Summary of the Center for Security Policy’s High-l

Five days after Secretary of State Madeline Albright announced that former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General John M. Shalikashvili, would be spearheading the “Administration’s effort to achieve bipartisan support for ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (C.T.B.T.),” the Center for Security Policy convened a High-Level Roundtable Discussion aimed at illuminating the very issues Gen. Shalikashvili will be exploring.

As the Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. John W. Warner (R-VA) observed in addressing the Roundtable on “Assuring Nuclear Deterrence after the Senate’s Rejection of the C.T.B.T.,” the proceedings of this session provide an indispensable record for any future debate about the wisdom of ratifying the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and the impossibility of fixing’ it.

Among the participants were more than seventy experienced national security practitioners including: two legislators who played, along with Sen. Warner, leading roles in the C.T.B.T. debate, Senators Thad Cochran (R-MS) and Jon Kyl (R-AZ); former Secretaries of Defense Caspar Weinberger and James Schlesinger (Dr. Schlesinger also brought to the discussion expertise acquired during his service as Director of Central Intelligence and Secretary of Energy); President Clinton’s former CIA Director James Woolsey; senior representatives of each of the Nation’s nuclear laboratories including Sandia National Laboratory Director Paul Robinson; and myriad other sub-Cabinet officials, congressional aides and members of the press. The honorary Chairman of the Center’s Congressional National Security Caucus, former House Rules Committee Chairman Rep. Gerald Solomon, and a member of its distinguished Military Committee, General Richard Lawson (USAF Ret.), were also in attendance.

Highlights of the remarks made by the Lead Discussants and other participants in the course of this extraordinary event included the following:

Sen. Kyl Confirms that the Senate’s Acted Deliberately, Responsibly on the C.T.B.T.

Opening remarks were provided by Senator Kyl, one of the Congress’ most astute and influential national security practitioners, who discussed “The Senate’s Action on the C.T.B.T. and the Future of Deterrence.” Senator Kyl explained in detail why the Senate rejected the treaty and briefly described the reasons why the Treaty’s very goals make it uncorrectable. He urged the rejection of the practice of relying first and foremost on negotiating arms control and only then addressing the military capabilities the Nation requires. The Senator recommended instead the time-tested policy of “peace through strength,” complemented where useful with sound, verifiable arms control agreements. Among Sen. Kyl’s most important comments were the following:

• “We had a brief moment of celebration on the defeat of the C.T.B.T., followed very quickly by a realization that the other side was not going to rest in its defeat but would immediately begin efforts to turn it around, part of the reason because they were so shocked that this actually occurred, and part of it because it is an element of the strategy to continue to deal with the allies and some other countries around the world in a way which promotes peace through paper’ as opposed to peace through strength.'”






• “I wrote to my colleagues in an effort to remind them of why we actually voted on the treaty….Almost no one could conclude that the treaty should be ratified on the Republican side, and that’s why we got 51 votes against the treaty. But a majority of the Republicans really didn’t want to vote on it….So I tried to remind my colleagues as they returned to Washington of the reasons why we had to end up voting, and I believe that the press to make this an issue right now is perhaps the best evidence of the fact that we had to vote on it. Had we not voted on it, we would be under [an even more intense] full court press right now to fix’ the treaty …to mollify the concerns of those Republicans who [the Administration] needed to vote in favor of the treaty, or not to vote to reject it.”






• “The [argument that] the Senate didn’t have time….is a false argument in any event. Republicans actually took a whole lot more time. I know, because for week after week after week, I kept bothering them and most of them said, okay, we’ve had enough briefings from you. We’ve had enough conversation. Don’t bother us anymore. No Republican was denied the opportunity to become thoroughly and totally enmeshed and immersed and educated on this issue.”






• “I think it’s important also to recognize that more time would not have altered some fundamental facts. This treaty was flawed in ways other than at the margins. For example, the Democrats were never willing to confront the fact that the preamble to the treaty outlines the purpose of the treaty, which is complete disarmament under strict and effective international control. Now, this is the real goal of the nuclear activists, but Democrats were never really willing to promote that, and I believe that when one talks about fixing the treaty, the place to start is with the preamble.
  

  “So let’s start with the general goal of the treaty. Are we really for disarmament, strict and effective disarmament under international control? If we are, then this treaty is our cup of tea. If we’re not, then there’s not a lot of fixing that’s going to modify that basic goal. So you have to start with the goal.”







• “Apart from the specific flaws in the treaty, and they are many and they are not fixable, you have to go back to two fundamental points. Number one, the treaty would never, even if it were the kind of treaty that could be verified and enforced, would never meet the objective. You’re never going to, by a treaty, prevent a country from developing this kind of capability if it wants to, and the kind of countries that want to, the kind of countries that are doing it, they are already in violation of treaties. Once you possess one of these nuclear weapons, you’re in violation of the NPT. And so the bottom line is that there can be no effective treaty to prevent this. You’ve got to have a defense, as well.”






• “This entire century has been animated by this debate. Do you rely upon treaties or do you rely upon defense? It’s not a black or white proposition. Both sides agree that there’s some utility in the other. But this administration’s stated philosophy is to rely upon treaties for defense first, and only if you just cannot strike a deal with the other side would you ever want to defend yourself.”
  

  “Our view, the Reagan view, is peace through strength,’ and once you have developed the ability to defend yourself, then however you can add to that by treaties can be useful. But you first attend to your own defense. That is a fundamental difference here between those who want to rely upon something like the C.T.B.T. and those who are unwilling to do so.”

Senator Kyl’s remarks were followed by brief comments by Rep. Solomon concerning the need for opponents of the C.T.B.T. and similar treaties to stay vigilant because the Clinton Administration, foreign governments (including some of our allies) and other advocates can be expected to mount a renewed push for the ratification of this Treaty. That warning — and the dire strategic implications of such a course of action — was powerfully underscored by a statement prepared for the Roundtable by former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General John W. Vessey. Gen. Vessey’s statement said, in part:

“It is unlikely that God will permit us to uninvent’ nuclear weapons. Some nation, or power, will be the preeminent nuclear power in the world. I, for one, believe that at least under present and foreseeable conditions, the world will be safer if that power is the United States of America. We jeopardize maintaining that condition by eschewing the development of new nuclear weapons and by ruling out testing if and when it is needed. Consequently, I believe that ratifying the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty — an accord that would have imposed a permanent, zero-yield ban on all underground nuclear tests — is not in the security interests of the United States.

