|
To print this page, press CTRL+P or the print icon in your browser. Then close this window to return to site. |
|
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: CONTACT: Nuclear Deterrence U.S. Senator Jon Kyl delivered a speech at the George C. Marshall Annual Awards Dinner on September 15, 2008 in which he discussed the state of the U.S. nuclear deterrent and what is needed to preserve this critical component of U.S. national security policy. Earlier this year, the Secretary of Defense took the extraordinary step of firing the Secretary of the Air Force and the Air Force Chief of Staff after a series of serious errors involving the U.S. nuclear deterrent. Sen. Kyl believes that these incidents were merely symptoms of a larger disease: the neglect, and resulting atrophy, of the U.S. nuclear weapons program. Sen. Kyl believes that as long as there are threats to the United States for which nuclear weapons are uniquely capable of providing a defense, we must maintain our nuclear deterrent, and continually modernize it so that it is safe, reliable, and credible. Unfortunately, many in Congress have taken the position that the United States should unilaterally disarm or make nearly no investments in its nuclear weapons deterrent. The following are excerpts from his remarks: “[T]he U.S. nuclear deterrent remains critical to our national security. As long as others have or are attempting to acquire these weapons and nuclear weapons states are growing and modernizing their stockpiles, the U.S. must maintain our nuclear deterrent. “[Our deterrent] would prevent a cascade of proliferation because of the nuclear umbrella that the United States provides for over thirty-one countries, including many with the technology and resources for the development of nuclear deterrence on their own. “What is the state of our deterrent today? We used to maintain a very robust nuclear weapons complex. It was able to quickly fabricate large numbers of weapons to respond to the constantly changing global threat. It regularly tested weapons and designed new generations of weapons and we produced them every 15 to 20 years. The result was a nuclear complex workforce with the best possible training and skill set. None of that exists today. As a result of decades of neglect, the nuclear weapons complex consists of buildings and equipment that have been used since the Manhattan Project in many cases, are over-used, obsolete, and, in many cases, are simply falling down from age. “So the nuclear complex is the first problem. “The warheads themselves are the second problem. The last new warhead design to enter into service was in 1988 and the U.S. has not funded a modernization of the stockpile since then. These are incredibly complicated devices, essentially the most complicated and dangerous ever invented by man….They are literally decaying as we speak and the heat they generate affects the components of the weapons every day. “So I believe that Congress should take some action right now to turn the situation around. “By modernizing the nuclear weapons complex and replacing these Cold War legacy weapons through programs like Reliable Replacement Warhead, our nuclear weapons workforce can be put back to work and we can get new scientists who are skilled in the actual working with the weapons, and the skills of almost seven decades could be preserved... “Finally, to recover the importance of the nuclear mission within the Department of Defense and to maintain the critical delivery systems that constitute the three legs of the triad itself, we must do planning, programming, and budgeting for follow-on nuclear weapons delivery systems, which would include cruise missiles, warplanes, ballistic missiles, and strategic submarines. “The bottom line is that the nuclear genie is out of the bottle and nobody is ever going to stuff it back in, in spite of their good intentions or the audacity of hope… Remember, President Reagan correctly warned, ‘We can’t afford to believe that we will never be threatened. There have been two world wars in my lifetime. We did not start them and, indeed, did everything we could to avoid being drawn into them. But we were ill prepared for both. Had we been better prepared, peace might have been preserved.’” ### |