Reforming the US nuclear weapons enterprise

Abstract

Management and governance problems within the nuclear weapons enterprise are complex and cross jurisdictional boundaries. These problems have been repeatedly studied and are the target of yet another study, coming to completion as this article was being written. The studies agree on many of the steps that must be taken if the US nuclear weapons complex is to be reformed. What the government needs now is leadership determined to actually implement the necessary changes within the NNSA, its labs and plants, and the Energy Department for reform to succeed. Successful implementation requires the creation of champions who are empowered to effect real change, and institutionalized means of monitoring progress on implementation. Once the recommendations of the latest study are issued, Congress should establish an independent group to monitor progress on implementation.

President Obama has stated a long-term goal of eliminating nuclear weapons globally and has taken concrete near-term steps—e.g., concluding New START with Russia—toward that goal. At the same time, he has committed to ensuring that US nuclear forces remain safe, secure, and effective for as long as they are needed in service to the nation’s security. The president’s challenge is to sustain and modernize nuclear forces and supporting infrastructure in a period of fiscal austerity, using a nuclear enterprise that many believe has been seriously mismanaged.

The US nuclear weapons stockpile is the smallest it has been since the Eisenhower administration, yet its role in deterring the most grievous of threats to the United States and its allies remains central. Warheads and their delivery platforms are not immune to aging and degradation; to sustain “safe, secure, effective” forces, from time to time those forces must be life-extended or otherwise modernized.

Today, the nation is on the cusp of a modernization cycle for nuclear delivery platforms and the warheads they carry. The last such cycle—the Carter-Reagan strategic modernization program—occurred during the late 1970s and early 1980s, leading to deployment of B-1 and B-2 bombers, the Peacekeeper intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), the Trident D-5 submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM), and air-, ground- and sea-launched cruise missiles. Many of the nuclear warheads and associated delivery platforms that are fielded today—including the Minuteman III ICBM, the B-52 bomber, and the B61 bomb—evolved from modernization cycles that took place two decades before this last one.

In coming years, many systems will need to be replaced or their service lives extended. Every warhead type in the stockpile will either undergo a life-extension program or be retired over the next two decades. At the same time, the US government is embedded in an increasingly austere fiscal environment. The Budget Control Act, coupled with fact-of-life cost growth in key programs, has forced a tightening of belts. Omnipresent continuing budget resolutions have further complicated the efforts of the Defense Department and the Energy Department’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) in overseeing US nuclear forces. Perhaps most important, there is a serious question about whether the nuclear weapons enterprise is up to the complex modernization task it faces in coming years. This concern is amplified in the president’s fiscal 2015 budget request, issued earlier this year, in which:

An interoperable warhead life-extension program to replace the aging W78 ICBM and W88 SLBM warheads has been delayed by five years, compared to last year’s plan.

A life-extended warhead for a new cruise missile is also being significantly delayed.

An alternate plutonium strategy, designed to replace a failed program to recapitalize the aging facility at Los Alamos that supports the production of pits for the cores of nuclear weapons, has been delayed by five years.

Efforts to recapitalize another aging facility—the Uranium Processing Facility at Y-12—have been slowed due to mismanagement and cost overruns; based on a recently issued independent review, the entire concept is now being rethought.

Management and governance problems within the nuclear weapons enterprise are complex and cross jurisdictional boundaries, in the executive branch and with Congress. These problems have been repeatedly studied and are the target of yet another study, coming to completion as this article was being written. The studies agree on many of the steps that must be taken if the US nuclear weapons complex is to be reformed. What the government needs now is leadership determined to actually implement the necessary changes within the NNSA, its labs and plants, and the Energy Department, for reform to succeed.

The nuclear weapons enterprise

The Defense Department develops and fields nuclear delivery platforms and generates requirements for the warheads carried on those platforms. The NNSA oversees the research, development, test, and acquisition programs that respond to the Defense Department’s warhead needs. The legacy of this bifurcated arrangement evolved from the Manhattan Project in the 1940s when clear civilian control of nuclear technology, having both military and peaceful application, was seen as desirable. That legacy has had certain benefits relevant even today but has also introduced inefficiencies in the way nuclear warhead life-extension and infrastructure modernization programs are pursued.