Is the U.S. Still Bound by the C.T.B.T.?

The Roundtable next turned to a discussion of “The Status of the C.T.B.T. Following its Rejection by the Senate” led by Douglas J. Feith, Esq., former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense and internationally recognized expert on multilateral arms control and other treaties, and Robert F. Turner, a former acting Assistant Secretary of State who specializes in constitutional law and serves as a professor of the University of Virginia School of Law. They eviscerated President Clinton’s assertion that the U.S. is still legally bound by the provisions of the C.T.B.T. — despite its rejection by a majority of the Senate — “unless I erase our name,” noting that such a stance is not supported by either international or U.S. domestic law. Of particular note were the following:

Dr. Robert F. Turner





• “As all of you know…last October, with 51 Senators voting in the negative, the Senate refused to consent to the ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. On the afternoon of October 14, during a press conference, President Clinton said, and I quote, We are not going to test. I signed to that treaty. It still binds us unless I go, in effect, and erase our name. Unless the President does that and takes our name off, we are bound by it.’
  

  “Our question is the current status of the C.T.B.T. as a legal constraint on the United States, and on that issue, I think the President is simply mistaken. While it is true that Senate rejection does not prohibit future consideration of the treaty by this or another Senate, the idea that we are legally bound by the terms of a treaty unless the President somehow formally removes our name from the treaty is silly. Such a theory would suggest that Woodrow Wilson could have made us part of the League of Nations by simply not going back to Paris and removing his signature from the Treaty of Versailles.”







• “The general principle governing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty under international law is that States are not bound by it unless they express their consent to be bound through the solemn act of ratification, approval, or accession. And how each state allocates authority within its domestic political system to make such commitments is almost entirely a matter of internal law normally governed by national constitutions.”






• “Is it a manifest violation of that provision if the President tries to keep the treaty in force when the United States Senate has not only not given him the two-thirds majority vote necessary for ratification, but has actually given him a majority vote against ratification? The answer is equally clear. I would submit that under international law, the United States is not likely to be held bound by the terms of the C.T.B.T. irrespective of what the President says.”






• “The clear meaning in the Constitution is that the President may not bind the country to a treaty without the consent of two-thirds of the Senate. The President has taken an oath of office to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States….The President [ought] to be more restrained in some of his public pronouncements than has been the case, because he clearly is violating the spirit of the Constitution if he attempts unilaterally to try to obligate the United States to the treaty regime once the Senate has so overwhelmingly rejected a constitutional effort to achieve that result.”



Douglas J. Feith, Esq.





• “There are only two ways to make law in the United States. One is by Congress passing a statute. The other is by treaty. There is no such thing as the executive branch making law by itself….To understand a lot of these debates about the status of the C.T.B.T. and to reinforce the points made earlier, we should all recognize that our Constitution doesn’t allow the President to make law unilaterally. That’s fundamental. And so if the President claims that we are bound under international law in a way that binds the government domestically simply because the executive branch has put its signature on a treaty, we should recognize how offensive that is at the most fundamental level to our constitutional system.”






• “It’s useful to be clear that when we talk about fixing’ the treaty, there are two ways that one might go about fixing it. One is amending it, and the C.T.B.T. is a multilateral agreement. Under international law, it can be amended only if the amendments are accepted by all of the parties. That, of course, would require renegotiation that would take quite a while….
  

  “The other way, which some people in the administration have suggested they might want to attempt, is by unilateral reservation or clarification by the United States….I think it’s important that…that the Senate not fall for this. In a multilateral treaty, it is impermissible for a state to ratify, subject to a reservation that is incompatible with the object and purpose of the treaty. And some of the pieces of paper floated by the administration or administration supporters that are possible reservations basically negate the treaty at a very fundamental level.”

Can the C.T.B.T. be Fixed’?

The Roundtable featured remarks by Secretaries Weinberger and Schlesinger on the question “Can the C.T.B.T. be Fixed?” Both of these distinguished civil servants — who, together with former Secretaries of Defense Melvin Laird, Donald Rumsfeld, Frank Carlucci and Dick Cheney, played a decisive role in the Senate’s deliberations on the C.T.B.T. when they wrote an unprecedented joint letter urging its rejection — agreed that the present Treaty is unfixable. They argued, moreover, that a zero- yield, permanent nuclear test ban is manifestly not in the United States’ national interest and noted that, given international support for such a treaty, needed changes to either of those key provisions would be unlikely to be accepted by other parties. Among the most noteworthy points were the following:

Caspar W. Weinberger





• “If you look… at what are the purposes that we’re trying to fulfill and what are the goals we’re trying to reach [pursuant to the C.T.B.T.], then the question really becomes: Is there anything that you can do with this treaty that would change the present situation and would still leave our security goals and objectives intact. I frankly don’t think there is, because what this treaty does – – and we should recognize it — is not to ban testing. What this treaty does is ban all effective testing. It says that you cannot test by explosion. You cannot test in the only way that is absolutely certain to give you the results and the answer to the question, “Will the nuclear deterrent work?”






• “Remember that the United States provides the nuclear deterrent not just for the United States but for a great many other countries, including a large part of NATO and many of our Asian allies and others. So it is far more important, to be perfectly blunt about it, that we know that our nuclear deterrent will work than it is for, say, France or some other country whose nuclear deterrent does not have worldwide implications….






• “…We have to ask ourselves quite seriously…whether or not the goal of this treaty is basically to disarm the nuclear power that is providing a nuclear deterrent over not just itself, but over many, many countries all over the world. If that is the goal, then let that be said and let us argue that. If nuclear disarmament is what is desired, and some people do talk about it, then you want to have that out on the table and see. This treaty may go quite a long ways toward disarming effectively the nuclear deterrent of the United States. And if that is done in the hope that everybody else will follow suit and we’ll be free of this terrible scourge, fair enough. Let’s discuss it. Let’s have it out on the table.
  

  “I do not think that that is a legitimate goal. I do not think it’s anything we should endorse. If that is the goal of the treaty, then so much the better that it was defeated, not by a vast right-wing conspiracy but by people who sensibly are concerned with the safety and security of the United States. So these are the things that I think we have to talk about when we talk about can [the C.T.B.T.] be fixed.'”







