{"id":45296,"date":"2018-01-24T17:52:05","date_gmt":"2018-01-24T17:52:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/airforcetimes\/uncategorized\/2018\/01\/24\/interview-nuke-warhead-chief-talks-risk-of-nuclear-war\/"},"modified":"2026-08-07T23:10:12","modified_gmt":"2026-08-07T23:10:12","slug":"interview-nuke-warhead-chief-talks-risk-of-nuclear-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/airforcetimes\/news\/2018\/01\/24\/interview-nuke-warhead-chief-talks-risk-of-nuclear-war\/","title":{"rendered":"Interview: Nuke warhead chief talks risk of nuclear war"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

WASHINGTON \u2014 In 2011, Air Force Lt. Gen. Frank Klotz retired after a distinguished career that culminated with him running Air Force Global Strike Command, the service\u2019s arm in charge of nuclear weapons. Three years later he was called back into service, this time as the head of the National Nuclear Security Administration, a semiautonomous branch of the Department of Energy that oversees the safety and development of America\u2019s nuclear warheads.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After four years of service at NNSA, during which he drew praise from both the pro-nuclear and nonproliferation communities, Klotz retired on Jan. 19. Before he stepped down, he joined Defense News for an exclusive interview to discuss the state of America\u2019s nuclear arsenal and what challenges await his successor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s start with an infrastructure question. You\u2019ve been warning for years about having a backlog of more than $3 billion<\/a> in deferred maintenance. Where is that now? <\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We have not, as a nation, made the investments that we have needed to make since the end of the Cold War to make sure that we can do the work that needs to be done in maintaining a safe, secure and effective stockpile. We still have a lot of facilities where we\u2019re still conducting work that date back to the early days of the Cold War and some even back to the old Manhattan Project. We\u2019ve been able to keep [deferred maintenance] at steady state for the last couple of years, largely because we\u2019ve had very strong support from Congress, particularly from the House Armed Services Committee, Strategic Forces Subcommittee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But at the end of the day, it\u2019s a question of budget and what are the budget levels and how timely do we get our allocation. So what decision-makers would do is they would say: \u201cWell, we absolutely must pay for the mission essential things. We\u2019ll accept risks and defer repair and recapitalization and modernization of the infrastructure another year.\u201d Well, one year becomes two years becomes 10 years, and you eventually get to a tipping point where you just absolutely have to do something. Shortly after I got here, we had a piece of ceiling fall at one of our facilities at Y12 in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Fortunately, no one was hurt. Fortunately, no equipment was damaged. But it could have been a lot worse. That\u2019s kind of the state of some of our infrastructure. A large portion of our infrastructure is that way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The U.S. has not conducted a live nuclear test since 1992, instead relying on the Stockpile Stewardship program, which simulates those tests<\/a>. There seems to be some renewed debate about whether testing may be needed again. Where do you come down on that?<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We conducted 1,054 tests as a nation before we voluntarily entered into a moratorium in 1992. We\u2019re archived a lot of that data. Now, what we decided to do in the \u201990s was to develop a Stockpile Stewardship program that would allow us to use scientifically based tools to understand how weapons operate and how weapons age; and if you have to replace components in those weapons as a result of aging, how best to design them; and if you use them, how they will affect the safety, security and effectiveness of the weapon. In that time, we have developed some very, very sophisticated diagnostic tools and diagnostic experiments to test various components and various materials within the weapons in order to understand the things I just talked about. It has been said publicly by some laboratory directors that we probably know more about the science and engineering of a nuclear weapon now as a result of 20-plus years of Stockpile Stewardship than we did when we were testing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We continue to invest in diagnostic and experimental capabilities. It\u2019s important that we continue to invest in that because there are still things we would like to know better. I won\u2019t describe those, but there are some things we would like to know better. So every year, by congressional statute, the three laboratory directors and the commander of U.S. Strategic Command are required to certify to the president through the secretary of energy and the secretary of defense that the stockpile is safe, secure, reliable and effective \u2014 and that there is no need to return to testing at this time. And every year for the past 20-some odd years that this statute has been there, they have so attested. So that\u2019s where we are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You sound confident.<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I sound confident now, yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What would change that?<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I suspect the thing that would probably change that is if there was some technical issue that quite simply could not be resolved as a result of this suite of tools, experiments and high-performance [computing] codes that we have. And we\u2019re not there. We\u2019re not there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

NNSA is preparing to spend, according to one estimate, more than $350 billion<\/a> in the next 30 years to modernize nuclear warheads and infrastructure. The Government Accountability Office, however, thinks it could be more<\/a>, as do some analysts in the nuclear community. What do you say to those concerns?<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, the only thing we can control are the variables we can control, and cost estimations, by the way, are an art, not a science. And by that I mean [there are] different methodological approaches as to how you estimate costs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We can control requirements. We can control the quality of people we assign to these tasks. We can control how we lay out the schedule. We can\u2019t control the timing of the funding. Yeah, the GAO has a point. And it\u2019s one we absolutely subscribe to if you delay [funding].<\/p>\n\n\n

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The Congressional Budget Office released a report estimating the total cost to modernize the U.S. nuclear arsenal to rise to over $1 trillion over the next 30 years.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n

But when we provide a cost estimate, we\u2019re providing a cost estimate to what we think, given the funding profile. I will say what I\u2019m most proud about is right now all four of our life-extension programs are on schedule and on budget. Right now they\u2019re all on schedule, and we\u2019ve delivered the vast majority, upward of 95 percent, of our multibillion-dollar construction portfolio since 2011 below cost, which to me is pretty, pretty significant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You\u2019re managing four major warhead modernization programs<\/a> right now. Is there any one<\/a> that you\u2019re particularly worried about being able to get done on time, on cost?<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n

No. But let me caveat that. I\u2019m very confident in the skill and experience of the program managers we have and in the schedule that they have laid out and the work that is being done in the labs and our production facilities to do that work. Now, having said that, again it\u2019s a function of funding. And there\u2019s always risk involved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The most substantial risk that we face is as we do these life-extension programs, we replace a lot of components. And many times the technology that was used, mostly non-nuclear components, the technology that was used to produce that component like a vacuum tube that no longer exists, nor would you want to use it if it did exist. In many cases we have to go out. And even though we have the design, which we may tweak a bit, we have to come up with a whole new way of fabricating that part. And if we try something new in a non-nuclear component, which we think will be more effective, more efficient in terms of the post-production maintenance associated with it, we\u2019ll also have to design, qualify, certify that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That is very challenging, technical work. And from time to time, there are challenges in producing these things to the level of quality that we expect them to be produced. That\u2019s probably the greatest risk. The other great risk in the life-extension programs is we\u2019ve never done more than one life-extension program at a time, since the end of the Cold War. We\u2019re now doing essentially four. The point is we are working pretty much at full capacity. <\/p>\n\n\n\t