MGEN Robert Smolen, USAF (Ret.)
Deputy Administrator for Defense Programs
AIAA Strategic and Tactical Missile.Systems Conference
January 23,2008
Thank you for the kind introduction. It is an honor for me
to be here with friends and colleagues to discuss our pressing
national security issues in a classified forum. My sincere
appreciation to the AIAA leadership add staff for all their
efforts. Although my formal remarks will be unclassified,
I'll gladly be able'to answer your questions at the SECRET
I
level.
I'U give you my bottom up front.. I'm here today to talk to
you about the future of the U.S. nuclear weapons program,
as well as a proposal to replace our aging Cold War
stockpile with one that is more secure, safer, easier to
maintain and with reliability that can be achieved over the
long term without underground testing. If you don't like
nuclear weapons and want fewer of them, then you should
demand we pursue the Reliable Replace Warhead (RRW)
concept. On the other hand, if you believe in the continuing
need to maintain our strategic deterrent, you should be a
strong advocate the RRW concept.
First I need to give you a little background.
During the Cold War, nuclear weapon programs were
undertaken in reaction to a clear and present danger to the
nation's survival. They involved large, multi-billion dollar,
development and production programs for both nuclear
weapons delivery systems and the warheads themselves.
There was intense and sustained attention and scrutiny to
these programs by senior government off~cials.The
uniformed services had a strong and prestigious career path
for officers involved in nuclear weapons R&D, planning, and
operations. There was sustained, widespread interest and
support within Congress' leadership and rank and file.
More generally, there was a reasonably robust bipartisan
consensus that nuclear weapons, in large part, were essential
to our nation's security.
In regard to nuclear warhead development and production,
the National Nuclear Security Administration and its
predecessor agencies at the Department of Energy were
replacing the stockpile on a 20 year cycle. Several major
warhead system development efforts were underway at each
of our national security labs at any one time. The stockpile
was very large and diverse with many weapons types. There
was a large warhead production complex producing up to
2,000 warheads per year. On average, we 'were conducting
over 20 nuclear tests per year, both to develop new warheads
and to assure the safety and reliability of the existing
stockpile.
The end of the Cold War did not bring and end to our
nuclear deterrent requirements as some supposed. With the
collapse of the Soviet Union, U.S. nuclear forces have been
rightly deemphasized and no longer command the same
attention from senior officials, o r from Congress. The
bipartisan consensus that we had about nuclear forces
during the Cold War has evaporated. As a result, some key
capabilities the nation has asked us to maintain are in
jeopardy. Today, the threats to the United States and its
allies are more diffuse and uncertain than they were in the
past.
The last twenty years have had enormous implications for
our nuclear weapons complex. Our last nuclear weaponthe W88-was
designed in the 1980s and entered sewice in
1988. We stopped producing nuclear weapons in 1992,
closed and dismantled our plutonium pit manufacturing and
stopped conducting underground nuclear testing and
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replaced it with the Stockpile Stewardship Program. By the
mid-1990s we had embarked on an ambitious program to
acquire the new stockpile stewardship tools-advanced
computing, high energy density physics capabilities, and
enhanced surveillance capabilities. In short our focus
shifted from replacing aging weapons with new ones to
simply sustaining our legacy stockpile by use of enhanced
suweillance coupled with replacement of aging components
in warhead life extension
By the early part of this decade our stockpile stewardship
program was well established and has been successful at
identifying and f f i n g technical problems in the stockpile.
But we face significant challenges as the stockpile continues
to age. If I can use an analogy to help illustrate the situation,
consider the B61 gravity bomb and the Ford Mustang. Both
were developed and fielded in the early sixties and both are
still with us today, although the B61 is no longer produced.
Let's say you bought a 1964 first model year Ford Mustang,
which you never drove once and now maintain as a
collector's item. I t has been sitting in your garage for 44
years. You wash it and polish it, keep the battery charged
and change the fluids, replacing parts when you deem it
necessary. However, you've never started the car since
bringing it home and have never even started the engine..
With all the tender loving care, are you confident after
having it sit in your garage for nearly a half century it will
work exactly as it did when you drove it to your garage and
parked it the first time. That's what we have to do in our
stockpile stewardship and life extension programs.
Over the years there have been five generations of Mustangs
and we've had several generations of weapons designs. The
fourth generation Mustang came out in 1994 and the fifth
generation came out in 2005. Our last weapon nuclear
weapon was designed in the late 1980's and the last new one
was produced over 15 years ago in 1992. With the successive
generations of Mustangs there were continuous
improvements in safety and reliability, although it still is a
muscle car and goes fast and is about the same size as the
earlier Mustangs. Today's Mustang has all the modern
safety and electronic features-air
bags, anti-lock brakes,
GPS navigation, satellite radio, theft deterrent and alarm
systems. Our nuclear arsenal remains locked in replicating
intricate design features well developed for their time, but
we believe we can now go further to implement modern 21"
century safety, security and anti-terrorism features.
Incorporating better safety, security, and surety features in
old systems - all without testing - is one of the challenges we
face with our nuclear stockpile.
With every warhead life extension program we slowly move
further and further away from the designs that were
certified with underground nuclear tests. These inevitable
accumulations of small changes over the extended lives of
these highly-optimized and complicated systems, has given
rise to concerns about how long can we sustain their
reliability. RRW takes us back to basics with everything
predicated on the concept that no testing will be required.
While we are confident that today's stockpile is safe and
reliable, it is only prudent to explore alternative means to
ensure stockpile reliability over the long term.
