For Fiscal Year (FY) 2011, which begins on October 1, 2010, the ObamaAdministration has requested a base budget of $548.9 billion for the Department of Defense (DoD). This is $18 billion, or 3.4 percent, above the appropriated Fiscal Year 2010 base budget of $531 billion.

In addition, the Administration has requested $159.3 billion for “OverseasContingency Operations,” to fight the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

This brings the Fiscal Year 2011 defense budget request to a total of $708.3 billion.

Further, the Administration has requested an additional $33 billion in emergency supplemental appropriations for Fiscal Year 2010. Including this $33 billion, total appropriated Pentagon spending for Fiscal Year 2010 will equal approximately $693.4 billion, a 4.1 percent increase over Fiscal Year 2009. This total brings us to a 2.1 percent increase in Fiscal Year 2011.

In real terms, this amounts to a $9 billion, or 1.3 percent, increase over Fiscal Year 2010.

These numbers do not include nuclear weapons related spending in the Department of Energy (DoE) or other defense related funding.

In addition to an initial $708 billion, the Administration has requested $18 billionfor nuclear weapons activities at Department of Energy and $7 billion for additional non-Pentagon defense related activities. This brings total non-Pentagon defense related spending (053/054) to $25 billion, a $2 billion increase over Fiscal Year 2010.

Click here for the full analysis of the FY 2011 request.

On January 28, 2010 at a Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation briefing for Senate staffers that was moderated by Center Chairman Lt. General Robert Gard (USA, Ret.), Dr. Richard Garwin discussed the reliability of U.S. nuclear weapons and options to ensure that these weapons remain safe and secure, and provided insight into what “modernization” is necessary. In this context, he detailed the findings of the JASON independent scientific advisory group report on the status of U.S. efforts to maintain the U.S. nuclear arsenal that concluded “Lifetimes of today’s nuclear warheads could be extended for decades, with no anticipated loss in confidence, by using approaches similar to those employed in LEPs [Life Extension Programs] to date.”

The Administration is currently evaluating the requirements necessary to maintain the U.S. nuclear arsenal in the context of the Nuclear Posture Review, an assessment of U.S. nuclear strategy, policy, and forces. The Review is scheduled to be completed by March 1. In addition, the FY2010 Defense Authorization Act requires that when the President submits the START follow-on treaty to Congress he must also submit a plan to enhance the safety, security, and reliability of the nuclear weapons stockpile, modernize the nuclear weapons complex, and maintain the delivery vehicles (i.e. bombers, subs, and missiles).

Dr. Richard Garwin is an IBM fellow emeritus at the IBM Research Center, Yorktown Heights, New York; adjunct professor of physics at Columbia University; and a longtime consultant to the U.S. government on nuclear weapons and military technology. He was one of the principal designers of America’s first hydrogen bomb. He is also a member of the JASON scientific advisory group. He has published more than 500 papers and been granted 45 U.S. patents. He is a recipient of the National Medal of Science and the Enrico Fermi Award. He received a B.S. in Physics from Case Institute of Technology, Cleveland, in 1947, and a Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Chicago in 1949.

Article summary below; read the full text online

The Graham-Talent WMD Commission asserted again last week that a bioterrorism attack that "will fundamentally change the character of life for the world's democracies" is highly likely to occur within the next four years. The commission argues that the United States must urgently expand its efforts to develop vaccines and other medical countermeasures against potential bioterrorism agents.

We disagree with the commission on both points. It exaggerates the bioterrorist threat and proposes solutions that won't produce the comprehensive approach needed to strengthen public health security.

The bioterrorist threat must be kept in perspective. Although many fictional "tabletop" scenarios and exercises have predicted bioterrorism catastrophes, these scenarios often have used unrealistic values for critical disease parameters and have routinely ignored the organizational and technical difficulties that terrorists would have in organizing, and successfully carrying out, a bioweapons attack. The history of both state-operated bioweapons programs and unsuccessful terrorist attempts to develop and use such weapons (e.g., the Japanese cult Aum Shinrikyo) have demonstrated, again and again, the significant difficulties that confront making and disseminating a biological weapon. The 2001 anthrax letter attacks, which were seen as validating the catastrophic scenarios, appear to have been executed with anthrax developed in a U.S. biodefense laboratory with capabilities vastly superior in scale and quality to anything a terrorist could achieve.

Advances in the life sciences may gradually put bioweapon capabilities closer within terrorist reach, but scientific and technological progress alone doesn't warrant exaggeration of the bioterrorist threat. Rather than basing policy on worst-case scenarios, the United States should develop and conduct more plausible, sophisticated threat assessments that take into account the complex set of political, social, and technical factors that would affect bioweapons development and use.

Whether you are reading this article in Tampa or Tucson, Los Angeles or Long Island, one thing is for certain: It’s six minutes to midnight.

