Panel: Navy excels at nuke mission, mostly - Navy News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Navy Times

Panel: Navy excels at nuke mission, mostly

The Navy has been a much better steward of its strategic nuclear mission than the Air Force, according to a top-level report released Thursday, but the Navy’s nuclear forces are “fraying at the edges,” and threatened by the potential loss of experienced leaders.

What’s more, the Navy has not maintained the nuclear variant of the Tomahawk cruise missile for which it’s responsible, even though it was ordered to keep it in the arsenal, reflecting a “failure to recognize” the missile’s “important deterrent capability,” the report found.

Still, despite the long-term worries and a few specific problems with its one-third of the U.S. nuclear triad, the Navy’s strategic forces are mostly well managed, well trained and motivated, according to the findings.

“We, generally speaking, found one aspect of our deterrent posture to be quite impressive. And that is the Navy,” said former Defense Secretary James Schlesinger, who headed the panel that investigated the nuclear arsenal. He briefed reporters Thursday at the Pentagon on his findings.

“We were quite satisfied, generally, with the Navy’s performance. Morale is high by contrast to some of the indications of lower morale in the Air Force in the nuclear establishment when we visited them earlier.”

The report was the second half of the findings of a high-level committee formed to investigate a series of Air Force nuclear mishaps and embarrassments, including a bomber that flew across the United States carrying live nuclear weapons; parts from nuclear missiles accidentally being shipped to Taiwan; inspection failures and others. Convened by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Schlesinger’s commission was tasked with a keel-up review of the entire U.S. nuclear arsenal, including all the military services.

In its previous report and other probes, the Air Force concluded that its leadership had badly marginalized its nuclear mission as it struggled to adapt its force away from a Cold War posture and toward 21st-century missions. For example, airmen in nuclear career fields had fewer pay and promotion opportunities, and readiness reportedly suffered.

“The attitude of the Air Force was: ‘We know that the president and the secretary of defense don’t give a damn about what we do,’ ” the authors wrote. “The attitude of the Navy was: ‘We know that the president and the secretary of defense don’t care — but we do.’ ”

Even so, the panel worried about the coming generations of Navy leaders who will have risen through a surface and aviation fleet now devoid of nuclear weapons. Less than a generation ago, the report authors write, it was typical for surface warriors and pilots to have experience with the Navy’s shipboard stockpiles of tactical nuclear weapons, including bombs, cruise missiles and torpedoes.

But with those weapons withdrawn from the fleet in 1991 and, later, taken altogether from the Navy arsenal, only ballistic-missile submariners will enter senior leadership with firsthand experience with nuclear weapons.

“This may require, as recommended to the Air Force, that the secretary of the navy and the [chief of naval operations] stipulate nuclear deterrent/weapons experience as a desirable promotion criterion for consideration by promotion and selection boards,” the report recommends.

“To ensure that the Navy’s nuclear weapons mission area continues to enjoy senior-level advocacy in the future, the senior leadership should institutionalize changes to expose an appropriate number of its officers to nuclear deterrence and strategy concepts,” the authors wrote.

A lack of high-level support is apparently why the Navy has not maintained its nuclear Tomahawks, even though it was instructed to do so. “The task force found no [combatant commander], joint staff or Navy advocacy for the nuclear sea-launched cruise missile capability” of the nuclear Tomahawk, the authors wrote.

Then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld issued the order for the Navy to maintain the nuclear Tomahawk in 2006, a Pentagon official told Navy Times. The service didn’t, according to the Schlesinger report, because both Navy leaders and U.S. Strategic Command saw “no specific military capability or gap identified,” that the missile was needed to fill. There are no plans or funding for a replacement weapon.

Other concerns about the Navy nuclear mission included under-manned training centers; problems with handling classified material in the Navy and Air Force supply chains; and insufficient inspections for the Navy’s E-6B Looking Glass command-and-control aircraft.

Gates issued a statement Thursday thanking the committee, which also included retired Adm. Ed Giambastiani, and making assurances that the American nuclear arsenal was secure and ready, despite the past hiccups.

“The U.S. nuclear deterrent remains safe, secure and reliable; no one should doubt our capabilities or our resolve to defend U.S. and allies' interests by deterring aggression. The report identified numerous trends, both recent and long-term, that may warrant corrective actions. The department will continue to review the panel's recommendations while ensuring the long-term credibility of the U.S. nuclear deterrent forces and sustaining allied confidence in U.S. security commitments well into the future,” Gates said.