WASHINGTON \u2013 There is little hope for the non-proliferation community to slow down nuclear weapons modernization in the next few years, a Democratic lawmaker said Wednesday.
Under the Obama administration, the Pentagon is working towards modernizing its fleets of nuclear-capable submarines, bombers, ICBMs and cruise missiles, as well as updating nuclear warheads. It is a major effort that budget experts warn could eat the Pentagon’s funding over the next decade, but one that Secretary of Defense Ash Carter has called the “bedrock” of American security.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The congressman was speaking at an event hosted by the Ploughshares Fund, a nuclear non-proliferation group that Wednesday presented a new report on nuclear advice for the next president. Garamendi praised the group\u2019s work, but expressed doubt that it would penetrate with either the current Congress or the new administration of Donald Trump.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n
“It needs to be studied. It needs to be taken into account in the days ahead,” he said. “Having said that I have a pretty clear notion that it won\u2019t be, and that concerns me greatly. I\u2019m really, really concerned that the ideas, the direction that are put forth here may very well not be looked at.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Garamendi, who predicted the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) would get done in the next two to three weeks, also sounded the alarm that unless Congress reverses course on supporting broad nuclear modernization, there would be wide-reaching implications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“The United States, Russia and China are clearly marching down the path of a new nuclear arms race,” he warned. “Here we go again. Tit for tat, escalate here, escalate there. That\u2019s where we\u2019re going folks, as sure as we\u2019re all in this room, that\u2019s exactly where we\u2019re going.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Triad modernization is going to continue, the lawmaker said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":66295,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":23,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":{"4":{"categories":["news"],"primary_category":"news"}}},"categories":[11,124,23,30,48],"tags":[],"coauthors":[3378],"class_list":["post-30033","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-global","category-nuclear-arsenal","category-space","category-smr","category-the-americas"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"FZV7OQTQXJEGRAUFWED7KA655U","arc_canonical_url":"\/space\/2016\/11\/16\/garamendi-no-halt-for-nuclear-modernization-programs-in-sight\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n