Unlike Defense Department weapons development, nuclear warheads are not developed and fielded through competitive contracting. Rather, the NNSA funds and oversees work carried out at eight government-owned, contractor-operated facilities—three national laboratories (Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore, and Sandia), four production plants (Pantex, Y-12 Plant, Kansas City Plant, and Savannah River), and the Nevada National Security Site. This enterprise supports the US nuclear weapons stockpile from cradle to grave. Unlike private-sector companies doing business with the Defense Department, NNSA-funded facilities, personnel, and infrastructure are maintained year after year to provide a set of capabilities that can be drawn from as needed in support of the nuclear stockpile.

The NNSA’s main job is to ensure a research and development and manufacturing infrastructure with sufficient highly qualified personnel to advance three core missions: sustain the current nuclear stockpile and ensure that it remains safe, secure, and effective; certify the safety and reliability of the future stockpile; and provide a quick, effective response to technical or geopolitical surprise.

In addition, the enterprise is expected to leverage nuclear capabilities and infrastructure to support national security needs beyond US nuclear weapons.

The NNSA enterprise has done a first-rate job of developing the tools, the scientific facilities, and the expertise to certify a safe and reliable stockpile—i.e., the “science” part of stockpile stewardship. It has also been effective in leveraging core capabilities in support of the national security missions of other government agencies, including support to non-proliferation, arms control, nuclear counterterrorism, and global threat reduction. The NNSA’s weapons labs, plants, and the Nevada site are crown jewels of US science, technology, and engineering.

With that said, the NNSA has in large part been unable to plan, manage, oversee, and hold accountable a nuclear enterprise responsible for delivering, on time and to cost, warhead life-extension programs to sustain today’s stockpile and large infrastructure projects that provide capabilities to respond to future stockpile needs. Among the root causes of these failures is that the NNSA federal workforce, while technically competent, does not possess the depth and breadth of program management, systems engineering, and cost-estimation skills to execute large, complex projects.

How did we get to where we are today?

An organization’s culture defines how it views itself and its mission. The culture of the nuclear weapons enterprise, evolving from the Manhattan Project, had several notable characteristics. It was, first off, a unique partnership between government, the University of California, and the private sector to bring advanced science and technology to bear on a singular threat to the nation. That partnership put excellence in science and technology above all else and was characterized by a scientific and not a military culture. The enterprise was responsive to the Defense Department’s warhead requirements, but aggressively independent of Defense, stressing technical integrity coupled with freedom to disagree with higher-ups. In the enterprise’s culture, nuclear weapons were seen to be so important that different views on them should be encouraged, not suppressed. The enterprise stressed an intense competition of ideas and concepts between lab-led teams, and relied on a strong, competent federal organization in Albuquerque to drive warhead production.

During the Cold War, that culture sustained a US nuclear enterprise that was carrying out an intensive and high-priority program to field new types of nuclear warheads on roughly a five-year cycle. Vigorous competition between two lab product teams—one headed up by Lawrence Livermore and one by Los Alamos, each with (fire-walled) Sandia partners—resulted in the winning team being awarded the development program for the next warhead. Although cost was a factor, the competition was mainly on design innovations to achieve ever better system performance—more “bang,” in smaller, lighter packages having enhanced safety and security.

The Energy Department’s Albuquerque Operations Office, composed of a team of federal officials with deep experience in nuclear weapons programs, ensured that the lab teams fully engaged the production plants and Defense Department delivery system experts. To a large degree, the Albuquerque office was the systems integrator for warhead development and production. This process worked well during the Cold War when the enterprise was turning out new warheads on a scale that sometimes exceeded 1,000 weapons per year.

Over the past two decades, major changes have transformed warhead acquisition—the end of the Cold War, the end of nuclear testing, a much more tightly constrained fiscal environment and, most important, the evolution of the mission from a balanced program of science and technology, engineering development, and production of new warheads on roughly a five-year cycle to much less frequent programs to extend the life of existing warheads.

By the early 1990s, the United States had just completed its last modernization cycle and there was not much life-extension work on the horizon. Most effort in the 1990s and early 2000 time frame was devoted to advancing the “science” of stockpile stewardship; the production complex was allowed to wither away, and the Albuquerque Operations Office was disestablished. The argument went this way: “Money is tight, we aren’t producing anything right now, and the big scientific challenge is to develop the experimental and analytical tools to certify safe, reliable warheads under a nuclear test ban.”

