Report casts doubts on nuclear spending

The Government Accountability Office released a report last week citing concerns about the increasing budget for nuclear weapons and that budget's potential to be inaccurate

The GAO report, titled "Modernizing the Nuclear Security Enterprise," looked at issues facing the National Nuclear Security Administration's budget projections for nuclear weapons.

"This is the fifth year doing this review of modernization plans and the main finding in the report is that the budget estimates may not align with anticipated costs," said David Trimble, director of the U.S. and International Nuclear Security and Cleanup department of the GAO. "Their ability to execute large contracts and large projects is of concern because of the historical problems."

GAO officials cite a cost projection for weapons modernization at $297.6 billion, which is $4.2 billion higher than the administration's budget figures. The low-range cost estimates for four programs to extend the life of nuclear warheads were also above the budgeted amount in years past.

Most of the physical work on warheads and bombs for life-extension programs is done at Pantex, which does assembly and disassembly of the warheads and bombs, and at the Y-12 National Security Complex, which manufactures, assembles and disassembles certain key components. Both sites are managed by Consolidated Nuclear Security.

These projections come at an increasingly complex time for the NNSA, as it is ramping up to juggle four major refurbishment programs on four separate warheads: a submarine-launched ballistic missile, a tactical "smart bomb," a submarine-launched ballistic missile and an air-launched cruise missile.

"In our view, the NNSA has enormous responsibility that is incredibly important and they need to do a lot of work to maintain the U.S. stockpile," said Stephen Young, senior analyst in the Global Security Program with the Union of Concerned Scientists. "However, they keep planning to go big and do everything perfectly at once in the best possible way. They simply can't manage that. They need to think small and do what they have to get done to maintain the stockpile or we risk a real problem."

The NNSA, under the umbrella of the Department of Energy, still remains on the GAO's Major Program High-Risk List for a record of mismanagement, fraud, waste and abuse. Although the department has made progress in managing work on projects that cost under $750 million, a pattern of waste in large projects continues.

Testimony from the GAO to the U.S. Senate Strategic Forces Subcommittee highlighted three major challenges facing the Department of Energy: management of the life-extension programs, oversight of contracts and major projects, and budgetary issues.

Of the life-extension programs that are concerning, the "smart bomb" program has a shortage of staff and is proceeding on a constrained schedule with little margin for program risks. Another warhead, the Interoperable Warhead 1, is scheduled to begin modernization in 2020, but the budget is based on a plutonium pit production line that isn't up to capacity yet.

"Some of the programs, like the W76 (submarine-launched missile), make total sense. It's the bulk of our stockpile, 1,600 warheads, and has a total cost of $4 billion," Young said. "Now for the B61 ("smart bomb"), they are spending $10 billion to modernize 480 bombs."

Young pointed out that for the cost of one "smart bomb," the NNSA could modernize roughly eight of the submarine-launched missiles.

"The NNSA is proposing to make major changes to the warheads, and because they are reaching so far, they risk cost overruns, delays and problems that have always surfaced in their programs," Young said. "It greatly increases the risk that one of these will fail. They should just do the work required to make sure our stockpile is safe and effective and nothing more than that."

Young said he also worries about the choice to modernize the "smart bomb," which would allow it to hone in on precise targets and vary its payload from 0.3 kilotons to 150 kilotons.

"The goal is not to use these weapons. Some argue you need to be able to fight and win a nuclear war in case one starts, but once you go nuclear, all bets are off," Young said. "There's no reason to plan for a small nuclear war."