Panel finds erosion of nuclear deterrence mission widespread at Defense

A special task force reviewing nuclear weapons management across the Defense Department found a "distressing degree of inattention" to the nuclear deterrence mission among senior military and civilian officials, said James Schlesinger, a former Defense secretary and chairman of the panel.

In a briefing at the Pentagon on Thursday, Schlesinger and other panel members released the Phase II Review of the DoD Nuclear Mission, the final report of the Task Force on DoD Nuclear Weapons Management.

An earlier report released in September 2008 (here here here) focused on shortcomings in Air Force nuclear stewardship.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates created the panel in June 2008 to uncover systemic problems in the handling of nuclear weapons and materiel after highly publicized failures in which Air Force pilots unwittingly flew nuclear bombs across the country and the Defense Logistics Agency erroneously shipped nuclear-related components to Taiwan.

U.S. allies have been especially concerned about the erosion of nuclear capability, Schlesinger said. Without confidence in U.S. capability, some of those allies could develop their own nuclear weapons, which raises the risk of nuclear proliferation, he added.

Leadership on nuclear deterrence must come from the White House and senior officials at Defense and the Energy Department, Schlesinger said. The task force recommended that the Obama administration "develop a strategic framework defining the unique role of nuclear weapons in deterring threats to the United States, our key interests and our allies." Such a framework could provide a foundation for the upcoming Nuclear Posture Review and Quadrennial Defense Review.

According to the report, "The decline in management attention to nuclear matters is evidenced by a dramatically reduced workforce, fragmentation of nuclear policy and guidance responsibility across the office, dilution of organizational focus because of proliferating missions, and relegation of nuclear-focused organizations to positions of lower authority."

"The remaining workforce lacks both depth and breadth of nuclear experience," the panel reported.

Among other things, the task force recommended that Gates establish an assistant secretary of Defense for deterrence in the policy office to consolidate nuclear oversight, which is now spread among dozens of Defense offices.

While Gates has not yet made any decisions regarding the recommendations, Schlesinger said, "I think that is very likely to happen and that there will be a concentration of authority in that office."

The task force also recommended that Gates review the mission portfolio of U.S. Strategic Command, the joint military organization that has responsibility for the nuclear mission. The command has nine major program areas, which limits the organization's ability to maintain a focus on nuclear deterrence.

The panel didn't prescribe how the command's mission portfolio should be restructured, but it did recommend that the command retain the nuclear deterrence, global strike and space missions, suggesting that other responsibilities could be moved elsewhere.

In its report on the Air Force, the task force pointed out that after the Cold War, the service reorganized in such a way that degraded the deterrence mission by shifting nuclear assets away from a single command organization. Within the new components the nuclear mission was diluted and lacked high-level advocates. The erosion of capabilities and expertise followed. A similar degradation of nuclear capability occurred Defensewide during the last decade, the panel noted.

Only in the Navy, where the nuclear mission remained focused within a single organization, has the commitment held relatively steady, Schlesinger said.

Even so, there has been "some fraying around the edges" of Navy capability, he said. "With all remaining nuclear weapons concentrated in the fleet ballistic-missile submarine force, a significant future challenge for the Navy will be an inevitable decline in nuclear weapons and policy expertise at the flag officer level among officers from other branches," the task force found. It made a number of recommendations aimed at compensating for the service's shrinking experience base.

Schlesinger and retired Air Force Gen. Michael P.C. Carns, a panel member, both made a point of praising Air Force leaders for taking significant steps to improve the service's nuclear capability.

"The value of our deterrent is not primarily a function of the number of our warheads, but rather of the credibility of our nuclear capabilities in the minds of those we seek to deter, dissuade or assure," the report said.

SecDef outlines commitment to military reform

Anyone looking for a clue as to how Defense Secretary Robert Gates may pursue his responsibilities under the Obama administration should pick up the January issue of Foreign Affairs magazine. In an article titled "A Balanced Strategy: Reprogramming the Pentagon for a New Age," Gates spells out his thinking on issues from the war in Iraq to modernization plans.

"To fail -- or to be seen to fail -- in either Iraq or Afghanistan would be a disastrous blow to U.S. credibility, both among friends and allies and among potential adversaries," Gates writes, dispelling any notion that he might support a speedy withdrawal of troops from Iraq if such reductions mean worsening security there.

"In Iraq, the number of U.S. combat units there will decline over time -- as it was going to do no matter who was elected president in November," he writes. "Still, there will continue to be some kind of a U.S. advisory and counterterrorism effort in Iraq for years to come."

With the Pentagon gearing up to conduct its next Quadrennial Defense Review -- a broad examination of how the services are structured and equipped to meet emerging challenges -- Gates' essay provides a sense of the direction the review is likely to take.

The bulk of Gates' concerns center on military modernization. He notes that higher defense spending will not eliminate national security risks, and says entrenched support for conventional modernization programs at the Pentagon, in industry and Congress is problematic.

"My fundamental concern is there is no commensurate institutional support -- including in the Pentagon -- for the capabilities needed to win today's wars and some of their likely successors," he said.

While maintaining a robust array of conventional weapons and planning for warfare against similarly equipped military forces remains important, Gates called for keeping the conventional threat in perspective: "As much as the Navy has shrunk since the end of the Cold War, for example, in terms of tonnage, its battle fleet is still larger than the next 13 navies combined -- and 11 of those 13 navies are U.S. allies or partners."

"It is true that the United States would be hard-pressed to fight a major conventional ground war elsewhere on short notice, but as I have asked before, where on earth would we do that?" he writes. "U.S. air and sea forces have ample untapped striking power should the need arise to deter or punish aggression -- whether on the Korean Peninsula, in the Persian Gulf, or across the Taiwan Strait."

While the United States is unlikely to embark on another forced regime change anytime soon, Gates writes, "that does not mean it may not face similar challenges in a variety of locales." The military, he says, must do a better job of building capacity in allied foreign governments and their security forces to prevent festering problems in weak states from ballooning into crises requiring U.S. military intervention.

"The United States does not have the luxury of opting out because these scenarios do not conform to preferred notions of the American way of war," he warns.

Gates is concerned that the institutional military -- mainly the bureaucratic organizations and systems for promoting personnel and buying weapons -- is out of sync with the needs of the nation. For example, he says, military promotion systems must reward the importance of advising, training and equipping foreign troops -- something still not considered a career-enhancing path for the best and brightest officers.

Gates is especially critical of military acquisition and procurement operations. He asks why it was necessary to go outside the normal processes to develop technologies to counter roadside bombs, build mine-resistant vehicles, and expand the use of unmanned aerial vehicles in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"The Defense Department's conventional modernization programs seek a 99 percent solution over a period of years. Stability and counterinsurgency missions require 75 percent solutions over a period of months. The challenge is whether these two different paradigms can be made to coexist in the U.S. military's mind-set and bureaucracy," Gates writes.

It is essential that strategy and risk drive procurement and not the other way around, he says: "I want to see a defense establishment that can make and implement decisions quickly in support of those on the battlefield."