While this may not be the normal mode of timekeeping for your dinner plans, it’s true for the “Doomsday Clock,” which figuratively marks the time remaining until the end of the world, due to a nuclear holocaust or an overheated planet. Drawing particular attention to progress made on nuclear weapons issues, a group of prominent scientists—including 19 Nobel laureates—decided on January 14 to move the clock’s minute-hand farther from midnight, from 11:55 p.m. to 11:54 p.m.

What seems like a fleeting amount of time when discussing daily routines is actually quite a significant move for the clock. Created in 1947, its hands have been moved just 19 times in 62 years.

So why the recent move?

In turning back the clock, the scientists recognized the significant progress made in the past year toward reducing the dangers posed by nuclear weapons.

This progress reflects renewed leadership on the part of the United States in raising awareness about nuclear dangers, and fostering the international dialogue and cooperation needed to combat the nuclear threat.

Specifically, this progress includes improved international commitment to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the cornerstone of international efforts to stem the spread of nuclear weapons; discussions with Iran to rein in its nuclear program; the announcement of an international conference of world leaders in Washington, DC in April to discuss nuclear terrorism prevention strategies; growing support for the passage of a treaty to ban nuclear testing; and negotiations between the U.S. and Russia to reduce their still-enormous nuclear weapons stockpiles.

This final step—negotiations to cut Russian and American arsenals—will be critical to advancing the nuclear security agenda.

The United States and Russia are negotiating a new treaty to succeed the landmark 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (known as START), which expired on December 5. START signaled the end of the Cold War by reducing the numbers of nuclear weapons the United States and Russia possessed, and providing for important monitoring and verification stipulations to ensure that each side complied with the treaty.

After beginning negotiations in April of last year, President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev have made tremendous strides towards completing an agreement. Once the treaty is signed, the Senate will need to approve it. Unlike most votes, however, treaty approval requires 67 “yea” votes.

A nuclear reductions treaty would greatly enhance American security. Though the Cold War ended two decades ago, the United States and Russia still possess 95 percent of the 23,000 nuclear weapons remaining in the world. Today, more nuclear weapons mean more opportunities for theft by terrorists or accidents by the hands of those controlling the stockpiles. The same weapons that provided a sense of security during the Cold War are today our gravest security threat.

The good news is that there’s strong bipartisan support for further nuclear weapons reductions. Leading Republicans, such as Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Senator John McCain (R-AZ), Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN), and former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and George Shultz, support a verifiable new nuclear reductions treaty.

Despite gains made in the past year, though, almost all the hard work of reducing nuclear dangers has yet to begin. The Iranian and North Korean nuclear programs, the vulnerability of dangerous nuclear materials to theft by terrorists, and the continued risks of an accidental or unauthorized nuclear exchange between existing nuclear nations are stark reminders that the world stands on the edge of a proliferation tipping point.

Twenty-first century threats require innovative and global solutions. Reducing the numbers of nuclear weapons in the world and preventing their further spread will require concerted effort by many nations and sustained leadership from the United States.

Finalizing a treaty to succeed START is an important first step, but it is just that—a first step. 11:54 p.m. is still too late if the world ends at midnight.

Download the statement here (PDF, 5 pages).

Summary

• The bioterrorist threat has been greatly exaggerated.
• New bioweapons assessments are needed that take into account the complex set of social and technical issues that shape bioweapons development and use by state and non-state actors, and that focus on more plausible threats than the worst-case scenarios that have largely driven discussion to date.
• Continuing to emphasize and spend billions of dollars on measures to specifically counter bioterrorist threat scenarios distorts our national understanding of the important issues in public health, and diverts scarce scientific talent and resources away from more pressing public health and natural disease threats.
• While it has been argued that spin-offs from biodefense programs contribute to countering natural diseases, the converse is more likely: direct targeting of effort and expenditure on natural disease threats would provide much greater public health benefit, and spin-offs from these programs would significantly strengthen resistance to bioterrorism.
• Bioterrorist threats need to be seen and addressed within a wider public health context--as just one of the many possible ways in which infectious agents may harm human, animal, and plant health.

How Serious is the Bioterrorist Threat?