• If this nuclear deterrent is to remain part of our strategic concept, and I cannot see how it could be otherwise, then we have to know if it works, and if you want to know if it works, you cannot sign a treaty that forbids effective testing, and that is essentially what we’re being told to do.”






• “So again, these would be reasons for not trying to fix the treaty but staying with the rejection of it and developing, if we want, computer methods of testing the stockpile from time to time, but always leaving ourselves with the option that if we determine our own security requires it that we can test. And if we find flaws, as we almost certainly will, that we then are able to fix them, so that the world will know that we have a nuclear deterrent not just on paper, not just of a size which ought to be reduced or any of those other things, but we have a nuclear deterrent that if we should ever need it will work.”



Dr. James R. Schlesinger





• “Let me drive home two points. I’m not a real fan of the Test Ban Treaty, but if it’s the determination of this administration to proceed, there are two things that you cannot do: First, make it a permanent treaty, and second, make it zero-yield. I thought that that would be sufficient. Ultimately, the administration decided to go with a permanent treaty and to make it zero-yield and the consequences are that, over time, we cannot have satisfactory confidence in the reliability of the deterrent.”
  
  
  
• “The chief barrier to proliferation in these last 55 years since Hiroshima has been confidence in the protection offered by the American deterrent. It is the reason, quite simply, that nations like Korea or Japan or, more complicated, in the case of Germany, have not sought nuclear weapons. Because of the NATO agreement, because of the Japan Treaty, because of our agreements with the Koreans, they have not felt the necessity of taking that final plunge. As confidence on their part in the U.S. deterrent wanes over a period of 30, 40, 50 years, what is the likelihood that those nations will refrain from seeking nuclear weapons? I think that it is very modest.”






• “Can this treaty be saved? The brief answer is No.’ And the reason that the brief answer is No’ is that we cannot go back and amend the treaty. Under international law, we cannot withdraw from that treaty and change any of the necessary characteristics.
  

  “This treaty could not be amended to permit a fixed limit of term, let us say ten years. Jimmy Carter’s treaty was intended to be for ten years. It could not be amended to permit low-yield testing, which would permit us to understand whether or not nuclear ignition had been reached.”







• “It certainly was not a political benefit internationally for the Senate to turn down the treaty, but it did so for good reason, which is that those charged with the responsibility should not gamble with the confidence in the U.S. deterrent over time.”






• “We have been much more fortunate than we ever anticipated in constraining the spread of nuclear weapons….The reason, once again, is the confidence in the American deterrent. Other nations have a greater stake in the reliability of that deterrent than even we do. That is the irony, and one must convey this to them.”






• “I have not detected any enthusiasm for this treaty on the part even of its military supporters. There are a bit sheepish about it, frankly, other than General Shalikashvili, who has been inserted, again, into combat and will lead, according to the request of Secretary Albright, the charge for the treaty this year. But no one else, I think, that I’ve been able to detect — maybe Dave Jones, another former Chairman — has much enthusiasm. As I indicated earlier, none of the chiefs of service could remember ever having had an explicit agreement on supporting the treaty. This was basically the Chairman…making that judgment for the JCS.”

Sen. Cochran on the Senate’s Rejection of the C.T.B.T. in Historical Context

The Roundtable’s luncheon address was provided by Senator Thad Cochran, who chairs the Senate Subcommittee on International Security, Proliferation and Federal Services and the Senate’s newly created National Security Working Group. Senator Cochran addressed the preposterous inaccuracy of claims that the Senate’s rejection of the C.T.B.T. was animated by “neo-isolationism” and admonished the present Administration for failing to work with Congress while the Treaty was being negotiated. Highlights of Sen. Cochran’s remarks include the following:

• “There’s been a good deal of criticism of the Senate after the vote charging it with neo-isolationism, or worse….The fact is, the Senate is not an isolationist body. The Constitution takes care of that by making it a joint partner with the administration in the treaty-making process.”






• ” I don’t think the Senate should apologize for making a decision to reject the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. I think some of the most impressive and persuasive discussions and remarks on the subject for why we acted as we did, and properly so, were given by Dr. James Schlesinger when he testified before our Subcommittee on International Security and Proliferation Issues two years ago on the concerns he had….[Senator] Dick Lugar was the other [one] I had in mind. He wrote an op.ed. piece after the [vote on the C.T.B.T.] explaining the Senate’s position and why we acted as we did. I thought it was the most persuasive piece I had read –and is still — on the subject of the Senate’s rejection of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.
  

  “So I invite your attention to those comments that have been made by others for the intellectual underpinning of our vote on that subject and why it is not a move toward isolationism or a capriciously undertaken act which was irresponsible. It was responsible, because it is a statement of our concern for a strong and secure national security policy and it was on that motivation that the votes were cast.”







• “One interesting…example of the risks in treaty-making can be found in the Naval Treaties of 1922 and the London Naval Treaty of 1930. These treaties limited the number of ships, their sizes, and the size of their weapons and froze naval fortifications and bases in the Western Pacific, all with the intent to halt a perceived naval arms race following World War I.
  

  “Now, Winston Churchill became First Lord of the Admiralty in 1939 and he undertook a review of the British navy’s shipbuilding program and the constraints against that program and found these treaties in force and they had been honored by the administrators of the navy and he said, the constructive genius and commanding reputation of the Royal Navy in design had been distorted and hampered by the treaty restrictions for 20 years. All our cruisers were the result of trying to conform to treaty limitations and gentlemen’s agreements.’
  

  “Of course, he observed that the construction of the Bismarck by Germany and its displacement that exceeded 45,000 tons had numerous advantages that the British navy couldn’t match. The Germans didn’t abide by the treaty, and neither did others. The fact of the matter is, it was difficult then to catch up and to provide for the security of Great Britain and its allies because of the provisions of those agreements.”

Can the Safety and Reliability of the U.S. Deterrent Be Preserved Without Nuclear Testing?

The Roundtable then turned to a central issue in the debate over the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty: Is the United States able today to ensure that its nuclear arsenal will remain safe, reliable and effective for the indefinite future if it must rely upon methodologies other than nuclear testing to so certify?

The Roundtable was fortunate to have among its participants many of the most knowledgeable and highly respected experts in the field, including top officials from the three national nuclear laboratories with direct responsibility for what is called the Stockpile Stewardship Program (SSP) — the hugely expensive, long-term program intended to develop and field advanced computational and other technologies capable of replicating and obviating the need for underground nuclear testing.

