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Kronologi over fredssagen og international politik 16 februar 2012 / Time Line February 16, 2012
Version 3.515. Februar 2012, 17. Februar 2012
02/16/2012
Budget Proposal Strengthens Nuclear Modernization, Official Says
By Army Sgt. 1st Class Tyrone C. Marshall Jr., American Forces Press Service
WASHINGTON - The Defense Department's strategy-based budget proposal sent to Congress earlier this week would strengthen the nation's nuclear weapons enterprise and modernization, a senior Pentagon official said here yesterday.
"We've come a long way in the past three years in establishing the context and the programs for nuclear modernization, but significant challenges remain," John Harvey, principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for nuclear, chemical and biological defense programs, said during remarks at the fourth annual Nuclear Deterrence Summit.
"On the plus side, the nuclear posture review has defined an integrated, balanced and comprehensive strategy for reducing nuclear dangers," he said. "The strategy strongly couples our nuclear deterrent to other elements of our nuclear security, including strategic arms control, nonproliferation, threat reduction and [weapons of mass destruction] counterterrorism."
Harvey said recent budgets have provided more funding toward modernization.
"After more than a decade of serious underfunding the nuclear weapons enterprise, the president put forward budget requests in [fiscal 2011] and [fiscal 2012] that included substantial new investments for this mission," he said. "We've had a very high level of support within the administration for getting these investments funded and sustained by Congress."
To demonstrate the department's commitment to these programs, he said, officials agreed to transfer $5.7 billion in top-line authority for fiscal 2011 to fiscal 2015. Later, he added, this was augmented by an addition $2.2 billion to be allocated in annual increments in fiscal 2012 through fiscal 2016.
Harvey also credited Congress for its approval of funding to continue modernization.
"The final funding levels appropriated by Congress for [fiscal 2011] were huge boosts to the enterprise and reflected some of the DOD contribution," he said. "The recent congressional appropriation for [fiscal 2012], while it did not go as far as we had hoped on the [National Nuclear Security Administration] side, provides a basis for continued progress."
Harvey touched on some of the challenges facing nuclear weapons enterprise as the nation is "embedded in an increasingly austere budget environment" and warned of serious problems if a "sequestration" mechanism in the budget law adds another $500 billion in defense spending cuts over the next decade if Congress fails to override the provision.
"The Budget Control Act, passed earlier this year, coupled with fact-of-life growth in key programs, has forced us to tighten our belts," he noted. "The implications of the [sequestration] under the Budget Control Act are so dire that we, in the department, are unwilling to consider it a plausible prospect," he said.
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