• Beginning in the early 1990s, an increasing amount was written about the threat of bioterrorism. Prior to 2001 most examples of “bioterrorism” were in fact hoaxes or were only tenuously related to actual threats, with the single exception of the use of Salmonella to contaminate salad bars in Oregon in 1984. Much was made of the Japanese group Aum Shinrykio’s unsuccessful attempts to use anthrax and botulinum toxin without drawing the simple and obvious lesson that achieving success in such attempts is difficult. The 2001 anthrax letters were seen as validating large scale and catastrophic threat scenarios, despite the very real difficulties that isolated individuals or small groups would have had in making such material. By the time the source of those letters was identified in August 2008 as a government laboratory with capabilities vastly in excess of those of any terrorist organization, biodefense programs costing tens of billions of dollars were already established, producing a potent and vocal constituency for continued and increased funding.
• Offensive, including terrorist, use of biological agents presents major technical problems. This is why the Soviet Union, United States, United Kingdom and others needed to spend vast sums for decades in order to research and develop biological weapons. Even then the results were considered an unreliable form of warfare, and there was little opposition to their elimination by international agreement (indeed the US unilaterally eliminated its biological weapons stockpiles).
• Fictional bioterrorism exercises such as Atlantic Storm and Dark Winter routinely used unrealistic values for critical parameters and were unrealizable by putative perpetrators. They tended to gloss over the very real problems involved in acquiring, growing and disseminating smallpox virus on a sufficient scale to represent a major threat. They also posited unreasonable assumptions about issues such as the rate of disease spread, which skewed the outcomes towards inflated and unlikely results.
• The effects of using biological materials, whether on a large scale or a smaller terrorist scale, are highly uncertain. Although the 2001 anthrax letters created panic and had a significant economic impact, the number of deaths and serious illnesses was very small.
• Existing bioweapons assessments focus on a narrow set of assumptions about potential adversaries and their technical capabilities. New bioweapons threat assessments are needed that take into account the more complex set of social and technical issues that shape bioweapons capabilities of state and non-state actors and that critically examine existing assumptions.

How Effective Are Bioterrorism Counter Measures?

• Much time, effort and money has been spent since 2001 trying to identify possible threats, create detection capabilities in government facilities and public spaces, and enact measures to prevent dangerous agents from falling into the wrong hands. Yet, threat scenarios are speculative and rely on too many unjustified assumptions, thus providing poor policy guidance. Detection systems continue to suffer many defects of sensitivity and specificity that so far make them unreliable as triggers for immediate countermeasures. And the enormous expansion of high-containment laboratories has greatly increased the numbers of people with access to dangerous pathogens and toxins, ironically increasing the likelihood of an attack by a rogue insider.
• In addition, agencies and programs have been set up at great expense, with the aim of having available stocks of vaccines against potential bioweapons agents. Many questions remain about these programs with respect to vaccine efficacy, safety, shelf life and the ability to perform mass immunizations at short notice. Until these issues are resolved the effectiveness of vaccines as countermeasures remains in doubt.
• Countermeasures effective after exposure to anthrax and the smallpox virus, the bioterrorist threat agents of greatest concern, have been developed and stockpiled—antibiotics for anthrax and a vaccine for smallpox. Efforts to accumulate stockpiles of more novel therapeutics, or ones targeted to even less likely bioterrorist threats, are not cost-effective unless they would also serve clear public health goals.
• The actual dollar costs of responding to the perceived bioterrorism threat includes creating new agencies and programs, funding research & development into threat evaluation, detection, diagnosis, prophylaxis and treatments. These costs approach $60 billion since FY 2001 and continue to rise. Of this, roughly $15 billion has gone to state and local public health capacity building, hospital preparedness, and other efforts aimed at directly strengthening public health.
• There are additional opportunity costs that are much harder to quantify: the diversion of technical, scientific and administrative talent away from more real and immediate infectious disease and other public health problems. For example the amount of research being conducted on anthrax (of which there are only a handful of cases per year in the US) has skyrocketed since 2001, due largely to the attraction of scientists away from work on other diseases of greater public health importance. Biomedical research is expensive and requires substantial levels of funding; accordingly, funding decisions made for political purposes can easily distort the direction of scientific effort into less useful although still scientifically interesting avenues.
• These bioterrorism-specific programs are unnecessary and inefficient if the bioterrorist threat has been exaggerated or overestimated, and they divert scarce resources from much more pressing public health threats.

What Is The Impact On Public Health?

• To put this in perspective, since 2000 bioterrorism has killed 5 Americans. In the same time period, influenza-related deaths alone have likely exceeded 300,000 based on CDC estimates, and other natural infectious diseases have killed hundreds of thousands more. Annual US morbidity & mortality figures from AIDS (14,000 deaths), opportunistic infections such as MRSA (19,000 deaths/year) and C. difficile (350,000 infections and up to 20,000 deaths) speak to unmet and pressing public health need.
• Consequently the threat of bioterrorism, which does exist but which is almost certainly minor, needs to be seen as only one element in the wider and larger public health war on infectious diseases.
• While deaths and morbidity from these and other infectious diseases are unlikely to be entirely eliminated no matter how lavish the funding, modest increases in funding and effort (relative to that currently invested in bioterrorism prevention and mitigation) could greatly decrease their impact, and save orders of magnitude more lives than are likely to ever be lost in any plausible bioterrorist attack. There is a clear imbalance between funding for biodefense and funding for research on and prevention of natural infectious diseases.
• Diverting scarce resources, money, and scientific, medical and organizational talent away from the general public health effort to address the narrower bioterrorism issue is likely to be self-defeating in the longer term because:
  1. Highly specific threat predictions lead to specific countermeasures and mitigation strategies, many of which may be useless for everyday public health purposes, or even to counter a bioterrorist attack that differs from the threat assumed.
  2. Development and production of bioterrorism countermeasures may present uncertainties and risks compared with pharmaceuticals manufactured according to strict quality assurance standards, and are subject to constant scrutiny of their efficacy and safety through post-market research. Such is not the case with bioterrorism countermeasures, which would be used only rarely if at all.
  3. In comparison with investments in routine public health activities, countermeasures targeted against specific bioterrorism threats are unlikely to ever be used and their manufacture, stockpiling and turnover thus represent a probable waste of scarce resources.

