Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Defense Department’s most high-profile threat reduction program last week came one step closer to receiving a nearly $100 million funding boost for the coming fiscal year, the latest budget documents show (see GSN, Sept. 14).

The Senate Appropriations Committee voted 18-12 in favor of the annual defense spending bill that would provide $522.5 million for the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction program in fiscal 2011. The Pentagon effort works to secure and eliminate weapons of mass destruction and their associated infrastructure in former Soviet states and beyond.

The appropriated amount matches the figure allotted by Senate and House Armed Services committees in May. The House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee approved roughly $523 million for the program in its version of the funding bill. The full appropriations panel in that chamber has not yet scheduled a vote on the legislation.

Both chambers must approve their respective defense spending bills. The measures would then be combined through a House-Senate conference and sent for signing by President Barack Obama. As the fiscal year 2011 starts in about a week, lawmakers are likely to draw up a continuing resolution that would allow government work to continue until the appropriations bills are passed.

Nonproliferation has long been near the top of the administration’s policy agenda, highlighted by Obama’s April 2009 speech in Prague. This spring he convened a two-day summit in Washington in which nearly 50 foreign leaders and top officials met to discuss plans to secure the global stocks of loose nuclear material.

The Nunn-Lugar effort is a “key part of the U.S. goal to secure all vulnerable nuclear material within four years and also to safeguard and eliminate potentially dangerous Russian weapons that have been decommissioned,” according to Kingston Reif, nuclear nonproliferation director at the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation.

“It deserves the level of funding that it has received,” he added yesterday during a telephone interview.

The program has received billions of dollars of support since its inception in 1991. As of last week its accomplishments included deactivation of 7,551 strategic nuclear warheads; destruction of 787 ICBMs; and elimination of 498 ICBM silos and 180 mobile launchers; 651 submarine-launched ballistic missiles and 476 launchers; 32 ballistic missile-capable submarines; 155 strategic bombers; 906 nuclear air-to-surface missiles and 194 nuclear test tunnels, according to Senator Richard Lugar (R-Ind.).

The threat reduction program's proposed $522.5 million budget matches the administration’s initial request and is an increase of nearly $100 million over the $424 million appropriated in fiscal 2010.

The lion’s share of those funds, slightly more than $209 million, would go toward biological threat reduction in the former Soviet Union, according to House and Senate authorization reports. That work encompasses securing pathogens, developing laboratories that conduct research on disease countermeasures and some border security operations, said Lugar spokesman Andy Fisher.

Nearly $80 million would be devoted to WMD proliferation prevention efforts that provide equipment, training and other resources to allow authorities in allied states to identify and prevent smuggling of unconventional weapons materials. Close to $75 million would support a new “Global Nuclear Lockdown” program, which aims to meet the president’s goal of securing the world’s loose nuclear materials, the authorization documents show.

Lawmakers allocated about $67 million for strategic offensive arms elimination inside Russia and $45 million for nuclear weapons transportation security in that country. They also set aside roughly $9.6 million for atomic weapons storage security inside the former Soviet Union, the report’s state.

Another $6.8 million would be used to eliminate strategic nuclear arms in Ukraine, while $3 million would be spent on chemical weapons destruction in Russia.

The program’s budget also would include $23 million for other assessments and administrative costs as well as $5 million for “defense and military contacts,” according to the reports.

However, the Senate Armed Services Committee diverged from its House counterpart by asking the defense and energy secretaries to submit a joint plan to carry out nonproliferation activities within China, a first for the Nunn-Lugar program.

The blueprint, which would cover fiscal years 2011 through 2016, would include a description of actions to be carried out; milestones and goals for such activities; an estimate of their annual cost; and an assessment of the total amount China would contribute to the effort, according to the panel's report.

The National Nuclear Security Administration, a semiautonomous branch of the Energy Department, has already had technical exchanges and discussions with Beijing over the U.S. Megaports Initiative, Tara Andringa, a spokeswoman for the Senate panel, said yesterday in an e-mail message. The program supports foreign government’s efforts to prevent and catch smuggling of nuclear and other radioactive substances through seaports.

“As China is different from other countries involved with the CTR program from an economic perspective, and to ensure coordination and cooperation with the nuclear agency, there is a reporting requirement so that the full scope of the plans with China is well understood and well coordinated,” Andringa told Global Security Newswire. “Based on lessons learned from the early CTR days it is important the program plan is clear and the coordination is in place.”

Lugar “welcomes the increase in funding for the CTR program," Fisher said. "It is necessary to support the opportunities for further expansion of the Nunn-Lugar program outside the former Soviet Union, and the continued growth of the chemical and biological demilitarization efforts.”

Reif, however, struck a cautious note over the likelihood that lawmakers would fail to approve the defense funding bill before adjourning Sept. 30 for the midterm election break. If a continuing resolution is necessary, all federal programs would be funded at this fiscal year's spending levels until the bill is passed, not the amount requested by the administration.

He said that while the White House could ask for certain exceptions, it remains unclear if that would include nonproliferation efforts.

“It’s an uncertain appropriations picture moving forward, given the gridlock in Congress right now,” Reif told GSN.