The United States and South Korea announced a series of joint naval exercises in the Pacific theater on Tuesday, designed to show force and resolve against a stubborn North Korea.  The first of the exercises will begin Sunday and will include ships, aircraft, sailors, and airmen (for a total of about 8,000 personnel) from both the US and Republic of Korea navy and air force.

The display is a direct response to and a continuation of the crisis begun when the South Korean frigate Cheonan was sunk off the coast of the Korean Peninsula on March 26.  An international investigation team concluded that the Cheonan was hit by a torpedo launched from a North Korean submarine, a charge North Korea and its ally, China, have denied.

The statement said that the exercises “are designed to send a clear message to North Korea that its aggressive behavior must stop.”  They will occur in both the East and West Seas, known to Americans as Yellow Sea and the Sea of Japan.

The military presence is quite large, with over a hundred aircraft and 20 ships and submarines, including the American aircraft carrier the USS George Washington.

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Security Matters, North Korea, Navy (all tags)

Artist’s conception of a possible design for the SSBN-X

HASC Seapower Subcommittee Chairman Gene Taylor yesterday announced his panel’s decision to “gate” 50 percent of FY 2011 R&D funding for the SSBN-X until the Navy shares its analysis of alternatives for the program. As I wrote previously, Taylor is interested in discovering whether a smaller, cheaper submarine could relieve some of the inevitable pressure on the Navy’s future shipbuilding budget—and just so happen to ensure consistent funding for the surface combatants built in his district.

Here’s CQ Today’s (subscription only) summary of the move:

The bill, if enacted, would restrict 50 percent of the $672.3 million authorized “until the secretary of Defense reports to the committee the guidance which shaped the results of the analysis of alternatives, the time needed to develop and deploy each alternative capability, and the rationale associated with construction of a new class of submarines capable of carrying the current weapon vice development of a smaller missile to fit an existing submarine,” said Seapower panel Chairman Gene Taylor, D-Miss.

[snip]

Taylor argues that the last Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) already limits the D-5 missile to carrying only eight nuclear warheads, despite its ability to carry more. “Is this very big missile what we need and do we need to build a new submarine for it?” Taylor asked.

The House may not get to vote on arms control treaties, but it certainly has ways to make its presence felt in U.S. nuclear policy deliberations.

UPDATE May 15: Rep. Taylor may indeed smell a rat, generally speaking, with this analysis of alternatives (AOA) business. As GAO reported last year:

Many of the AOAs that GAO reviewed did not effectively consider a broad range of alternatives for addressing a warfighting need or assess technical and other risks associated with each alternative

[snip]

Without a sufficient comparison of alternatives and focus on technical and other risks, AOAs may identify solutions that are not feasible and decision makers may approve programs based on limited knowledge

[snip]

While AOAs are supposed to provide a reliable and objective assessment of viable weapon solutions, we found that service sponsors sometimes identify a preferred solution or a narrow range of solutions early on, before an AOA is conducted. The timing of AOAs has also been problematic. Some AOAs are conducted under compressed timeframes in order to meet a planned milestone or weapon system fielding date and are conducted concurrently with other key activities required to become a program of record. This can short-change a comprehensive assessment of risks and preclude effective cost, schedule, and performance trade offs from taking place prior to beginning development.

Some of these findings could (as in maybe) apply to the SSBN-X, I think.

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Nukes on a Blog, Congress, Navy, Posture Review, FY 2011 Budget Request (all tags)

The always-scooping Christopher Cavas reports:

Rep. Gene Taylor, D-Miss., chairman of the House Seapower subcommittee, complained in a letter sent Thursday to Defense Secretary Robert Gates that the Navy “refuses to share” the analysis of alternatives (AoA) for the SSBN(X) program — a document that, Taylor says in the letter, was completed last year.

Rather than commit to replacing the current crop of large Ohio-class submarines armed with Trident II D5 ballistic missiles with similar ships, Taylor wants to see what a smaller, Virginia-class submarine armed with a less-lethal ballistic missile would cost. Instead, he says, the Navy already has decided it wants the bigger and more expensive ships — which some sources say could cost as much as $70 billion.

