The Pentagon’s Trillion Dollar Sales Job

Recently the Pentagon announced a 14-stop summer tour touting the troubled F-35 aircraft, designed to show its wares and convince the public that the program is worth the price — $1.5 trillion over its lifetime and already $160 billion over budget.

But this isn’t the Pentagon’s only difficult sales pitch. With a $1 trillion plan to modernize and maintain the US nuclear weapons arsenal, the defense establishment has used creative tactics to market the campaign.

Most observers accept that fact that nuclear weapons continue to play a role in protecting American security. Moreover, there is little question that many of our nuclear systems are coming to the end of their useful lives.

But the question is whether the Pentagon should take an “all of the above” approach to modernize all legs of the U.S nuclear triad — land, sea and air — and associated nuclear warheads.

Finding increasing resistance to its plan, mainly due to excessive costs, Pentagon officials are expanding their justifications.

The Russians are coming

When the United States deployed over 31,000 nuclear weapons at the height of the Cold War, “the Russians are coming” served as the ubiquitous excuse.

For Pentagon purposes, that era has returned.

In presenting its Fiscal Year 2017 budget to Congress, the Pentagon declared: “We are countering Russia’s aggressive policies through investments in a broad range of capabilities,” which include designing a new long-range strike bomber (B-21) and a new long-range stand-off cruise missile (LRSO), in addition to directly modernizing other aspects of the nuclear arsenal.

There’s a problem with that justification: Nuclear modernization planning has been in the works for many years, extending back to a now inconceivable era when US-Russian relations were civil and at times productive.

Today, with rising US-Russian tensions over Ukraine, Crimea, Syria and elsewhere, Russia has become the excuse du jour.

This latest line of argument disregards the fact that the United States maintains a stockpile of almost 7,000 nuclear weapons that has not prevented questionable Russian behavior. Defenders of the program ignore the notion that nuclear weapons seem irrelevant for the major security challenges facing United States.

The Chinese?

Others have pointed to a growing Chinese military force and its increasingly aggressive actions in the South China Sea.

A recent Defense News piece pointed out, “With a rising China and a resurgent Russia, as well as six other nations armed with nuclear weapons, the Pentagon is sounding an alarm that the tab for nuclear recapitalization is due.”

Robert Sher, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Strategy, Plans, and Capabilities, recently testified, “China is introducing qualitative advances into its nuclear and conventional military capabilities as it continues to rise.”

Yes, but there’s also the inconvenient fact that the 7,000-strong U.S. nuclear force dwarfs the Chinese nuclear force of about 260 warheads, only a fraction of which can actually hit the US. Frankly, our predominance in nuclear weaponry has not deterred Beijing’s adventurism.

And then there are the North Koreans

North Korean belligerent and outrageous behavior can always be counted upon to strengthen Pentagon arguments. Kim Jong Un has launched a series of missile and rocket flights, as well as infamous nuclear weapons tests. He has also made a series of outlandish boasts and threats.

In direct response, Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) said in written statement: “We must also take immediate steps to strengthen our own nuclear deterrent, which is the foundation for our other defense capabilities.”

Brian McKeon, Principal Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, warned, “North Korea’s evolving nuclear weapons and missile programs pose a continuing threat to the United States and our allies and partners.”

If 7,000 U.S. nuclear weapons, plus heavy-duty sanctions, have not been enough to prod Pyongyang into good behavior, updating all of our nuclear weapons at the same time will not either.

Is one trillion dollars “affordable” amidst massive Pentagon budgets?

There’s an oft-repeated contention that the nuclear modernization program is easily affordable.

House Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Ala. opened a January 12 hearing with, “Let’s start out the year by putting to rest this notion that our nuclear deterrent is ‘unaffordable.’ This is — quite simply — ridiculous.”

Senator Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., chairman of the SASC’s Strategic Forces Subcommittee, agreed that the effort was being funded at “the bare minimum — a very small part of the federal budget.”