Lead discussants for this portion of the program were Sandia National Laboratory’s Director Dr. Paul Robinson; Dr. Steve Younger, Associate Director of Los Alamos National Laboratory for Nuclear Weapons; Dr. Michael R. Anastasio, Associate Director for Defense and Nuclear Technologies, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory; and Troy Wade, former Assistant Secretary of Energy for Defense Programs.

Among the topics discussed in this section were: the increased risk to the safety, reliability and effectiveness of the nuclear stockpile in a no-test environment; the technical challenges and serious funding shortfalls that must be overcome before the diagnostic tools being prepared as part of the Stockpile Stewardship Program (SSP) can be brought to fruition; the long timeframe — perhaps as long as twenty years — before the SSP will be ready; questions about the utility of the SSP, assuming it ultimately does come on-line, if it cannot be calibrated with future nuclear tests; and the current and growing impediments to any near-term resumption of testing should the Nation feel the need to do so as a result of the physical deterioration and the lack of a robust readiness program at the Nevada Test Site. The following comments were of particular interest:

Dr. Steve Younger





• “I think that the end of the Cold War, while it may reduce our need for numbers in nuclear weapons, has not substantively changed the need for nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons are still the ultimate defense of the nation. They are still the most destructive weapons ever created. They are still seen by a number of countries, and we saw this with the test of India and Pakistan, as symbols of national legitimacy, as well as instruments of military force.”






• “Having said that the job we’re doing hasn’t changed in a fundamental way, the way we do that job has very much changed since the end of nuclear testing. The United States developed nuclear weapons the same way people have developed everything from toasters to rocket ships — through a sequence of design, test, and produce. We designed weapons to meet military specifications. We tested them to make sure that they worked. And then we made as many as were required for national defense.
  

  “Now, the President has not identified a need for a new nuclear weapon design at this time, although he has asked us to maintain the capability to do that. The President has signed and the Senate rejected a ban, a treaty on nuclear testing. Nevertheless, the United States is not testing now, and I think it’s safe to say, at least under this Administration, that there are no plans to test in the immediate future. And we’re not producing weapons. As a matter of fact, it’s not an overstatement to say that Pakistan has a higher weapons production rate than the United States at this time, simply because we are not producing any weapons at all and, presumably, Pakistan is.”







• “I want to agree certainly with Secretary Schlesinger that if we really want to know it works, test it. You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to figure that out….The issue, the principal issue with Stockpile Stewardship is, can you provide sufficient confidence, can you be good enough in making an estimate of your confidence in the stockpile to maintain the deterrent without testing?”






• “One of the key issues is sustained support for the [Stockpile Stewardship] Program. The program has never received the…the budget request of approximately $4.5 billion, and been permitted to spend it on stockpile stewardship. One has to be very careful of what actually is included in a budget.
  

  “The cost of this program has been estimated at about $5.3 billion per year. We have done that exercise several times, and we are reasonably confident of that. We believe that with significant scrubbing we can get that down to about $4.8 billion. We have never really gotten $4.5 billion. We have about a billion-dollar backlog in work that still needs to be done at the production plants and at the laboratories, and we are making some modest stern-way in meeting that.”







• “[Another concern] is…moral support, I might say, for the people involved in this endeavor. When I came into this nuclear weapons program, I came in because it was something important that I could do for the country, and it was technically very exciting. Over the past year, the laboratories have been buffeted by alleged espionage, by all kinds of safety and other issues. It is not as easy to attract people to the laboratories as it once was. It is, I think, a critical thing for the people to understand from their Government that they are doing something important.”






• “We have tested all the weapons in the stockpile, but it is not clear that we have sufficiently accurate data and the sufficient quantity of data to enable us to get a quantitative prediction.”






• “This past year has arguably been the darkest year in the history of the nuclear weapons laboratories for a whole bunch of reasons that have been mentioned. In fiscal year 2000, we expect to hire a total of 75 people at Los Alamos, and that includes everyone from secretaries to nuclear physicists. That is about what we are seeing with attrition, and…basically we are caught between a rock and a hard place — the rock being that we want to keep our most experienced people, the people that have nuclear test and design experience. On the other hand, the hard place is we want to bring in new people so that those experienced people can train them, and that is just difficult.”






• “No one has ever tried to maintain something forever without testing it….You can do physics, fundamental physics calculations, but you often find that they are relatively simple in what you are trying to calculate.”






• “We cannot do the integrated systems test. So there is a leap of faith required to rely on the integrated calculations on the new supercomputers which have not been built yet to assess the overall safety and performance of the device. We cannot do that test, and in that sense, the scientific method that has been in place since the time of Galileo…– that is, hypothesis is backed up by experiment — is not accessible to the Stockpile Stewardship Program in the total system performance.”



Dr. Michael R. Anastasio





• “In my mind, the Stockpile Stewardship Program is the best program we at the laboratories could think of to meet the constraints that we are given: How to maintain the confidence in the nuclear weapon deterrent in a world where we are not able to do nuclear testing and a world where we are not doing the development of new nuclear weapon systems. Both of those are key points that we have to remember, and it is both of those things that have been part of the development of [the SSP].”






• “The weapons were developed during a culture of design, test, and deploy, and now we have a completely different task which has a different set of technical challenges, which is to survey the status of the system, to assess any issues that might come up, make judgments about any actions that may be taken, and then do any kind of refurbishment that is required to keep them going.
  

  “From a technical perspective, that is a very different task. So we have to care and feed for the things that we have built under an old culture, while we build a new culture that provides a completely new approach technically to how we do this job and the new tools that it takes to do this — with a new generation of people who will never have the experience that the senior people or the experienced people have had certifying a new weapon through a testing process.”







• “As to where we are, I think…each element of the program has significant technical challenges, but we think not insurmountable [ones] and, of course, each of them has some significant risk as any program does that is working at the cutting edge of technology. So the program has risk, but in fact each individual element of the program has risk….In many ways, the program that has been going for the last 4 or 5 years is one where some things have gone better than we expected and some not as well, and I think it is a program that still has an opportunity for success, but with significant challenges.”






• “One of the keys is it is about people and high-quality people….It is a race against time because the new program that we have to bring to bear, an important risk-reduction, is if we have the opportunity to exercise the new approach of the newer program while we still have the experienced people from the past still available to be harsh critics of it. We do not ever want to be in a position where our confidence is high and misplaced.
  

