Lawmakers Call for U.S. Nuclear Posture Study

A House of Representatives panel yesterday cut $20 million from the White House’s request for the Reliable Replacement Warhead program in order to fund a review of U.S. nuclear plans, the Washington Post reported (see GSN, April 25).

“This commission is designed to help frame the debate over the future direction of the nuclear weapons program and place it in the context of related strategic consideration,” said Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee Chairwoman Ellen Tauscher (D-Calif.).

The panel was considering the $51.4 billion request for strategic programs included in the fiscal 2008 defense authorization bill.

The Bush administration sought $88 million in the next fiscal year for finalizing design and cost studies for the program to develop new nuclear warheads.  That schedule would enable lawmakers to vote on the new submarine-launched warhead in 2008, and for the weapon to enter service by 2012.

Tauscher indicated her desire to slow the rate of spending of the RRW program, along with the Complex 2030 initiative intended to update the U.S. nuclear weapons complex.  Cutting RRW spending would produce “a measured, knowledge-based approach,” said subcommittee ranking Republican Terry Everett (R-Ala.).

The $20 million would allow for a one-year review by a bipartisan commission of the U.S. nuclear posture, Tauscher said.  There needs to be backing from both major parties regarding the necessary size of the nuclear weapons complex, she said.

Tauscher said the White House was not being realistic when it said in a 2001 Nuclear Posture Review that the country needed between 1,700 and 2,200 deployed warheads (Walter Pincus, Washington Post, May 3).

The Federation of American Scientists and the Natural Resources Defense Council yesterday estimated that there are now more than 9,930 nuclear warheads in the U.S. arsenal, and that the number would drop to slightly more than 5,040 before the end of 2012.

The two organizations released the estimates to challenge the decades-old practice of classifying the size of the stockpile.

The Bush administration has been slower than any other U.S. administration since 1957 in dismantling nuclear weapons, the organizations said.  Actual numbers are classified; the claim is based on information collected by authors of a new fact sheet published by the two groups (Federation of American Scientists, May 2).

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