
of missile defense systems on Aegis cruisers and destroyers.
The Navy area-wide program has, in fact, been canceled, the
near-term program, and the theater-wide program is at least a
decade away. There isn't going to be the rapid deployment of
THAAD missile batteries. That program is also a decade away.
There aren't any space-based weapons ready to go. Air-based
weapons are in a long development process.
So what we're looking at, and what they're looking at, is a
slow deployment of some rudimentary capacities that won't
appreciably affect them militarily. So they're less concerned.
They don't like the treaty withdrawal. They think it has wide-
ranging implication for how countries think about treaties, but
they're less concerned about the military impact.
They are concerned by the impressive show that the United
States has put on most recently in Afghanistan and the huge
technological leap that we have in command, control,
communications, and precision-guided munitions, and they are
fearful of what that means if we're serious about our stated
goal to seize the high ground, to dominate space across the
full spectrum of capabilities. They're fearful of what that
means for their ability to communicate, to see, to have timely
intelligence.
And when you marry that up with the Nuclear Posture Review
that calls for new designs and new development and justifies
the use of nuclear weapons in non-nuclear situations, they're
concerned that the United States might use its advantage, not
this year or next year, but in the decades to come to force
China to go along with U.S. decisions that it might otherwise
resist. And this may cause China to increase its nuclear force
more than they otherwise would.
They have a very minimal nuclear force at this point. They
have only 20 ICBMs that could reach the United States. They
have only 20 intermediate-range missiles that can reach Russia,
for example, a very small nuclear force that numbers around 400
warheads total. There has been a debate inside China about
where resources should go, just as there is in this country.
That debate has been decided against a significant
modernization of the force, although some is underway. It's
been underway for decades now. This may encourage them to
increase the size of the force that they would otherwise
deploy. And it was particularly true in the area of tactical
nuclear weapons. If the United States is considering mating a
precision-guided munition with a small tactical warhead, well,
perhaps China should go down that route, as well.
The United States is now concerned about very low-yield
tactical weapons, ones that would minimize collateral damage.
But if you don't have that concern, and if the United States is
saying it's OK to do this, then perhaps China would consider
using a small, but still very large, nuclear weapon on some of
its missile batteries that are now assembled across the Strait
of Taiwan. It would make elimination of Taiwanese air fields
and communication facilities much easier for them to
accomplish. We don't believe any of those missiles are nuclear
armed at this point. So that is some of the dilemmas you get
into as you make the world safe for nuclear-weapons use.
Let me say one other thing, and then I'll stop. You asked a
question earlier on, ``Are we undertaking new designs?'' The
answer is yes, we are. And if you read the Nuclear Posture
Review, it says that, as a direct result of this review, the
Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration
has undertaken several initiatives, including reestablishing
advanced warhead concept teams at each of the national
laboratories and here at the headquarters in Washington to
explore new nuclear-weapons designs that include modifications
to existing systems, improved new earth-penetrating weapons,
and improved low-yield warheads that would reduce collateral
damage. Therefore, they want to shorten the test time necessary
so that if these new designs, in fact, prove out, they will be
able to test them more quickly than they otherwise would.
Let me stop there.
Dr. Thompson. With regard to China, you know, China has
shown remarkable restraint in their nuclear forces for over a
generation now. I would have to conclude from that that they
are much less of a threat to us in the near term than some
people seem to think.
In the past, and probably in the future, China's assessment
of what it requires militarily has been based on the regional
threats that it faces from the Russians, from the Indians, even
from the Vietnamese. I would have to conclude from that that
the main reason why the Chinese would want, in the near term,
to greatly increase their forces, vis-a-vis, us, is the
position we take on Taiwan. The fact that we have 6,000 or
2,000 nuclear warheads, in the past, has not made a big
difference to the Chinese, so probably won't in the future. On
the other hand, the Taiwan issue could become a major impetus
to how they regard their military preparations toward us.
Now, on the subject of reduced resources, I sure like that
idea you brought up with the previous panel of going and
getting them first instead of waiting for them to launch and
then trying to stop the missiles. That just has intrinsic
common sense behind it. However, in the past, we haven't always
been willing to go do that. In fact, we usually aren't. We
usually need a real crisis to get us moving, and that usually
means they have launched first. We're only spending 3 percent
of our Defense budget on all our missile-defense efforts.