  “I think it is important if we are able to carry out the program in a way that we can overlay the new approaches we take, the new tools we bring to bear in the presence [and] under the critical eye of the experienced people who put the weapons into the stockpile to begin with. So, in some sense, that is a race against time. Can we develop a new generation of high-quality people while we still are new generations, while we still have experienced people around? That in itself has challenges, challenges of potential spies, concerns about mismanagement, potential for changes in contractors at the laboratory, polygraph testing, restrictions on unclassified interactions with scientists in this country and other countries. All of those constrain our ability to get quality people into the program.”




Troy Wade





• “President Clinton, when he forwarded the CTB to Congress, assured Congress that the capability to resume testing would be maintained. It is my opinion that that is currently not the case.
  

  “First of all, there is no agreement between Congress and the administration about what constitutes the capability to resume nuclear testing. Congress views the plans presented by the Administration as if they were plans developed for a very expensive fire station waiting for a very low-probability fire. To some extent, as budgets decline, the laboratories tend to take that same view. Another thing that has happened is that the Administration through [DoE’s] Defense Programs [organization] and the labs have not helped this by being unable to define the most basic requirements needed to conduct a test.”







• “What I…believe is the most important…potential requirement for doing a test is to assure that a problem that we have discovered in the enduring stockpile is indeed resolved, and that the safety and reliability of the subject warhead again meets the laboratory standards. I certainly believe based on my personal experience that this is a high-probability event, and I believe we are not prepared to conduct such a test in any rapid meaningful manner.
  

  “…We are at an impasse. Congress is seeking the absolute cheapest option, while the labs can’t agree over what must be done and what priority it must be [given] and, therefore, the capability to resume testing always falls to the bottom of the priority list.”







• “As all of you may know, the test support manpower at the Nevada test site in 1990 was about 10,000. It is now around 2,500, and so whatever redundancy was in the system has clearly been gone for some time. We are losing the people, not only the weapons designers that these gentlemen are concerned about, but the field operations personnel that I am concerned about.
  

  “The subcritical tests are a great step in maintaining that capability, although they are done in a way that does not exercise in the classical sense our ability to resume nuclear testing. That has to do with the certification of equipment, with the certification of people, with the maintenance of some of the kind of instrumentation we would need if it were to be a classic underground nuclear test.’ So I firmly believe that until there is a better definition of what the capability to resume testing really means, that what we now have will continue to erode, and that the continued maintenance of the enduring nuclear stockpile is at risk.”




Dr. Paul Robinson





• “In my testimony [before the Senate on the C.T.B.T.], I had made the reference that a new modern automobile has about 6,000 parts that come to the assembly line and are all built together in the finished product. That is about the same number or part-count in a U.S. nuclear weapon. Now, the technology does ratchet up somewhat higher and is somewhat more unique than automobile mechanics, but I also said in the testimony that I could affirm with no caveats that [when it comes to] the performance of high-technology devices — whether it is cars, airplanes, medical diagnostics, computers, or nuclear weapons — testing is the preferred methodology to evaluate its reliability and performance.”






• “Let’s consider an auto assembly plant….The assembly line begins, and it concludes at the far end with an individual coming out and pouring a small quantity of gasoline into the car. Then an individual jumps into the seat and turns the key. Nineteen out of 20 times, the car starts, sounds okay. They drive it outside to park it until it has moved to the delivery point. In that 1 out of 20, it goes to what is called a rework area.
  

  “In the rework area, they investigate what exactly what left out that caused a problem or caused nothing to happen…and in the majority of cases, the feedback that goes back to the line involves personnel, new personnel, somehow changed personnel, someone was ill, someone was on vacation, someone else substituted for them, and they made mistakes. Now, that feedback is crucial. Otherwise, everything that came out is likely to have those same mistakes.
  

  “What I would like to do is speculate with you for just a minute. What would happen if by treaty we said I am sorry, you may not take that final step of testing it by turning the key? My guess is that even though we would not be allowed to measure it, all the cars have been towed out to stockpile somewhere, that in reality soon after you invoke that, I would bet close to 19 out of 20 would still start when you needed them, and that is sort of where the U.S. began this moratorium with its stockpile, a very good condition.
  

  “But let’s speculate how that might change over time. Without feedback to the individuals involved, as mistakes creep in, no one is going to notice. So you will continue to go. Certainly, I believe your confidence would erode and I think each of us could make our own guess as to whether the actual reliability would erode. Let’s consider a larger period of time…– 15, 20 years, since the people who are the responsible designers for nuclear weapons are mid- to late- career by the time they get that responsibility. The original people are gone. Now we have replaced lots of people in the factory in the assembly.
  

  “The original folks when you had a process of closing the loop with feedback have not retired. Do you think you could count on 19 out of 20? I dare say not….I believe under these conditions, you might have 10 out of 20, 5 out of 20.”







• “The more basic question is why would anyone want to place anything important at such a risk, with such a process. Everyone who testified, the Administration witnesses, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the Secretary of Defense, all three lab directors said the United States must rely on its arsenal of nuclear weapons to preserve our national security for the foreseeable future. If we accept that that is going to be the thesis, why would you add risk to that process?”






• “One problem comes to mind, and that is, if no tests are allowed, how can you be sure that you have achieved success in that process? Certainly, being trained as an experimental physicist and even though I have a lot of friends who are theorists, I have always preferred predictions of what was going to happen by my theorists rather than “postdictions.” In this phase, we are only doing postdictions of tests that took place in the past and modeling to those.”






• “If the United States scrupulously restricts itself to zero-yield, while other nations may conduct experiments up to the threshold of international delectability, we would be at an intolerable disadvantage. I still believe that is the crux of the argument.”



Discussion


The following were among the most interesting comments expressed by Roundtable participants in the give-and-take that ensued:





• “A system that requires a successful hit-to-kill test of a ballistic missile defense system and at the same time does not require a test to validate any Stockpile Stewardship Program strikes me as there being a clear imbalance. I would argue that a Stockpile Stewardship Program is probably as complex a thing as the totality of a missile defense system working, and yet I don’t believe this country would deploy a ballistic missile defense system based upon a computer simulation or any number of experimental demonstrations of subsets of that system. They would require a test of the whole system to demonstrate that it works, and it seems to me that a nuclear test is the ultimate validation of any Stockpile Stewardship activity, and yet…it is not [currently] required as part of any Stockpile Stewardship Program.”