As a result, the organizational culture that evolved from the Manhattan Project and took us through the Cold War has undergone significant changes. Because of the relative lack of production work over most of the past two decades, as well as from heightened sensitivity to safety resulting in part from the 1986 Challenger accident, the NNSA has lost its way on a production “culture” and become exceedingly risk averse.

Today, the NNSA faces a series of life-extension programs involving every warhead in the stockpile with no clear plan to modernize needed plutonium infrastructure, with uranium infrastructure that is falling apart, and with an enterprise that has lost its program management and systems integration skills.

Illustration: Who “owns” the B61 bomb life-extension program?

The B61 bomb, deployed with NATO fighter-bombers, provides the cornerstone of US extended deterrence commitments to allies. It is also carried on the B-2 bomber, providing an essential component of air-delivered strategic deterrence. A life-extension program for the B61 is under way, at a total cost of about $8 billion, to replace aging, unsupportable components in that bomb. Several knowledgeable government and laboratory officials were posed the following question: “Who is the program manager for the B61 bomb life-extension program?” There were several responses:

“It’s Sandia.”

“It’s Los Alamos.”

“It’s the B61 Project Officers Group (POG).”

“It’s the B61 Executive Steering Group (ESG).”

“It’s the NNSA federal officials in Albuquerque.”

“It’s the Nuclear Weapons Council (or its Standing and Safety Committee).”

“No one manages the program.”

To state the obvious, there is a problem—multiple and intertwined lines of authority have obscured who specifically is responsible and accountable for a critical program to sustain the nation’s nuclear deterrent. Notwithstanding these responses, there is actually a well-defined set of responsibilities and accountability for managing the pieces of individual life-extension programs, and a fairly well defined process guiding development and production. The nuclear design lab—Los Alamos in the case of the B61—generates the engineering design information for the nuclear explosive package. Sandia is responsible for design, development, and testing of non-nuclear components and for their integration with the explosive package. Sandia also works with Air Force engineers to ensure compatibility of the bomb with the Defense Department-produced bomb tail kit assembly. All activities require close coordination with production activities at Sandia, Kansas City, Y-12, and Pantex, and with the Air Force.

A major problem: There is no driving entity, such as the Albuquerque Operations Office, to coordinate activities at up to eight sites on tight and interdependent schedules; to ensure the labs and plants engage productively; or to pull funds from one activity at one site that is on track to augment a different activity at another site that isn’t.

Improving program management

In managing the NNSA’s large acquisition programs, there are two generic functions. Program managers organize the set of technical activities—research and development, testing, evaluation, systems integration—leading to a manufactured product. Federal oversight defends and advances the program by engaging Congress on needed resources, and by holding the program manager accountable for meeting cost and schedule milestones.

In the traditional approach, NNSA officials, working with program leads at the labs and plants, both oversee and manage warhead life-extension programs and infrastructure recapitalization projects. This acquisition model has been successfully demonstrated, not just by the Albuquerque Operations Office, but by the Navy Strategic Systems Programs—responsible for all aspects of the Trident submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) system—and the Naval Reactors Program for ship nuclear propulsion.

Both of these naval programs employ several hundred federal acquisition experts and engage companies in the private sector as support contractors, not as lead systems integrators. Both have been in business for decades and have been successful in achieving safe, secure, and cost-effective operations across their respective systems’ life cycles.

The intensive engagement of the Navy Strategic Systems Programs with the NNSA on all aspects of the W76 SLBM warhead life-extension program (now completing production), the program management expertise that it brought to bear, and the respect it has engendered over decades as a technically competent customer of the NNSA’s services were major factors in the relatively successful execution of that program.

The NNSA must reconstitute a life-extension program office, with capabilities similar to those previously provided by the Albuquerque Operations Office, to oversee activities at the nuclear labs and plants, to ensure their integration with related work of the relevant service, and to de-conflict interactions between multiple ongoing life-extension programs. This would entail a multiyear effort to transform the workforce by hiring systems engineers from the outside, by training from within, or some combination of the two. One “out of the box” idea for improving NNSA management would have the Navy Strategic Systems Programs take on management and system integration responsibilities for its warheads until comparable capabilities at the NNSA are restored.