A Better Approach

• The public health problem of infectious diseases requires a more generic approach that addresses a variety of issues, including the following:
  1. Information about morbidity and mortality in terms of disease incidence and causes is critical in deciding which problems are most important and where intervention would provide the greatest benefit. A risk-based and data-driven approach should guide the allocation of scarce public health resources.
  2. The nation’s epidemiological workforce must be adequate to investigate and address all public health issues: infectious disease outbreaks whether due to natural, deliberate, or accidental causes; chronic diseases; environmental health; consequences of nutritional and life-style choices; etc. Only by ensuring adequate staffing in all program areas will we build a sustainable public health infrastructure that can reliably provide adequate surge capacity in the event of a large-scale emergency.
  3. Animal disease epidemiology capability needs to be enhanced. This would improve the ability rapidly to detect and diagnose not only animal, but also zoonotic infections. Such enhanced capability would provide both a defense against natural disease outbreaks as well as a capability for early recognition of a bioterrorist threat originating in the animal population.
  4. Effective, ongoing training for epidemiologists, which has reached a plateau or has even been reduced since 2004, is essential.
  5. Provision of the basic tools necessary to support routine public health surveillance and epidemiology - including skilled personnel, public health laboratories, and data collection, management and analytic systems - are also critical. In this respect, public health preparedness funding, increased out of concern about terrorism in general and bioterrorism in particular, has been important and needs to be maintained and enhanced.
  6. Disaster preparedness needs to be improved—the ability to respond rapidly and effectively to an event that produces a large number of casualties needing hospitalization or sanitary burial is common to handling large natural outbreaks of infectious disease, a bioterrorism event, or a natural disaster such as earthquake or tsunami.
  7. Research is a key component of any program to improve public health and by extension the ability to deal with deliberately created outbreaks. The most obvious areas of need are in new antibiotics and antivirals for emerging or established diseases that cause significant mortality or morbidity. The role of vaccines in dealing with the bioterrorism problem is more controversial since vaccines are highly disease-specific (often even strain-specific), usually need to be given prior to exposure, tend to have a limited shelf life, and suffer from a problem of public acceptability. Research into immune system stimulation and enhancement which could have wide application may be a more fruitful investment.
  8. Measures that enhance access by more people to preventive healthcare are likely to strengthen individual resistance to disease and improve early detection and effective treatment and containment of disease outbreaks.
• Fundamentally, improving the capability to respond to natural disease outbreaks, which currently present the major problem, almost automatically improves the capability to deal with any bioterrorist attack.

In an effort to force Iran to give up its nuclear program, the House of Representatives recently approved legislation that would place sanctions on foreign companies providing that country with gasoline. If also passed into law by the Senate, these sanctions threaten to complicate diplomatic efforts by encouraging anti-American propaganda and undercutting the very people the United States wishes to support.

Unfortunately, the Iranian government isn’t that vulnerable to gasoline sanctions. Under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran has both increased its refining capacity and enacted a more effective rationing program. These moves have significantly decreased its need to import petroleum products.

Instead, gasoline sanctions would inflict widespread economic hardship on the Iranian people, including those who took to the streets last year to protest what they said was Ahmadinejad’s rigged re-election. If our country forces regular Iranians to pay more for the gasoline they use every day, it won’t, as some suggest, cause a further rift between the people and their government. Rather, gasoline sanctions would inflame anti-Americanism that the regime can then exploit to further its own anti-democratic interests.

If the United States hopes for the emergence of an environment in Iran where pro-democracy forces may successfully challenge—and one day replace—the current regime, new sanctions are a step in the wrong direction. Poorly designed gasoline sanctions strengthen hardliners’ anti-American arguments and undercut moderates’ calls for internal reform and external engagement with our country.

Sanctions have no history of changing Iranian behavior, apart from moving it in a more aggressive direction. While Washington may believe that negotiations are bound to fail and that the United States should start preparing for worst-case scenarios, this “inevitability assumption” has previously turned out to be wrong. Egypt, Germany, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan were all once thought to be the next inevitable nuclear weapons states, but none of these countries ever built “the Bomb.” Worst-case assumptions may lead decision-makers to miss clear signals when a negotiated settlement with Iran is actually possible.