• “The bottom line…was the fact that [a blue-ribbon commission assigned to examine the adequacy of the nuclear weapons production complex that was chaired by Dr. John Foster] noted that there was no coherent plan within the Department of Energy, within the laboratories, within the plants to bring on board people and train them in a time sufficient to replace those who are going to retire. We called upon the laboratories and the plants to put a plan in place so that anyone could walk in and see…the rate of attrition due to retirement or people going off to other programs was sufficient and…[that] the hiring rate was sufficient to replace that attrition, taking into account that according to the laboratories, according to the plants, many of these skill areas take 5 years of hands-on practice before you should trust the judgment of these people in a training program.”






• “Fifteen years ago when we were still testing and trying to prepare for the possibility of no testing, a couple of suggestions were made. I would just like to resurface them because the older you get, the fewer the people around that remember it….One was could we demonstrate from first principles that you could not do [stockpile stewardship without testing]….Would it be worthwhile to have an effort, sort of a first principles-like effort, to determine whether this thing could even succeed? Because we are going to invest somewhere between $50 and $100 billion in this thing. It would be nice to know if we are up against some truly fundamental uncertainties, the uncertainty principle applying in a bad way for us as an example.”






• “A commitment was made [in] 1995 [to] a certain level of support of the Stockpile Stewardship Program. I remember that in some detail. It was $4.5 billion and not much different from that without the new production reactor and with inflation adjustments. Since that time, it has become $4.5 billion with tritium production; $4.5 billion without any inflation; $4.5 billion with material disposition and pit disassembly; and $4.5 billion now with some sort of [additional funding wedge] for NIF, [assuming] NIF is going to come — it would have to be fixed.
  

  “And I have to mention now, a [further, uncosted] bill so far from the President’s National Economic Council, which… seems to me…in their report [concerning]…the exposure of the workers in the atomic industry…[to] come very close to saying that anybody that was exposed to radiation that could cause cancer or any other health problem will be compensated by the U.S. Government. And guess what program that is going to come out [of]?”

Must the Deterrent be Modernized?

In light of the evident difficulty — if not the sheer impossibility as a practical matter — of introducing new nuclear weapons into the U.S. arsenal without first subjecting them to realistic underground tests, the concluding portion of the Roundtable focused on the question of whether it was likely that such modernization might be required at any point in the future. This topic takes on even greater importance in light of the contention by some of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty’s proponents that, even if modernization could be accomplished without further testing (e.g., the adaptation of an existing weapon like the B-61-11 to provide a modest earth-penetrating capability), the C.T.B.T. prohibits such a step.

The lead discussants were former Clinton Director of Central Intelligence James Woolsey; Dr. Robert Barker, former Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Atomic Energy; former Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy Ambassador Robert Joseph; and Dr. Dominic Monetta, a former Assistant Secretary of Energy responsible for the New Production Reactor program.

They and other participants agreed that world conditions, U.S. national security requirements and the future status of the Nation’s aging stockpile dictate that modernization of the arsenal will be required. This requirement can only be met with a resumption of at least limited nuclear testing.

The areas in which such modernization seems likely to be most needed include: the requirement for a robust earth-penetrating nuclear weapon, capable of holding at risk rapidly proliferating and threatening facilities being deeply buried by rogue states and other potential adversaries; assuring the future effectiveness of the Triad of land-, sea- and bomber-based nuclear forces; and enhancing the U.S. theater nuclear forces’ deterrent capabilities. An important appeal was also heard for a concerted effort to recruit, train and retain the personnel needed to manage large-scale construction programs that will be essential if the Nation is to meet future plutonium “pit” manufacturing, tritium and other requirements associated with the maintenance of a safe, reliable and effective nuclear deterrent. The following were among this portion of the Roundtable’s most insightful comments:

James Woolsey





• “I think as far as maintaining a general nuclear deterrent against halfway rational states, such as the old Soviet Union, and those countries in today’s world, Russia, China, Iran, Iraq, North Korea, who either have or will have nuclear weapons in relatively short order, ballistic missiles to carry them and within probably 5-to-10 years in the case of the rogue states, [will be] able to reach the United States, I think our deterrent, particularly Trident, is reasonably well-constructed and some reasonable number of Trident boats at sea is a force that puts us in a position to do what needs to be done by way of maintaining a deterrent.”






• “It seems to me the new world we are moving into of post-Cold War, particularly with the three rogue states, with China’s future uncertain and with Russia’s future uncertain, however, levies at least one added requirement on the nuclear stockpile, and that would seem to me to be a thoroughly reliable and highly capable earth-penetration munition.






• “I think we have to look at the fact that underground construction technology has taken off over the course of the last couple of decades, and tunneling and digging equipment and technologies are available from companies all over the world, Europe, Asia, that can do an extraordinarily good job of digging and hardening deep underground facilities. It is not only the Yamantau Mountains [in Russia] that we need to think about. It is also what Iraq and Iran and North Korea have and are putting under ground.
  

  “There is a great deal of premium in going underground. Partially, it hides whatever you are doing in those facilities from reconnaissance satellites. Partially, though, it gives you a place to put work on weapons of mass destruction where it may well not be able to be discovered, but certainly not effectively targeted by conventional weapons.”







• “In dealing with states such as North Korea and Iran and Iraq, especially North Korea and Iraq, I would say, one really cannot apply the same type of test of halfway rationality that one applied to the dealings [with the Soviet Union] in the Cold War….I think there can be in some circumstances with halfway rational states some utility and some types of arms control agreements, but with the likes of an Iraq or a North Korea, there is none.






• “One is dealing with in the case of Iraq one of modern history’s most murderous thugs and in the case of North Korea with a gentleman who is sort of a cross between Caligula and Baby Doc Duvalier. In dealing with individuals and polities that are so guided, one really is whistling in the dark to talk about deterring what they will or might do with weapons that cannot reach what they hold most dear, and what they hold most dear is not their people, is not their cities, is not really even most of their military forces. It is those who surround them and make possible their continuation in power, and the instruments of state power which can be used against their own people in the case of Iraq, for example, or their neighbors or us in ways that strike terror.”






• “I think the only effective way that one could in the case of a state such as North Korea or Iraq or again in the future, let’s say, with a Russia gone terribly sour could effectively deter the threatened use, quite possibly not the use, but threatened use is bad enough for many purposes, a threatened use of weapons of mass destruction is for that state to know fully well, clearly, and solidly, that there is no place they can hide — as [in], I guess it was Joe Lewis said of one of his opponents, He can run, but he can’t hide.’
  

