The Bloated Sub Force

On the radar: Superfluous subs; Pausing the sanctions push; the Costs of nuclear weapons; Revisiting Biden-Helms; Past, present, future; and Area 41.

July 30, 2013 | Edited by Benjamin Loehrke and Alyssa Demus

Bloated sub fleet - “With sequestration and the fiscal crisis and the budgetary impacts on the DOD topline, there’s a lot of folks looking at how low we can go with the SSBN force,” said Rear Admiral Richard Brekenridge, the Navy’s Director of Undersea Warfare, in the latest defense of the Navy’s $100 billion plan to buy 12 new ballistic missile submarines.

--Why is the Navy is so adamant about retaining a 12 sub fleet? “The force is bloated both in terms of size, loadout, capability, and operations,” writes Hans Kristensen. The Navy’s planned force of 12 subs would be able to deploy more nuclear warheads than the entire nuclear force level proposed by President Obama in Berlin last month. That’s a sub force larger than the total stockpiles Britain, France, China, Pakistan, India and Israel - combined.

--”A force of 8-10 SSBNs with six operational boats would provide more than enough capacity to perform adequate deterrence deployments in Pacific and Atlantic. Shedding the excess SSBN capacity now would save billions of dollars in construction and operational costs and make it easier to persuade Russia to reduce it forces as well,” writes Kristensen. Full post from the Federation of American Scientists here. http://bit.ly/14ykyOJ

Signal - President-elect Hassan Rouhani who will take office Sunday is set to appoint Mohammad Javad Zarif as his foreign minister. Zarif, fluent in English and US-educated, has “been at the center of several secret negotiations to try to overcome 35 years of estrangement between Washington and Tehran.” Experts suggest his appointment signals Rouhani’s interest in breaking the impasse between the two states over Iran’s nuclear program. Marcus George and Paul Taylor at Reuters have the full story. http://ow.ly/nsyr0

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Sanctions pause - A cohort of House Democrats wrote a letter to House leadership urging them to delay the vote on a new round of sanctions on Iran, arguing that pushing new sanctions would undermine the Obama administration’s effort to engage Iran’s new President Hassan Rouhani and seek a diplomatic solution that prevents Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. John Hudson at The Cable has text of the letter, authored by Reps. Jim McDermott (D-WA), John Conyers (D-MI), Keith Ellison (D-MN) and Jim McGovern (D-MA). http://atfp.co/1e8w6hf

Rouhani’s resume - Hassan Rouhani’s past work as Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator may offer a glimpse into his future role as president. In 2003 the president-elect likely played a key role in halting Iran’s weaponization program, writes former French ambassador to Tehran François Nicoullaud. The actions Rouhani likely took “raises hopes that as president of the Islamic Republic he will be able to find and implement a negotiated solution for the continuing nuclear crisis,” writes Nicoullaud in The New York Times. http://ow.ly/nsBVt

Nuclear budgets - “It’s a sad commentary on the current state of the Pentagon that its second highest-ranking official deems $16 billion in taxpayer dollars to be ‘trivial’. Every billion adds up, especially in a time of budget austerity,” writes Kingston Reif in response to a recent talk from Deputy Secretary of Defense Ash Carter.

--Reif explains how Carter underestimated the cost of the US nuclear arsenal and disputes the notion that arms control does not yield budget savings. “Instead of downplaying the significant budgetary impact of nuclear weapons, Carter ought to be laying the groundwork for further reductions in our bloated arsenal of approximately 5,000 nuclear weapons on both national security and financial grounds.” In Defense One. http://bit.ly/1can6f5

Problems with selective reading - Conservative political opponents to the president, treaties, nuclear reductions or all of the above wrote a letter to President Obama arguing that any nuclear reductions should be put before the Senate in the form of a treaty. They cite a 2002 letter from then-Senator Joe Biden and Jessie Helms (R-NC), which urged the Bush administration to put arms control agreements into a treaty and not skirt the Senate through an executive agreements.

--A simple reading of the Biden-Helms letter “makes clear that the concern is about whether ‘international agreements’ that contain significant obligations on American nuclear force would constitute a ‘Treaty’ as they maintain it would, not whether the President might reduce weapons independent of Russia,” writes Jon Wolfsthal. Full post here. http://bit.ly/18PhlTv

History lesson - “What Went Wrong with Arms Control?” by Michael Krepon at Arms Control Wonk. http://bit.ly/14yvPhW

Tweet - @Diplomat_APAC: South Korea Goes All In On Missile Defense http://t.co/iimqjED1J9

Speed reads -

--”North Korea Displays Mysterious, Possibly Fake Road-Mobile ICBM” from Global Security Newswire. http://bit.ly/1aUGYzI

--”How US, Russia Can agree on Missile Defense” by Kevin Ryan and Simon Saradzhyan in The Christian Science Monitor. http://bit.ly/14ysm2M

--”Russia Inks Deal to Modernize Three Strategic Bombers” from Global Security Newswire. http://bit.ly/12BLDX5

Events:

--Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, markup of the defense appropriations bill. July 30 @ 10:30 AM. Webcast here. http://ow.ly/nsvS3

--"2013 PONI Summer Conference." July 31-August 1. Sandia National Laboratories, New Mexico. Details here. http://ow.ly/nswyT

--"Initial Conclusions Formed by the Defense Strategic Choices and Management Review," Ashton Carter and Adm. James Winnefeld. August 1. Webcast on HASC website here. http://ow.ly/nsxF8

--Senate Appropriations Committee, markup of the defense appropriations bill. August 1 @ 10:30 AM. Webcast here. http://ow.ly/nsvS3

--Former basketball star Dennis Rodman returns to North Korea. August 1.

Dessert:

Atomic tourism - In a benign looking building, behind a “mundane roll-up shutter” and several vault doors is a 230 foot concrete tunnel that burrows deep into a New Mexico canyon wall. Behind it, a once top-secret nuclear weapons facility - Technical Area 41. The site which was once used to house nuclear weapons components was declassified last week. David Szondy at Gizmag has the scoop and a video tour of the site. http://ow.ly/nsEJ8