Sanctions would divert the attention of the Iranian government and its people from the real problems within Iran, including the lack of freedom of speech and other rampant human and civil rights abuses. Stepping up our sanctions against Iran would offer its hardliners the propaganda they need to gain internal political support against the United States and therefore increase the regime’s power—just as support for Ahmadinejad has begun to wane.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a powerful wing of the Iranian military that supports terrorists abroad, should be a primary target for any sanctions. Yet the Guard Corps may actually benefit from the proposed sanctions, since they could give its smuggling activities a boost. Even the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank that supports these sanctions, acknowledged that the Guard Corps “is least likely to be affected” by this type of effort.

Rushing to pass unilateral gasoline sanctions may send the signal that the United States is no longer interested in engagement. If sanctions become necessary to increase international pressure on Iran, multilateral sanctions targeted at the Iranian leadership and Guard Corps would be more effective.

If Congress ultimately passes unilateral gasoline sanctions this year, Ahmadinejad would have a convenient excuse for delaying negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program and continuing to stifle dissent. Are these counterproductive outcomes worth it just so a few members of Congress can go home and brag to their constituents that they are “doing something” about Iran?

Leadership isn’t about doing something. It’s about doing the right thing.

The Report of the International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament, “Eliminating Nuclear Threats: A Practical Agenda for Global Policymakers”, was presented December 15, 2009 in Tokyo to the Prime Ministers of Australia and Japan, their excellencies Kevin Rudd and Yukio Hatoyama, by the Commission Co-Chairs, former foreign ministers Gareth Evans and Yoriko Kawaguchi, at a ceremony at the Japanese Prime Minister’s residence.

Read the full report

The Conference agreement on the Fiscal Year (FY) 2010 Defense Appropriations bill was adopted by the full House on Wednesday, December 16, roughly 24 hours after it became available for public viewing. The Senate is expected to act on the legislation this week. The bill includes $497.7 billion for the Department of Defense’s annual “base” budget (not including funding for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan). This is roughly $3.4 billion below the Obama administration’s request ($501.1 billion).

Beginning with its FY 2010 budget submission, the Defense Department includes funding for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, which were previously funded separately, as part of its annual budget request. For FY 2010, the administration requested $128.6 billon for “Overseas Contingency Operations,” funds which primarily support continued military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Conference approved $128.2 billion, $348 million below the request.

This bill does NOT include funds to support the “surge” of 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan proposed by President Obama on December 1, the cost of which conservative estimates place at an additional $30 billion. Nor does the bill include funding for military construction, military housing, or nuclear weapons activities in the Department of Energy, which are funded through other appropriations bills.

HIGHLIGHTS

Defense Health Care – Provides $29.2 billion, $1.34 billion above the administration’s request and $3.4 billion more than FY 2009.

Military Pay Raise – Includes a 3.4 percent pay raise, 0.5 percent above the administration’s request.

C-17 Transport – Adds $2.5 billion in unrequested funds for 10 C-17 aircraft.

F-22 “Raptor” Fighter Aircraft – Contains no funding for additional F-22 aircraft, but includes a provision that allows the Defense Department to develop an export version of the aircraft.

JSF Engines – Includes $465 million in unrequested funds to support a second source for the Joint Strike Fighter’s propulsion system.

No Permanent Bases – Continues a general provision prohibiting the establishment of permanent bases in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Guantanamo Bay Detention Facility – Provides no funds for the closure of the detention facility at Guantanamo Naval base.

FUNDING PROVISIONS

Total Funding (Excluding Overseas Contingency Operations)
Request: $501.1 billion
House: $497.6 billion
Senate: $497.6 billion
Conference: $497.7 billion ($3.4 billion below request)

Personnel
Request: $125.3 billion
House: $122.4 billion
Senate: $124.8 billion
Conference: $124.2 billion ($1.114 billion below request)

Operations & Maintenance
Request: $156.4 billion
House: $154.2 billion
Senate: $154.0 billion
Conference: $154.3 billion ($2.19 billion below request)

Procurement
Request: $105.2 billion
House: $104.8 billion
Senate: $108.0 billion
Conference: $104.4 billion ($816 million below request)

Research, Development, Testing & Evaluation
Request: $78.6 billion
House: $80.2 billion
Senate: $78.5 billion
Conference: $80.5 billion ($1.9 billion above request)

Revolving and Management Funds
Request: $3.1 billion
House: $3.1 billion
Senate: $2.6 billion
Conference: $3.1 billion

Other Defense Programs (including defense healthcare)
Request: $31.4 billion
House: $33.3 billion
Senate: $31.2 billion
Conference: $32.4 billion ($932 million above request)

MAJOR WEAPONS SYSTEMS

Ballistic Missile Defense (Missile Defense Agency only)

Request: $7.7 billion
House: N/A
Senate: $7.7 billion
Conference: N/A

Aircraft

F/A-22 “Raptor” Fighter
Request: $95.2 million
House: $399.9 million, including $369 million in advanced procurement for 12 additional aircraft
Senate: $95.2 million
Conference: $95.2 million

F-35 Joint Strike Fighter
Request: $6.8 billion for procurement of 30 aircraft (20 Navy, 10 Air Force)
House: $6.4 billion for procurement of 28 aircraft (18 Navy, 10 Air Force)
Senate: $6.8 billion for procurement of 30 aircraft (20 Navy, 10 Air Force)
Conference: $6.8 billion for procurement of 30 aircraft (20 Navy, 10 Air Force)
NOTE: Includes $465 million in unrequested funds to support a second source for the Joint Strike Fighter’s propulsion system.