The Chairman. Yes, I agree.
Dr. Thompson. Now, I think Joe's right. I think the reason
people don't care about us pulling out is because they don't
believe we're going to do anything significant. Certainly five
interceptors in Alaska isn't something that's going to change
global politics. However, we are doing some things, genuinely
transformational things that, down the road, could be quite
significant.
And although I basically agree with your priorities and
your assessment, I would say this. If your concern is about
constrained resources in the future, 3 percent of the Defense
budget on missile defense isn't much compared with what we're
going to have to spend on those other items you thought we
should be emphasizing.
The Chairman. Well, I agree. I agree. That is my point.
And, look, I have voted since I've been a United States
Senator, tens of billions of dollars on research on national
missile defense, so I have not been--but that's another story.
But what I'm talking about is the continued, sort of, dogma now
that we are going to. It's a dogma of--it's kind of the new
catechism, that we are going to build this----
Dr. Thompson. I think we're trying to reassure ourselves.
The Chairman. I think maybe. I hope that's the case.
I'll conclude with you, doctor. And, again, I appreciate
the patience of all of you. I cost you lunch.
Dr. Weinberg. Well, I'm not a China expert. I have a wok,
but that's all.
But I do know that the Chinese have collective leadership
and that inevitably, whatever they decide to do about
modernizing their missile forces or increasing their size,
there will be one side that is in favor of it, and there will
be another side that will be against it, because that's the way
the world works. And whatever we do--for example, if we build
an anti-missile system, it will be an argument in the hands of
the people who want to increase their forces.
There was a national intelligence estimate a few years ago
that if we deployed a missile defense system, the Chinese would
increase their forces by a factor of ten. I think that's not
inconsistent with what's been said about missile defense,
because they wouldn't necessarily increase their forces if they
didn't think we were actually going to deploy a meaningful
missile defense system.
But I think we always have to think of the effect we have
on them. That might not be the case in a country ruled by a
single dictator, like Iraq, but I do think it's the case in
countries like Iran, China, many others, which, while very far
from being democracies, are, nevertheless, ruled by a clique
rather than by a single individual.
As for the spending issue, of course spending on extremely
expensive projects like missile defense will produce swingeing
cuts in other programs. One of the programs that I'm most
concerned about is the Nunn-Lugar programs. The Baker-Cutler
report called for spending on that at a much higher rate than
we are now doing, and I think that's really a pity.
And, finally, I would say, with regard to stripper wells,
I'm from Texas, and I've had exactly the same thing happen to
me.
Mr. Cirincione. May I just add one----
The Chairman. Sure, Joe.
Mr. Cirincione [continuing]. Little Chinese addition. The
Nuclear Posture Review places a great emphasis on improving our
capability to locate, target, and destroy mobile and
relocatable targets. They go into some detail in the review.
OK, who's got mobile and relocatable targets? We're talking
about using nuclear weapons against them. This is the Nuclear
Posture Review. Presumably that means we're worried about
nuclear mobile and relocatable targets. Well, that's the
direction that the Chinese are moving in. That's what they're
modernization is premised on. They want to take their fixed
intercontinental ballistic missiles, now 20 years old, and
develop a new mobile ballistic missile in approximately the
same numbers, but to make it more secure, more survivable,
because they have a deterrent force. If the United States is
improving its capability to take those out first, that causes
the Chinese great concern, that they may not have a survivable
deterrent. That raises very profound issues for them.
The Chairman. Gentlemen, I appreciate your being here, I
appreciate the time, and I appreciate your willingness to
engage one another. It's the place from which guys like me can
learn the most, the circumstance, and I appreciate everything
you've done, as well, for the country.
I am going to--with your permission, would like to submit
several questions to each of you and warn you that you're all
good enough that, unfortunately, we're going to ask you to
trespass on your time again as this debate goes on. I thank you
very, very much.
We are adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 1:50 p.m., the hearing was adjourned, to
reconvene subject to the call of the Chair.]
-