  “They have to know absolutely certainly that however deep they dig, however much effort, time, and expense they put into hard and deep underground facilities, the United States can hold them at risk. Now, I think our need to do that might be somewhat mitigated if we had an effective and, to my mind, that means space-based ballistic missile defense system, but, nonetheless, even in those circumstances, the need to hold such facilities at risk would not go away.”




Robert Joseph





• “[Concerning] those states that we need to think about in terms of deterrence, I would begin with Russia. For a variety of reasons, we may wish to ignore or cleverly spin’ what the Russian leadership says about us and how they see the world — but if we do so, we do so at our own peril….Even more disturbing than the words are the turbulence and the growing dysfunction of the government in Moscow. Even among those who discount what Russian leaders are saying, most would agree that the strategic uncertainties regarding Russia are staggering.”






• “Few would venture to forecast where Russia will be politically in five years or even in one year. Yet most would predict that Russia will continue to possess a large nuclear stockpile for the foreseeable future. While their strategic force level will likely shrink as a consequence of resource limitations, the overall posture will continue to number in the thousands.
  

  “Indicative of this reliance on nuclear weapons for both defense planning and declaratory policy is the recent announcement of an across-the-board increase in R&D as well as a start of production of new tactical weapons. Reportedly, there is also a revised doctrine for the employment of these weapons that lowers the threshold for use in light of the desperate condition of Russia’s general purpose forces. This revision would be consistent with Moscow’s earlier reversal on no-first-use. In sum, Russia is doing what it can to maintain as much nuclear capability as it can, expending very scarce resources on deploying a new mobile missile, keeping heavy MIRVed missiles in the field, and retaining a massive infrastructure an order of magnitude greater than our own in terms of numbers of personnel and the capability to produce new warheads.”







• “There is a consensus that countries such as North Korea, Iraq, and Iran — those that our State Department refers to as “rogues” — represent a growing threat, especially as they acquire weapons of mass destruction. These states define the United States as the enemy without any reservation….
  

  “As a rule, these states are more risk-prone than was the former Soviet Union. Moreover, as [Dr.] Keith Payne has pointed out in his work, the conditions that we always valued in our Cold War deterrent relationship — such as effective communications and mutual understandings — are not likely to pertain with these countries. In addition, and again different from the past when the West sought to deter the Warsaw Pact from projecting force outward, these rogue states see as their task deterring us from intervening in their regions. As a consequence, the symmetry of the East-West relationship is absent.
  

  “Finally, given the West’s demonstrated conventional superiority and their knowledge that they will lose on a conventional battlefield, the rogues see NBC weapons as their preferred tool of asymmetric warfare — their best means by which to achieve victory, either through the threat of large casualties or the actual application of force to accomplish this end. In other words, instead of being weapons of last resort, NBC weapons are becoming weapons of choice — making deterrence essential on our part.”







• “China [is] the state that in my view poses the greatest strategic uncertainties. Unlike Russia — a country in decline — China is an emerging power, in Asia and perhaps globally. However, like Russia, China’s political future is unstable.
  

  “Here again, perhaps the best we can do is note what Chinese leaders are saying as well as what they are doing. Even more forcefully than in Russia, the Chinese are declaring the United States to be a threat to their own national security and to global stability….All of this and more, of course, is from a state that has checked every box when it comes to demonstrating rogue behavior, whether in the treatment of its own population, or aggression against its neighbors, or support to proliferation programs of states, or the use of force to intimidate others.”







• “On modernization, the Chinese determination to develop a more robust nuclear arsenal is clear….the scope of the Chinese program reflects a long-standing commitment to improve their nuclear capabilities. The acquisition of MIRV and solid fuel technologies, the deployment of increasingly longer-range mobile missiles, the development of neutron warheads, all indicate a broad-based, and well-financed nuclear modernization program….China has started to construct a new submarine to carry longer-range missiles with warheads based on the design of the Trident W88. This capability will permit the Chinese to target US nuclear forces for the first time.”






• “In a Russian context, in which an unstable and potentially hostile state possesses a large nuclear force, much of how we practiced deterrence in the past remains relevant. For example, deterrence — while more in the background — will continue to be based primarily on the prospect of unacceptable damage from retaliation. Strategic defenses in a deterrent context, as opposed to accidental and unauthorized launch, will not be a major factor given the size and sophistication of the Russian force, even at very reduced levels.
  

  “Our strategic offensive forces will need to remain survivable, effective and responsive. For this reason, all three legs of the Triad — ICBMs, SLBMs, and bombers — retain their value for the same reason they did before, namely the synergy that provides flexibility to our leadership, that enhances survivability and that complicates defenses.”







• “In the field of arms control, we need to avoid measures that, although advocated in the name of promoting safety and stability, would actually undermine confidence and deterrence. Most important, we need to take a long-term view. Politically, we should take care not to perpetuate as official policy the concept of mutual assured destruction with Russia. Promoting this concept — which is grounded in the suspicions and distrust of the Cold War — inevitably has a very corrosive effect on how we perceive each other.”






• “With regard to the rogues, the prescription is much different. Here, deterrence — and especially deterrence of their use of weapons of mass destruction — is central. But the concept and practice of deterrence in a regional setting bears little resemblance to how we have thought about deterrence in the past. Mutual assured destruction has no relevance with regard to North Korea, Iraq or Iran.
  

  “Moreover, effective deterrence must be based both on the threat of punishment and on denial, that is the capability to deny the adversary the utility of his weapons of mass destruction. Here, counterproliferation capabilities such as improved passive defenses, as well as counterforce means such as deep underground attack weapons, play a central role in deterrence. Also, and especially in light of the proliferation of long-range missiles, theater and national missile defenses are key.”







• “For theater nuclear forces — which may take on much greater deterrence significance given the continuing spread of weapons of mass destruction and longer-range missiles — the situation is even more stark. Specifically, there has been no decision to ensure dual-capability in the next generation of tactical aircraft, and there is no planning for a next generation of a sea-based nuclear land-attack missile.”






• “New warheads may also be required for the deterrence of regional NBC threats. This is a different challenge and it requires us to hold at risk different targets. For example, we may very well need to develop a new warhead to attack hardened, deeply buried facilities such as those being constructed by rogue states, as well as very accurate, low-yield, low-altitude burst weapons for use against biological facilities.”



