GOING, GOING…: CENTER HIGH-LEVEL ROUNDTABLE EXAMINES CLINTON DECISIONS IMPERILLING U.S. UNDERSEA WARFARE FORCES

(Washington, D.C.): Evidence that the United States’
future ability to make effective use of undersea assets
for nuclear deterrence, sea control and other purposes
was the focus of an extraordinary discussion yesterday
involving over fifty senior security policy practitioners
and other experts. The occasion was a day-long Roundtable
discussion sponsored by the Center for Security Policy
concerning the future of the U.S. strategic and tactical
undersea forces. Among the participants were former
Secretaries of Defense James Schlesinger
and Caspar Weinberger, the former
Director of Naval Nuclear Reactors, Admiral Kinnaird
McKee, the former Deputy Director of the Central
Intelligence Agency, Vice Admiral Al Burkhalter,
former Under Secretary of Defense Don Hicks
and former chief strategic arms negotiator Ambassador Linton
Brooks.

The Roundtable was the second in a series of such
high-level Center symposiums on major national security
issues of the day. The first occurred on 8 June 1994 and
dealt with the future of the manned bomber force. It
resulted in an influential summary of that Roundtable’s
proceedings which served to inform subsequent
congressional decisions about the need to maintain a
robust U.S. bomber force and to preserve the option to
produce additional B-2 bombers.

Yesterday’s discussion identified and explored a
number of dangers threatening the future viability of the
United States’ undersea warfare capabilities. These
include the impact of:

• the Clinton Administration’s Bottom-Up Review
  that provides too few nuclear attack
  submarines to perform the myriad
  missions assigned to them — and too few
  resources to sustain even that inadequate force
  structure;
• the Administration’s Nuclear Posture Review which
  calls for a minimum of four (out of
  eighteen) Trident ballistic missile submarines
  to be removed from service prematurely;
• the Clinton Administration’s commitment to
  “denuclearization” which is, among
  other things, translating into an inadequate
  supply of the radioactive gas tritium
  needed to sustain the nuclear weapons of the
  sea-based leg of the Triad (and other U.S.
  nuclear forces). Without such a supply of
  tritium, the United States will be simply unable
  to execute options the Administration claims it
  is maintaining, i.e., “hedging” options
  for reconstituting nuclear capabilities should
  strategic conditions require the U.S. to do so;
• a failure properly to appreciate — and invest in
  the technology and operational developments
  necessary to defeat — emerging anti-submarine
  warfare threats that may jeopardize the
  future survivability of U.S. undersea forces;
• actions by the executive and legislative branches
  that impinge on the Nation’s ability to maintain critical
  industrial capabilities associated with
  the production of nuclear-powered submarines and
  submarine-launched ballistic missiles; and
• an unwarranted expectation of Russian
  cooperation and accommodation in the
  future with regard to strategic arms control
  arrangements. In this regard, it was noted with
  considerable concern that Moscow has to date made
  only modest reductions in its sea-based and other
  nuclear forces compared to the deep cuts the
  United States has already effected or is
  currently undertaking.

A summary of the Center’s Roundtable on the Future of
the U.S. Strategic and Tactical Undersea Forces will be
published shortly. Click here for a copy
of this summary.