Necessary but not sufficient conditions for success

Competent program management, systems integration, and cost estimation are necessary but not sufficient conditions for successful execution of life-extension projects and major construction efforts in the nuclear weapons complex. Other obstacles that prevent or impede work from being done must also be addressed in an overall solution.

Budget atomization

Program managers cannot manage if they cannot readily move funds across the eight sites to address unforeseen contingencies. Budgets are submitted to Congress with dollars allocated in many small “buckets” to fund the anticipated workload at each site, and Congress funds it that way. The intent is to maintain tight control of spending, reflecting a lack of trust among Congress, the NNSA, and the labs and plants carrying out the work. Moving funds between buckets involves a ponderous process to gain high-level NNSA and Energy Department approval and congressional reprogramming authority. The associated delay ultimately increases program cost.

A risk-adverse safety culture

Independent safety oversight is a critical component of all programs. That said, examples abound in which multiple layers of oversight, coupled with a risk-adverse Energy Department and NNSA culture, have led to substantial cost growth in major projects without increasing safety. The oversight process involving the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, established by Congress to advise the Energy Department on the safety of its nuclear facilities, has not been particularly effective. Problems arise when the NNSA and the safety board argue about the interpretation and application of Energy Department safety rules. The “sunshine laws” under which the safety board operates are well intended—indeed, transparency reinforces public confidence in the enterprise—but corrosive impacts arise when safety issues play out in the press before the dialogue or choices are mature. Recommendations of the board often do not buy down safety risks commensurate with their high cost. A strategy of seeking to eliminate all risks is unachievable. Moreover, it diverts attention from managing the most important ones, leading, somewhat perversely, to a less safe workplace.

Regular exercise of life-extension capabilities

The government’s overall plan for life-extension programs—both near- and long-term—must ensure that the complex exercises the full set of required capabilities on a stable, year-to-year basis that builds competence and confidence. Capabilities not regularly exercised will be lost—as experience shows. Further delay of the interoperable warhead life-extension program, for example, puts at risk Lawrence Livermore’s efforts to maintain key capabilities. If core capabilities are lost, the quality of program management will not make a difference.

Beyond program management

Restoring program management and systems integration skills to the NNSA workforce is a manageable problem with a known solution. Indeed, capabilities the nuclear enterprise once had can, over time, be restored. But a host of other problems present in the nuclear weapons enterprise must also be addressed if real change is to occur.

First, the ineffective relationship between the NNSA and the national labs must be changed. In part due to changes in how the government contracts for lab services, the relationship between federal officials and lab managers has become adversarial, and not a shared partnership to advance the nation’s security. Lack of trust breeds micromanagement and associated inefficiencies, with the NNSA directing not just “what” but “how” projects should be carried out. Multiple and unclear lines of authority within the NNSA often result in mixed messages being delivered to the labs and plants.

There is also a structural problem. Unlike the situation at the Defense Department, in the NNSA a small number of projects represent a large component of the agency’s budget. Also unlike Defense, the NNSA commingles funds for construction and operations. Cost escalation on a major construction project therefore puts enormous fiscal pressures on other activities. And Congress funds Energy Department construction projects on a year-to-year basis, rather than the multiyear approach used for comparable Defense Department projects, further driving program instability.

The relative autonomy of the NNSA from the Energy Department, called for in legislation establishing the NNSA in 2000, has never been achieved. NNSA roles and responsibilities are confused and overlap with other Energy Department components. Many Energy orders and directives create inefficiencies and higher costs; the NNSA should be provided flexibility to waive them, as appropriate, or to replace them with commercial best practices.

There is also a congressional component to the NNSA’s problems. NNSA funding for nuclear weapons programs is overseen by House and Senate energy and water appropriations subcommittees, not the defense appropriations subcommittees. But the energy and water subcommittees are not aligned with the defense mission or well suited to oversee the nuclear weapons enterprise. Labs and plants need funding stability, flexibility, and predictability to function effectively. In addition to the funding issues described above, an endless series of continuing budget resolutions has wreaked havoc on enterprise plans to get work done on time and to cost.