Dr. Dominic Monetta





• “What we have essentially, is a requirement to build new facilities, and those new facilities are going to have to be built within a very, very constrained budget….The fact [is] that we need about $5.3 billion. What we really will get is $4.5 billion, maybe, but not more than that.
  

  “Consequently, we have an Achilles’ heel that we tend to overlook, and that is the construction line-item budget of the Department of Energy. That particular construction line-item budget that centers around the defense program work tends to get competed inside of the Department of Energy with everything else the Department of Energy is doing. Now, that bubbles up and it goes through the policy shop and it then goes through the Comptroller and then it gets reported out. When it hits the subcommittees on the Hill, it gets competed against everything else that the Federal Government wants to build, including earthen dams. What we wind up with is an interesting inability to actually bring online any major construction line items of over $400 million that has a heavy R&D component in them.”







• “Now, we are pretty good at constructing from zero to $100 million dollars and reasonably good at $100 million to $400 million, however when we get above 400 million, our track record is dismal. I contend the reason for that is because we do not grow our own construction line-item project managers. The reason we have to grow them is because we have to inculcate them into the culture and the society with all of the tribal cues that we have lived with for the last 50 years.
  

  “You cannot bring in a project manager from an architectural engineering firm or an engineering construction firm, no matter how good he or she is, who has just built a $700 million dollar petrochemical facility in Thailand successfully and expect him or her to build a NIF or a MESA or a computing facility or DARHT or whatever because they have to live inside of this particular cultural milieu that is difficult to understand from the outside. I contend, it is almost impossible — and we tend to overlook it because we have been inside that society all of our lives and have internalized all these cues.”







• “Tritium production is a good example. We have been wrestling with that for the better part of 12 years. K-Reactor was originally designed and built by Dupont to run for 5 years. We closed it down after it was 35 years old because that reactor did not have a containment vessel, however we spent $1.2 billion trying to fix it. Then we moved onto the New Production Reactor, and we were on time and on schedule, but we wound up having the end of the Cold War befall it, with all of the assumptions that came with the fact that we had won and we do not have any more enemies — Hallelujah, but not true.
  

  “Tritium production is a good harbinger of the problem we have got. We tried to build a reactor, and we did not get that done. We tried to build an accelerator to do that production, and that particular project is dying. We are now talking about trying to put what the NRC likes to call foreign material’ in a commercial reactor to make tritium. This is going to produce some very interesting problems with the NRC when it finally gets officially tabled and they have to discuss it. The ACRS will ask for a probable risk assessment which will take 3 years. So they will blow their schedule as far as tritium being available because that risk assessment has never been attempted before and it is very difficult to do because there are more variables than we know how to deal with.”







• “So the bottom line is that we need to grow some highly qualified project managers who can carry these major projects successfully through, on time and within cost, so that we don’t wind up with a situation that every time the [congressional] subcommittee sees us, they flinch because it is going to be $150 million dollars more than the last time. The Super Collider is a good case in point, that reflects the nature of our business because we have such a very large R&D component in our construction line items. It is not like building a petrochemical facility where everything is fully described. It is in designing a unique facility where we are actively doing the R&D in parallel, like NIF and APT, where the difficulties arise.”



Dr. Robert Barker





• “If you are going to replace one capability with another, you want to do some kind of calibration to determine that the two techniques are going to give you the same answer. There is no scientist in the world who is going to throw out his standard without determining that the replacement is going to give him the same answers as the one replaces [it]….If somebody wants to get rid of nuclear testing, we should have put a system in place and demonstrated that it gave the same answers before we abandoned nuclear testing. We have not done that, and without any qualms whatsoever, I say responsibly we should be testing now.”






• “George Bush, on his next-to-last day in office — January 19, 1993, only 7 years ago — sent a report over to the Hill….He was responding to a thing called the Exon-Hatfield-Mitchell legislation which would have allowed him to do 15 tests before stopping all testing. Basically, what President Bush [said] is “No, that won’t do it. Fifteen tests will not meet the [requirement]. We need to test as long as we have nuclear weapons. This [was on] January 19, 1993 –not 1950, not 1960, not 1970, 1993.”






• “He said first, regarding weapon safety:…Today’s stockpile is safe, but it could be safer, and we ought to have weapons — safer weapons on the shelf to replace the ones we have when they are no longer reliable, so that we are replacing today’s safe weapons with even better safer weapons.






• “Second, President Bush said that nuclear weapon testing was important to increase predictive capability. That is stockpile stewardship. There was a program ongoing at that time whose objective was that some day one might be able to have the capability, with a combination of laboratory facilities and calculations, to do the job that nuclear testing does today. But the program that was ongoing when testing stopped allowed you to do the tests side-by-side with the development of the new techniques to let you know whether they worked or not…. The calibration of stockpile stewardship is a critical thing. How can you possibly depend upon it if you cannot determine they are going to give you the same answer that nuclear testing would give you?”






• “The third area that President Bush mentioned was testing for the reliability of nuclear weapons. What we used to do is go out and take one weapon of one weapon type out of the inventory each year and test it. The laboratories always assured us it was going to work, and lo-and-behold, it did work, of the ones we tested. That is not to say every weapon tested the way the laboratory said it would, but when the stockpile confidence tests were done, they worked, but we have not done one of those tests since 1990 or 1991. So it is approaching 10 years since we have randomly taken a weapon out of the stockpile and said fine, you guys assure us it is okay, but let’s just see, let’s just feel good about it.”






• “The fourth area mentioned by President Bush for testing had to do with nuclear weapons effects. We have heard talk about rogue states, proliferation, et cetera. We have got China. Bob mentioned the concerns about China, the concerns about a future Russia. We need to be sure that our conventional hardware has a chance of surviving in one of nuclear detonation environment. We have not been able to do those kinds of nuclear weapons effects tests for — again, it is probably 10 years at least since the last one of those tests was done…We have gone through that before, too, and convinced ourselves at least a decade ago that no degree of calculation or simulation would give us the same degree of confidence as the amalgamation of these [weapons effects] tests.”






• “I maintain those same four reasons are as valid today as they were when President Bush made that statement….By some fate of history in this 7-year period, we have gone from a period when the President said we need to be doing nuclear tests routinely as an integral part of our nuclear weapons program to a period where somehow or another we are now embarrassed to say we might need a nuclear test at some point in the future, and that is wrong.”