F/A-18E/F “Super Hornet” Fighter
Request: $1.0 billion for 9 aircraft
House: $1.5 billion for 18 aircraft
Senate: $1.0 billion for 9 aircraft
Conference: $1.0 billion for 18 aircraft

EA-18G Jamming Aircraft
Request: $1.6 billion for 22 aircraft
House: $1.6 billion for 22 aircraft
Senate: $1.6 billion for 22 aircraft
Conference: $1.6 billion for 22 aircraft

V-22 “Osprey” Tilt-rotor
Request: $2.2 billion for 30 Marine Corps aircraft, and $437 million for 5 Air Force aircraft
House: $2.2 billion for 30 Marine Corps aircraft, and $437 million for 5 Air Force
Senate: $2.2 billion for 30 Marine Corps aircraft, and $437 million for 5 Air Force
Conference: $2.2 billion for 30 Marine Corps aircraft, and $437 million for 5 Air Force

C-17 Transport
Request: $88.5 million
House: $762.6 million
Senate: $2.6 billion for 10 aircraft
Conference: $2.6 billion for 10 aircraft

C-130J Transport Aircraft
Request: $285.6 million for 3 Air Force aircraft
House: $285.6 million for 3 Air Force aircraft
Senate: $285.6 million for 3 Air Force aircraft
Conference: $285.6 million for 3 Air Force aircraft

Joint Cargo Aircraft
Request: $319.1 million for 8 aircraft
House: $319.1 million for 8 aircraft
Senate: $319.1 million for 8 aircraft
Conference: $319.1 million for 8 aircraft

SHIPBUILDING

Aircraft Carrier Replacement Program [CVN-21]
Request: $739.3 million
House: $739.3 million
Senate: $739.3 million
Conference: $739.3 million

DD-1000 “Zumwalt” Destroyer [DD(x)]
Request: $1.1 billion
House: $1.1 billion
Senate: $1.4 billion
Conference: $1.4 billion
NOTE: The requested funding is to complete the third and final ship in this class.

DDG-51 “Arleigh Burke” Destroyer
Request: $1.9 billion for 1 vessel
House: $1.9 billion for 1 vessel
Senate: $3.65 billion for 2 vessels
Conference: $1.9 billion for 1 vessel

Littoral Combat Ship (LCS)
Request: $1.4 billion for 3 vessels
House: $2.2 billion for 4 vessels
Senate: $1.1 billion for 2 vessels
Conference: $1.1 billion for 2 vessels

LPD-17 “San Antonio” Amphibious Assault Ship
Request: $872.4 million
House: $872.4 million
Senate: $872.4 million
Conference: $872.4 million

LHA Replacement Vessel
Request: no new funding requested
House: no new funding requested
Senate: $170 million in advanced procurement
Conference: $170 million in advanced procurement

SSN-774 “Virginia” Class Submarine
Request: $1.96 billion for 1 vessel
House: $1.96 billion for 1 vessel
Senate: $1.96 billion for 1 vessel
Conference: $1.96 billion for 1 vessel
NOTE: The committee also includes $1.96 billion for advanced procurement of an additional vessel, the amount requested.

ARMY PROGRAMS

Stryker Armored Vehicle
Request: $388.6 million
House: $613.6 million
Senate: $364.2 million
Conference: $363.9 million

Future Combat System
Request: $2.9 billion
House: N/A
Senate: N/A
Conference: N/A

UH-60 “Blackhawk” Helicopters
Request: $1.3 billion for 79 aircraft
House: $1.3 billion for 79 aircraft
Senate: $1.3 billion for 79 aircraft
Conference: $1.3 billion for 79 aircraft

Light Utility Helicopter
Request: $326.0 million for 54 aircraft
House: $326.0 million for 54 aircraft
Senate: $326.0 million for 54 aircraft
Conference: $326.0 million for 54 aircraft

HMMWV “Hummer” High Mobility Vehicle
Request: $281.1 million for 1,770 vehicles
House: $281.1 million for 1,770 vehicles
Senate: 282.3 million for 1,770 vehicles
Conference: 282.1 million for 1,770 vehicles

FUNDING FOR OVERSEAS CONTINGENCY OPERATIONS (TITLE IX)

As part of its FY 2010 budget submission, the administration requested $128.6 billon for “Overseas Contingency Operations,” funds which primarily support continued combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Committee approved $128.2 billion, $348 million below the request.