The Defense Department can contribute to the NNSA’s poor performance, too; at times, a lack of coherence among the services, the combat commands, the joint staff, and the defense secretary’s office regarding nuclear warhead needs, and the process establishing those needs, has contributed to schedule delays and increased costs. There is a perception that some in the Defense Department are too willing to run risks in favoring “stockpile” funding over “science” and do not understand the role that science plays in ensuring safe and reliable warheads.

The components of the overall weapons complex problem are inextricably linked—a comprehensive solution must address all of them. Simply changing the organization (making the NNSA an independent agency, for example, or a part of the Defense Department) without fixing the other problems is a supposed solution doomed to failure. Prudent organizational adjustments, however, can facilitate reform.

What to do about the problem

Multiple panels and commissions over the past two decades—among them commissions led by the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, the National Academy of Sciences, the Defense Science Board, the Stimson Center, and the bipartisan Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States—have developed coherent, self-consistent recommendations to address many, if not all, of the problems identified above. Most recently a congressional advisory panel, co-chaired by former undersecretary of the Army and Lockheed Martin chief executive Norm Augustine and retired Adm. Rich Mies, is examining governance of the nuclear enterprise (Congressional Advisory Panel, 2014). ¹ Its findings were issued in April 2014; its final recommendations will be issued shortly. All of this work, including that of the Augustine-Mies panel so far, reflects a reasonably broad consensus about what needs to be done that can be summarized along the following lines:

Increase administration and congressional focus on the nuclear mission.

Integrate Defense Department and NNSA processes for nuclear weapons program planning and budgeting.

In Congress, move funding oversight of the NNSA’s weapons activities to defense appropriations committees; increase program manager funding flexibility to address contingencies.

Provide the NNSA administrator full authority (held accountable solely by the Energy secretary) to achieve mission objectives safely and securely, on time and cost.

Restore program management, system integration, and cost estimation skills and a “production” culture in the NNSA.

Strengthen safety and security and improve product delivery by transforming a culture that seeks to eliminate all risks to one that focuses on managing the most important ones.

Transfer nuclear facility safety oversight from the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Failing that, reform the safety board’s model of independent safety oversight.

Restore a strategic partnership between the NNSA and the national labs, replacing the current practice of arms-length, adversarial micromanagement.

Ensure regular exercise of the capabilities of the enterprise on a stable, year-to-year basis.

Unfortunately, similar recommendations from multiple previous reports either so far have not been implemented or their implementation has failed. The challenge for the Augustine-Mies panel is to understand why this has been so, and to then structure effective, practical methods for implementing its recommendations.

Both the benefits and unintended consequences of any proposed legislation to fix specific problems in the weapons complex must be carefully considered. Legislation is typically a blunt instrument; some solutions will require a scalpel. An overarching principle should be “Do no further harm.” Recall that the act establishing the NNSA resulted from a President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (1999) study, “Science at Its Best, Security at Its Worst,” that examined security shortfalls at the Energy Department in light of the Wen Ho Lee spy incident. The legislation enacted by Congress establishing a semi-autonomous NNSA within the Energy Department was a thoughtful and prudent approach, but ineffective implementation by the Energy Department short-circuited any desirable outcome and, indeed, resulted in making some things worse.

In advancing change in any organization, the relatively easy part of the problem is generating solid recommendations; the hard part is attention to their implementation, particularly in an organization that may not recognize the urgency for change. Successful implementation requires the creation of champions within the organization who are empowered to effect real change and held accountable if it does not occur, and institutionalized and structured means of monitoring progress on implementation. Once the recommendations of the Augustine-Mies panel are issued, Congress should establish an independent group to monitor progress on implementation that would report its findings during annual hearings.

Substantial progress on reform of the NNSA and its nuclear weapons enterprise will require senior leaders who embody both a culture of achievement and a singular commitment to the substantial time and effort required to drive that culture down from leadership through all levels of the organization. With Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, NNSA Administrator Frank Klotz, and his deputy Madelyn Creedon, I am encouraged that the leadership team is in place to effect productive change. Successful reform has an added benefit to the US taxpayer—it will result in a nuclear weapons enterprise that is much more efficient and thus much more able to deliver its products within existing budgets.