“I have repeatedly asked officials of the Department of the Navy if less-expensive alternatives to building the Ohio-class were examined,” Taylor said in the letter. “I have repeatedly been told that only the Trident solution met the requirement.”

Rep. Taylor understands the chart below and can clearly do the math: if replacing the Ohio-class SSBN fleet costs $85 billion and eats into funding for other Navy shipbuilding—like, say, the surface combatants built in Mississippi that employ at least 11,250 people in Gulfport and Pascagoula—then his district would take a serious economic hit.

The key question is whether Taylor’s parochial preference for a smaller, cheaper SSBN-X might actually comport with broader U.S. national security requirements. I for one would like to read the analysis of alternatives to see what the Navy thinks about a smaller, cheaper boomer.

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Nukes on a Blog, Congress, Navy, Posture Review, FY 2011 Budget Request, Trident (all tags)

Anything you can do I can do bigger

From the gang called Russians with attitudes, crazy motherf***** named Putin said yesterday that Russia should proceed with building a new nuclear-capable bomber.

Putin’s statement comes as President Obama is ramping up funding for development of the next generation U.S. nuclear submarine and bomber.

Now boys, are we merely seeking to keep capabilities in tip top shape, or are we having a resolve contest in the middle of negotiating a nuclear reductions treaty? Yes yes, we’re all seriously committed to blowing each other up in the most stylish manner possible. Let’s get on with the reductions now, shall we?

Alternatively: pandering to Russian military-industrial complex while recapturing Soviet glory days = Putin for Prez 2012.

UPDATE 3/3: In retrospect, the picture caption probably should have been “Long pole in the nuclear tent.” I regret the oversight.

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Nukes on a Blog, Russia, New START, Posture Review, Navy, Air Force (all tags)

The big funding increase for nuclear nonproliferation has become, at this point, a well-developed part of the narrative surrounding the new fiscal year (FY) 2011 budget. Vice President Biden messaged it in the Wall Street Journal. An administration apparatchik followed up on background with tastemaker Laura Rozen. And the press guys (and they are all guys) covered it: Fleck, Landay, Matishak, Pincus, and Ambinder.

More nonproliferation funding is always good. If the Pentagon is as serious about stopping nuclear terrorism as the 2010 QDR suggests, it ought to spend at least 0.074 percent of its total budget on Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction, as is proposed for FY 2011, right?

Yet there’s more to the nuke game than nonproliferation. Yep, you guessed it: I’m talking about hardware. How much leg did the FY 2011 budget show on new nuclear bombers and submarines? And what does it mean for President Obama’s arms control agenda? Read on, read on…

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Nukes on a Blog, Air Force, Defense Spending, FY 2011 Budget Request, Posture Review, Navy (all tags)

Nice knowing you, Navy surface combatant

According to Reuters, the forthcoming Fiscal Year (FY) 2011 defense budget “foresees spending about $4 billion over the next five years to maintain the U.S. bomber industrial base, study plans for a possible new bomber, and upgrade existing B-2 and B-52 bombers.” Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition Ashton Carter said yesterday that when it comes to details about the new bomber, "We will provide an answer on what comes next on that within the next year." Secretary Gates said previously that the new bomber would likely get around $1 billion in FY 2011.

At a HASC subcommittee hearing yesterday, CBO analyst Eric Labs said that building 12 new SSBN(X) ballistic missile submarines to replace the 14 Ohio-class subs could cost around $85 billion, with the lead ship costing $11 billion and subsequent ships costing $7 billion apiece. More modern construction techniques could help hold down costs; however, increased labor and material costs, the enhanced capabilities of all Navy subs, and the current low rate of ship construction (i.e. fixed overhead costs spread over fewer ships) might push costs upward.