This bill does NOT include funds to support the “surge” of 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan proposed by President Obama on December 1, the cost of which conservative estimates place at an additional $30 billion.

HIGHLIGHTS

Afghanistan Security Forces – Provides $6.56 billion for Afghanistan Security Forces Fund, $900 million below the request (transferred to the MRAP program).

Improvised Explosive Devises (IEDs) – Provides $1.76 billion for the Joint IED Defeat Fund (JIEDDF), $227 million above the request.

Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicles (MRAP) – Includes $6.28 billion for the MRAP program, $825 million more than requested.

Commander’s Emergency Response Program (CERP) – Provides $1.2 billion ($300 million below the request) for CERP, which allows U.S. officers to finance urgent humanitarian relief and reconstruction requirements in their area of responsibility (AOR). $1 billion is for CERP in Afghanistan, and $200 million in Iraq.

National Guard and Reserve Equipment – Provides $950 million for equipment for the National Guard and Reserve.

FUNDING PROVISIONS

Total Funding
Request: $128.6 billion
House: $128.2 billion
Senate: $128.2 billion
Conference: $128.2 billion ($348 million below the request)

Personnel
Request: $14.1 billion
House: $16.2 billion
Senate: $14.1 billion
Conference: $15.0 billion ($863 million above request)

Operations & Maintenance
Request: $89.3 billion
House: $88.0 billion
Senate: $86.9 billion
Conference: $86.1 billion ($3.2 billion below request)

Procurement
Request: $21.3 billion
House: $20.4 billion
Senate: $22.2 billion
Conference: $23.1 billion ($1.75 billion above request)

Research, Development, Testing & Evaluation
Request: $310.3 million
House: $241.4 million
Senate: $293.6 million
Conference: $268.1 million ($42.2 million below request)

Revolving and Management Funds
Request: $396.9 million
House: $412.2 million
Senate: $412.2 million
Conference: $412.2 million ($15.3 million above the request)

Other Defense Programs
Request: $3.1 billion
House: $3.0 billion
Senate: $4.0 billion
Conference: $3.4 billion ($249 million above request)

SOURCES

Managers’ Statement to Accompany H.R. 3326 (December 15, 2009)

The first two Americans to win the Nobel Peace Prize were Republicans. President Theodore Roosevelt was awarded the 1906 prize. His masterly mediation to settle the Russian-Japanese war the previous year quickly erased his bellicose tendencies in Norwegian eyes.

The man who served as his secretary of war and then secretary of state, Elihu Root, got his prize in 1912. Root, a successful corporate lawyer of formidable intellect and brusqueness, was first named secretary of war by President William McKinley after the Spanish-American War to, among other things, supervise the administration of territories, primarily the Philippines and Cuba, acquired in the conflict with Spain. He continued in the post under Roosevelt and spearheaded some of the most lasting reforms of the U.S. Army, including the introduction of the General Staff and the reordering of officer training to effect the Army’s transformation into a force commensurate with the nation’s new status at the start of the century as a world power.

While a Republican senator from New York, Root was picked by Andrew Carnegie to become the first president of his recently endowed peace foundation, and the promise embodied in this new role certainly influenced the Nobel Peace Prize Committee. Other achievements cited in the awarding of the prize included Root’s contribution to a “better understanding between the countries of North and South America.” Despite these apparently anodyne credentials, Root was a hard-headed realist. This was reflected at the start of his Nobel Lecture when he warned:

“...the continual recurrence of war and the universally increasing preparations for war based upon expectation of it among nations all of whom declare themselves in favor of peace, indicate that intellectual acceptance of peace doctrine is not sufficient to control conduct, and that a general feeling in favor of peace, however sincere, does not furnish a strong enough motive to withstand the passions which lead to war when a cause of quarrel has arisen.”

While not completely dismissive of appeals to humans’ better nature, Root believed that any resultant inclination toward peaceable behavior was inevitably vulnerable to the savage forces that lay, more or less dormant, just under the civilized veneer of modern man. He was encouraged that the world had embraced the process of international arbitration as established by the Hague Convention, which he credited with settling 16 international disputes over the preceding dozen years. Each war averted reinforced a habit of peace.

What were needed, in Root’s opinion, were regular Hague conferences to establish a body of international laws to determine the rights and obligations of countries. In addition, there should be efforts to educate general populations on the agreed, international, legal standards of conduct, since constitutional governments were reluctant to embark on war without popular support. Equally, Root recognized that there is always an attempt to justify acts of international aggression — “The wolf always charges the lamb with muddying the stream” — but he hoped that the advent of improved communications, expansion of international trade and more information available to the general public would lead to them passing sound judgment on the just and unjust conduct of nations.

How would an up-to-date Elihu Root apply his political philosophy if he found himself in today’s U.S. Senate? There is no doubt that he would recognize the international tensions and complexities surrounding the issue of nuclear weapons, and want to strengthen the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) that has limited the spread of these weapons rather effectively over nearly four decades.

