WASHINGTON -- Taking aim at an area of federal spending left unchecked for generations, two dozen lawmakers today plan to propose legislation mandating deep cuts in the US nuclear arsenal – including submarines, missiles, aircraft, and weapons design laboratories.
According to its chief sponsor, the bill is an effort to jumpstart a wider discussion that both liberals and some fiscal conservatives consider long overdue: why does the United States still need thousands of atomic bombs designed to prevent a war with the Soviet Union?
“Many say that we need a fundamental reevaluation of Medicare and Medicaid and the entire domestic side of government spending,” said Representative Edward J. Markey of Malden, who has enlisted dozens of his Democratic colleagues in the effort. “You never hear them talk about a fundamental reevaluation of whether the Cold War defense budget approach makes sense any longer for the 21st century.”
The bill, a summary of which was provided to the Globe, estimates that $100 billion can be saved over the next decade while still maintaining hundreds of nuclear weapons to deter any would-be aggressors.
“This is not a road map to zero weapons,” said Joel Rubin, a former State Department official who is now director of policy and government affairs at the Ploughshares Fund, which seeks to reduce the spread of nuclear arms. “Markey is calling for sound strategic and fiscal decision-making for our national defense.”
The legislation comes as President Obama is reviewing the nuclear strategy to determine how many weapons are needed to deter potential enemies such as Iran or North Korea.
“The Markey bill, more than anything, highlights some of the ways which the United States can save tens of billions of dollars in systems that are simply not required for our security,” said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, a nonprofit think tank in Washington.
One of the most significant proposals involves the fleet of bombers that are equipped to carry nuclear weapons.
The bill will propose stripping the nuclear mission from both the B-2 and B-52 bombers and delaying production of a new bomber until 2023. Such a move would effectively phase out one of the legs of the so-called “nuclear triad” consisting of aircraft, land-based missiles, and submarines. That structure has characterized the nuclear arsenal since the early 1960s.
Other proposals include:
--reducing the fleet of nuclear-armed submarines from 14 to 8;
--delaying production of a replacement submarine to 2023 and only building eight;
--canceling plans for the new F-35 jet to be able to carry nuclear bombs;
--canceling plans for a new intercontinental ballistic missile; and
--canceling plans to build a uranium processing facility in Oak Ridge, Tenn., to manufacture material for new nuclear weapons.
“We need more nuclear weapons programs like Lady Gaga needs another outfit,” Markey said.
However, the legislation would also require that the military and Department of Energy, which builds and maintains the warheads, to keep at least 200 intercontinental missiles and 250 submarine-launched missiles to keep a strong nuclear deterrent in an uncertain world.
The bill summary does not mention limits on the number of actual weapons, which according to recent estimates are somewhere in the ballpark of 5,000 bombs, including those ready to be launched and those in storage. Some missiles can carry multiple warheads and the United States and Russia last year agreed to cut the number of total weapons ready to be launched at 1,550.
The Markey bill has the support of only of 24 Democrats in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives. There is little confidence that it get enough support to pass any time soon – especially in a heated election year.
But several Republicans in recent months have also expressed support for slashing nuclear weapons to help reduce government spending.
For example, Senator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma, last year laid out a similar plan for nearly $80 billion in nuclear weapons cuts over the next decade, including cutting land-based missiles, nuclear-armed subs, bombers, and the number of warheads stored in reserve.
“None of this is really radical thinking in the context of the budget environment we are in,” said Carl Conetta, co-director of the Project on Defense Alternatives in Cambridge. “The nuclear weapons industry is huge and they are going to lobby against it, but we still have dramatic overkill in this area.”
He said it is possible that military leaders would welcome the cuts. “You might get agreement among the Joint Chiefs, who might want to rescue other weapon systems” from budget cuts.
Markey also said reducing the nuclear arsenal could save other defense programs that are designed to confront more pressing threats. “It’s better to cut unneeded submarines than Navy SEALs and better to cut nuclear bombers than unmanned drones,” he said. “Which weapons are we going to be using in the 21st century?”
At minimum, the Massachusetts lawmaker said he hopes his bill will force those who are still defending the current structure to justify their position.
“How many Americans know each Trident submarine has the capacity to totally destroy Russia or China?” he asked. “That’s each submarine, not the entire fleet.”
He also explained it in terms of other pressing national priorities that need to be met with fewer resources coming into Washington.
“What is the greater terror? That Americans will be attacked in nuclear war or they will get a call that cancer or Alzheimer’s has struck one of the members of their family,” he asked. “We need to have this wider debate.”
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