At the same hearing, CRS analyst Ronald O’Rourke made the point that if the Navy pays for the new SSBN(X) out of its regular shipbuilding budget, it would have to steal money from other programs. This could reduce the total number of ships the Navy is able to procure by 56 (20 percent) and “make a substantial consolidation of some kind of the surface ship construction industrial base a distinct possibility, if not a likelihood,” according to O’Rourke. To deal with this problem, the Navy has started asking whether or not an individual service like the Navy should be responsible for spending so much of its own budget on “force structure elements that serve a national mission of strategic nuclear deterrence,” as O’Rourke put it. Loren Thompson suggested to HASC the creation of a “separate, strategic funding” category for the SSBN(X) that would keep it separate from other shipbuilding programs, a model similar to how the Department of Energy pays for U.S. nuclear warheads even though they are fielded aboard DOD-financed delivery vehicles.

One last thing covered at the hearing was the issue of ship requirements for the Obama administration's rejiggered plan for U.S. missile defense in Europe (yeah, we might consider Aegis missile defense a "strategic" budget priority now). For more detail, read what both Labs and O'Rourke said.

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Nukes on a Blog, Table Scraps, Iran Watch, Missile Defense, Defense Spending, Posture Review, Acquisition, Navy, Air Force (all tags)

Lt. Gen. David Deptula, Air Force deputy chief of staff for ISR, said last week that a new multi-role long-range bomber is his top purchasing priority. "We cannot move into a future without a platform that allows the United States of America to project power over long distances and to meet advanced threat systems in a fashion that gives us an advantage that no other nation has…We can’t walk away from that,” remarked Deptula. Discussion about a nuclear-capable next-generation bomber has simmered for years (see here and here for recent examples) and the Air Force remains strongly committed, perhaps because, as Loren Thompson noted, “The Air Force owes its existence to the strategic bombing mission.”

Inside Defense (subscription only) reported last week that the Navy is trying to figure out the best way to tell Congress that its $80 billion plan to buy 12 next-generation ballistic missile submarines could force shipbuilding cuts and lead to industry consolidation. Production of the next-generation subs is slated to begin in 2019 so that they will be ready when Ohio-class subs start retiring in 2027. The Navy’s 30-year planning document is due to Capitol Hill in two months.

Finally, the Center put together a new fact sheet detailing the pros and cons of bombers, ICBMs, and SLBMs. Our objective was to preemptively referee intra-triad sniping, which we are already seeing now that delivery vehicle reductions may be forthcoming. Of course, none of this is new. As he was researching the fact sheet, Kirk found a great GAO report from 1993 which concluded that the vulnerability of each leg of the U.S. triad was consistently exaggerated during the Cold War by advocates of other legs. As GAO concluded about U.S. submarines:

For the sea leg, this [threat inflation] was reflected in unsubstantiated allegations about likely future breakthroughs in Soviet submarine detection technologies…The projected threat to the sea leg was…used frequently as a justification for costly modernizations in the other legs to “hedge” against SSBN vulnerability. Our specific finding, based on operational test results, was that submerged SSBNs are even less detectable than is generally understood.

Now who in the world would publish such unsubstantiated allegations?

(Yep, that’s a Puff Diddy Daddy reference in the title. Got a problem with it? Do something.)

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Nukes on a Blog, Table Scraps, Navy, Posture Review, Defense Spending (all tags)

Shhh, be quiet

At FAS, Hans Kristensen’s got the goods...

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Nukes on a Blog, China, Acquisition, Navy (all tags)

Isn’t it inappropriate for the Boston Globe to publish an op-ed advocating the construction of new aircraft carriers when the author works at a consulting firm that represents Northrop Grumman, the company responsible for carrier construction?

The Globe committed this exact sin today by running Christopher Lehman’s op-ed, “Keeping the Aircraft Carrier Fleet Afloat.” The Globe did not even bother to disclose the author’s financial stake in the position he was arguing, which at least would have helped readers evaluate Lehman’s credibility (or lack thereof) as a dispassionate analyst. I might have failed to notice Lehman’s conflict of interest, such an occurrence being so common today, except that his argument was utterly unpersuasive.

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Security Matters, Navy, Acquisition, Defense Spending (all tags)