There are two pieces of legislation pending that directly impact the future of the NPT. The first is the renewal of START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty), a major arms-control agreement initiated by President Reagan and brought to fruition by the administration of George H.W. Bush during the perilous break-up of the Soviet Union. The renewal of START is due by the end of this year and would represent a significant pact between the United States and Russia, which still possess over 90 percent of the world’s nuclear warheads between them. The renewal would demonstrate further progress toward nuclear disarmament, an obligation that the nuclear weapon states (NWS) have accepted under Article VI of the NPT and one that the non-nuclear weapon states (NNWS) are pressing to be honored.

The second piece of legislation is the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) that was signed but failed Senate ratification during Bill Clinton’s presidency. The objectives of this ban are twofold: to prohibit NNWS from holding the tests necessary to develop nuclear weapons and to prevent NWS from building ever more destructive and sophisticated warheads.

There were two major technical reservations about the CTBT when ratification failed in the Senate — detection of tests and the necessity of future testing to assure the reliability of the U.S. nuclear arsenal. Since 1999, there have been steady improvements in the detection thresholds and coverage provided by global monitoring systems, and a review by senior American scientific advisers has concluded that the active cores, the plutonium pits, in U.S. nuclear weapons will show no meaningful physical deterioration for at least 85 years.

The U.S. has not conducted a nuclear test since 1992 so in that sense is already complying with the CTBT. Problems remain with the treaty, its organization bears the unwieldy bureaucracy typical of the U.N., but its purpose is crystal clear — to end all nuclear test explosions — a goal first pursued by the Eisenhower administration. The political process stipulated at the U.N. to bring the treaty into force may prove impossible, but even if there are a handful of nuclear-capable countries that refuse to sign or ratify it, surely the U.S. does not wish to be grouped with them.

Russia has ratified it and China, which has signed, is probably watching to see what the U.S. does. India and Pakistan have not yet signed, but again the United States may have a significant influence if the Senate finds the necessary two-thirds majority to ratify it. Obviously the more countries that ratify the CTBT, the more credible it becomes as a global norm, and the more condign should be the penalties for breaking the ban.

The ratification of foreign treaties in the U.S. Senate requires overcoming a high barrier and this is as it should be, since such treaties bind successive administrations and trump U.S. law. Any treaty involving arms control is especially daunting because of the imputed risk to national security.

Dwight Eisenhower was the first Republican to recognize that the achievement of an international system to restrain the proliferation of nuclear weapons would be well worth a minor abrogation of national sovereignty. It is to be hoped that the necessary handful of Republican senators will endorse the collective wisdom of predecessors Root, Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush and join their Democratic colleagues in supporting START renewal and ratification of the CTBT.

President Obama may be the type of man, who Root said, occasionally comes along and through his “exceptional power of statement or of feeling and possessed by the true missionary spirit, will deliver a message to the world, putting old truths in such a way as to bite into the consciousness of civilized peoples and move mankind forward a little,” but to really advance the cause of nuclear disarmament he will need to convince Republicans in the U.S. Senate to be bold.

Andrew Brown is a research associate at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard’s Kennedy School and a member of the national advisory board of the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation.

Article summary below; read the full text online

The belief that the United States is the only declared nuclear power that isn't modernizing its nuclear arsenal is fast becoming an article of faith in nuclear weapon policy circles. As Arizona Republican Sen. Jon Kyl put it last summer, "Every nuclear weapons power--with the exception of the United States--is currently modernizing its nuclear weapons and weapons delivery systems."

From this belief arises a dangerous argument: U.S. allies and adversaries are adding new nuclear weapons and capabilities, while Washington is allowing its nuclear forces to atrophy. Opponents of President Barack Obama's nonproliferation and disarmament agendas are using this idea as a way of undermining his plans, alleging that by not modernizing, the United States is in danger of being surpassed by Russia and China. Yet these arguments are specious and misleading.

By narrowly defining "modernization" as the production and deployment of new warheads and delivery vehicles, an inappropriate standard is set by which to judge the health of a nuclear arsenal. What matters far more than the age of warheads and other equipment is whether a country has a reliable, credible deterrent. Viewed in this light, the United States cannot be said to be falling behind: Washington takes continual steps to ensure that its arsenal remains dominant, and indeed, its nuclear arsenal remains second to none.

That Washington doesn't follow the same approach to maintaining its forces as Russia, China, Britain, or France isn't a sign of weakness or neglect. After all, constantly churning out new systems isn't necessarily the mark of a more reliable, credible, or threatening force. In so far as the United States has pursued a different approach from other countries, it is because this approach has proven to be remarkably effective. In fact, a comparison of the status of the U.S., Russian, Chinese, British, and French arsenals and modernization programs demonstrates the fallaciousness of the implication that Washington is falling behind; it also undercuts the idea that the United States is the least active nuclear weapon state in terms of updating its forces.