Added Lt. Gen. James Kowalski, former deputy commander of US Strategic Command, the total nuclear modernization costs “represents less than 0.3 percent of the United States GDP at a time when the Pentagon has asked European nations to meet their NATO goal of spending 2 percent of GDP on defense.”

If the program is so affordable, why do many Pentagon officials tell a different story?

Principal Deputy Undersecretary of Defense, Brian McKeon, noted, “We’re looking at that big bow wave and wondering how the heck we’re going to pay for it, and probably thanking our lucky stars we won’t be here to answer the question.”

Undersecretary for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics, Frank Kendall, was recently quoted in an article for Defense News, stating, “There is no way I can see that we can sustain the force structure and have a reasonable modernization program unless we get more money in the defense budget.”

Deputy Secretary of Defense Bob Work has also acknowledged concerns over nuclear modernization funding. “Starting in 2021, between 2021 and 2035, it’s about $18 billion a year to reconstitute and recapitalize our strategic nuclear deterrent,” Work said. “If that comes out of our conventional forces that will be very, very, very problematic for us.”

Outside observers agree. “The challenge here is that we have to recapitalize all three legs [of the nuclear triad] and we don’t have the money to do it,” explained General James Cartwright, former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Todd Harrison, the director of defense budget analysis at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), wrote in a January report that “Modernization plans, if not altered from current plans, will require either an increase in defense spending or a reallocation of resources within the defense budget.” Harrison points to peak nuclear costs in the mid-2020’s coinciding with a large bow wave on spending for conventional weapons and programs.

To put that in another way, if nuclear plans proceed, conventional programs will suffer.

The program is “affordable” — if someone else pays

Curiously, the Air Force and Navy are suggesting that nuclear weapons modernization costs should be paid outside of their budgets — another red flag for the notion of “affordability.”

Congress has authorized — but not yet appropriated money for — a budget gimmick called the “National Sea-Based Deterrence Fund,” which moves the nuclear submarine program from the Navy’s account to the defense-wide budget. This changes the accounting, but as Undersecretary Kendall acknowledged, it fails to fix the actual affordability problem.

And now it seems that the Air Force wants in on the action. Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James recently said, “Certainly if there is to be a fund for nuclear modernization, it seems to me appropriate that it be for all three legs of the triad and not just for one leg of the triad.”

Most recently, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter appeared open to the idea. In response to a question from Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton, R-Ark., he said the idea “may make sense.”

‘Apres moi le deluge’; let the next Administration solve it

Perhaps the least excusable line of reasoning is that the modernization program may be unaffordable, but the next Administration will have to solve the problem.

Making hard budget choices is always difficult, but the current Pentagon team seem content to pass the buck.

Last year, Pentagon comptroller Mike McCord admitted “I don’t know of a good way for us to solve this issue,” while noting that it will be a major challenge for the next administration.

Frank Kendall, the Pentagon’s top acquisitions official, agreed, “the next administration is definitely going to have to confront this.”

The trouble is that decisions made this year to direct resources into the highest priority programs, at the same time reducing others, can at the least partially alleviate some of the largest fiscal concerns down the road.

Gen. Paul Selva, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, pointed out, “If we are not starting that discussion right now, this instant, it will be too late.”

Indeed it is late

A recurring Pentagon pattern involves creating a new program advertising amazing technological advances, all while underestimating the costs and miscalculating the technical challenges, and then, years later, admitting to huge cost overruns that require drastic program cuts.

A plan to deploy 200 MX ICBM missiles was eventually cut to 50. A purchase of 132 B-2 stealth bomber was cut to 21.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Robert Hale, former Pentagon Comptroller, told the February 2016 Nuclear Deterrence Summit in Arlington, Virginia, that there are alternatives to the “all of the above” strategy. Such steps could include delaying the start of some individual programs, reducing the total buy and stretching programs or cuts in non-nuclear areas.

If Congress joins with the Pentagon to stick their collective heads in the sand, there will be severe penalties: taxpayers will pay the price and conventional weapons, as well as readiness, will suffer.