US nuclear bomb budget falls well short, audit reveals

By John Donnelly, CQ-Roll Call

WASHINGTON — Building new atomic bombs to replace the oldest such weapons in the U.S. arsenal will cost 35 percent more than the Energy Department has budgeted, and production will start two years late, according to an internal department estimate cited in a congressional audit.

The estimate for the B61-12 program was produced last fall by the Energy Department’s Office of Cost Estimating and Program Evaluation, and it was cited deep inside a report issued this past week by the Government Accountability Office.

Developing and producing up to 500 B61-12 bombs will cost $10 billion through fiscal 2026, according to the new estimate. The Energy Department’s National Nuclear Security Agency projected in its fiscal 2017 budget that the program’s would cost $7.4 billion. A few months later, the department updated the estimate to $7.6 billion, but officials there have still not agreed to change the coming fiscal 2018 budget to reflect the cost-analysis office’s higher projection, the GAO report said.

Four years ago, the Pentagon’s cost-estimating office predicted that the new bombs would cost $10 billion and would be delayed. At the time, the Energy Department said that estimate was not accurate.

The program was initially projected to cost $4 billion and production was to have begun this year.

The B61-12 program would replace four types of B61 bombs with one upgraded model that would guide bombs to their targets with a satellite-guidance kit on their tails.

Production of the first of the upgraded bombs, which is scheduled to start in fiscal 2020, will more than likely begin two years later, the department’s cost estimators said. But the Energy Department and Pentagon schedule projections have by all indications not changed.

This month, Air Force Gen. John Hyten, chief of U.S. Strategic Command, told Senate Armed Services in prepared testimony that the B61-12 program was on schedule for a 2020 production start. He said it “must deliver on schedule to avoid any strategic or extended deterrence capability gaps.”

An expert on nuclear weapons who has closely tracked the cost projections said the new report bodes ill for atomic arms budgets.

“The GAO report reveals that despite NNSA’s assurances that the B61 life extension program is proceeding without any hiccups, the program could face a major disruption for which the agency is ill-prepared,” said Kingston Reif of the Arms Control Association.

The apparently likely shortfalls in the coming budgets for the B61-12 are part of a larger problem, according to the GAO report.

The Energy Department has a pattern of under-funding programs on the assumption that more money will become available later. From fiscal years 2022 to 2026, each of the department’s annual budgets will average $11.1 billion, according to the latest plan. But the budget for each of those years may need to be more than 15 percent higher to execute the programs as intended, the GAO said, citing the Energy Department’s estimates.

“The potential under-funding of the B61 would further exacerbate a major execution challenge already facing NNSA’s weapons program highlighted by GAO: a multi-billion dollar mismatch between NNSA’s plans and budget projections over the next decade,” Reif said.