This was impetus for the Reliable Replacement Warhead
concept. RRW is intended to provide us with nuclear
weapons with enhanced safety and security, and with
assured reliability over the long term. Unfettered by Cold
War requirements for minimum weight and maximum
number of warheads on a missile, RRW is designed with
improved performance margins, reduced use of hazardous
materials, less stringent design tolerances for ease of
manufacture, and improved safety and security features that
did not exist and cannot be back fitted into our legacy
systems. The RRW is intended to be a replacement for
current warhead systems and will not introduce new
military capabilities into the stockpile.
Today our deterrent is at a major crossroads and important
decisions will have to be made now. Indecision and
maintaining the status quo is not acceptable. Each year
brings new technical challenges in maintaining the deterrent.
The Fiscal Year 2008 Omnibus Appropriations Act did not
fund the Department of Energy's RRW study-note
this is
feasibility and cost, not funding for
study to determine ~ R w
warhead development o r production. The Act did fund
continued work on approaches to certify the RRW without
nuclear testing and on enhanced RRW safety and surety
features. Completing the RRW cost and feasibility study,
however, is essential in order to ensure timely completion of
the next administration's nuclear posture review as
mandated by Congress as well as to inform important
decisions concerning the future of the deterrent.
Let there be no doubt: today's nuclear weapons stockpile is
safe and reliable and has not required post-deployment
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nuclear testing to date, nor is nuclear testing currently
anticipated o r planned. Periodically, however, we encounter
problems with warheads that in the past would have
resolved with nuclear tests. Our Stockpile Stewardship
Program has worked well so far to help us to avoid that
prospect. The considered judgment of the Directors of our
national weapons laboratories is that maintaining
certification of the finely-tuned designs of an aging Cold
W a r stockpile through Life Extension Programs and absent
nuclear testing involves increasing r i s k A technical problem
with a warhead that required a test to resolve may be
politically unacceptable, but so would a technical problem
with a warhead that called in question the viability of a large
portion of our deterrent. This is the conundrum we may
face one day with indecision and maintaining the status quo.
We are often asked: If today's stockpile is safe and reliable,
why start on RRW sooner rather than later? Why not wait
until the next decade when you know more? The need to
start sooner that than later is driven by three basic reasons.
First, is the increasing technical risk I just talked about.
Plutonium science continues to mature. Additionally the
exotic materials used in our warheads age at different rates
and many of their aging properties are still not well
understood. We cannot rule out a catastrophic failure in one
of our aging warheads. As our warheads continue to age,
their certification will become more difficult--especially as
life extensions and other technical modifications move the
warhead further away from the "as testedmdesign.
Second, the introduction of a RRW system provides the
benefit of additional diversity in the nation's sea-based
nuclear force. RRW will replace a portion of W76 warheads
deployed on the Trident system. That particular warhead
comprises a high percentage of our planned future strategic
nuclear deterrent force under the Moscow Treaty. Although
we have not uncovered any problems with the W76, it is
prudent to hedge against a catastrophic failure of that
system by introducing a diverse warhead design into the
submarine launched ballistic missile force.
Third, the RRW effort has provided an opportunity to
ensure the transfer of nuclear design skills from the
generation that honed these skills with nuclear testing to the
generation that will replace them. In just a few years, nearly
all of that older generation will be retired o r will have passed
away.
In addition to the three basic reasons we need RRW, there is
also the consideration that RRW can help facilitate a more
responsive nuclear weapons design and manufacturing
infrastructure. If we can build replacement warheads in
response to technical problems, we can further reduce
reserve warheads in the stockpile.
It's important to keep in mind that the RRW is designed to
replace the current, aging warheads. It is not new in the
traditional arms control or military sense. It provides no
new military capability, and will have the same fit, form and
function as our current weapons. It will not increase the size
o r power of the U.S. nuclear arsenal. It will simply allow us
to deploy a safer, more secure design that gives us greater
long-term confidence in the reliability of our stockpile,
rather than having to depend on our old, outdated Cold War
arsenal.
RRW will reduce that likelihood that the U.S. would need to
conduct a nuclear test to identify or confirm a fm to a
warhead in the stockpile. This advanced nonproliferation by
reinforcing our commitment to maintain our moratorium on
underground nuclear testing.
Because of the Moscow Treaty signed by Presidents Bush
and Putin, the number of operationally deployed strategic
nuclear weapons will go from over 10,000 at the peak of the
Cold War, to a range of 1700-2200 by 2012. In addition,
based on decisions by President Bush in 2004 and late last
year, the overall U.S. nuclear arsenal, by 2012,will be at its
lowest level in 50 years.
Our near-term strategy for the U.S. nuclear weapons
stockpile includes an increased rate for dismantling
warheads that are retired from the stockpile. Warhead
dismantlements ensure that our plans are not misperceived
by other nations as "restarting the arms race." Indeed, our
commitment to a smaller stockpile is made concrete by our
record of accelerated dismantlement.
The ability to reduce our stockpile even further with RRW
ensures continued progress on our international obligations
under Article M of the Nonproliferation Treaty.
Let me conclude by summarizing my basic message:
To meet its own security needs and those of its allies, the
United States will need a safe, secure, and reliable
nuclear deterrent for the foreseeable future. We will
achieve this with the smallest nuclear stockpile.
consistent with our nation's security.
We see increased risk, absent nuclear testing, in
assuring the long-term reliability of today's stockpile of
legacy warheads left over from the Cold War.
RRW can permit us to maintain a safe, secure and
reliable deterrent while reducing the overall number of
nuclear weapons in the stockpile.
As I said at the onset of my remarks today If you don't like nuclear weapons and want fewer of them,
then you should demand we pursue the Reliable Replace
Warhead (RRW) concept. On the other hand, if you believe
in the continuing need to maintain our strategic deterrent,
you should be a strong advocate the RRW concept.
Thank you. I'll be happy to take questions.