National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2022

Floor Speech

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Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, the United States, Russia, and China are aggressively engaged in a new nuclear arms race. The rapid development by all three nations of new bombs, new stealth delivery systems, and near total reliance on space for observation and communications makes this new nuclear arms race far more dangerous than the previous arms race.

Therefore, in an effort to slow the pace and to create time for arms control negotiations to move forward, I rise to offer an amendment to the fiscal year 2022 National Defense Authorization Act that pauses the development and prohibits the funding for the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent, the GBSD, program and the associated W87-1 nuclear warhead for the fiscal year 2022.

This amendment also extends the service life of the Minuteman III Intercontinental Ballistic Missile, which is in place today, the current missile system that the GBSD is slated to replace, until at least 2040.

My amendment also requires the use of nondestructive testing methods and technologies similar to those used by the Navy for the Trident II D5 submarine-launched ballistic missiles.

There has been much debate over the ground-based leg of the nuclear triad recently. I have frequently argued for a longer pause for the GBSD program to help defer the cost of over $240 billion that will occur in the next 20 years for not only this, but the remaining nuclear enterprise monitorization initiatives and to slow the pace of the ongoing arms race with Russia and China.

However, this amendment does not seek to permanently resolve the question of the future of the land-based ballistic missile systems. While that debate is of utmost importance, my amendment only seeks a 1- year pause in the funding.

Why a 1-year pause? The answer is because a short pause is practical and prudent, given the Biden administration is currently undertaking a new nuclear posture review, which is expected to be completed in the early calendar year of 2022.

The NPR will establish the future role of the nuclear arsenal. Further development of the GBSD, therefore, can occur after that time period.

Now, before we spend billions of dollars in fiscal year 2022 on the GBSD and the W87-1 warhead, and over $276 billion when accounting for the total lifecycle cost on a nuclear missile system that is not yet needed, we should wait until the President completes the NPR so that we have a complete picture of the overall requirements.

This pause will have absolutely no impact on our deterrence capability, now or in the near future. We know that the Minuteman III ICBMs can be safely life-extended until at least 2040. We know that because that is exactly what the Air Force intends to do with more than half of that arsenal. The U.S., Russia, and China, as they rush to modernize their nuclear arsenals, the tripwire is becoming more taut each and every day.

Observation and communication satellites and systems are increasingly vulnerable to attacks. All three countries are fielding stealth and hypersonic nuclear delivery systems designed to evade detection. The risks of a false alarm or a political miscalculation has always-- always--haunted the nuclear landscape, and they do even more today.

While we must recognize the need to preserve a safe, secure, and effective deterrent as long as nuclear weapon systems exist, some aspects of the current modernization programs are simply not required.

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Mr. GARAMENDI. Oh, my good friend from Ohio, how often have I heard you say that President Biden has been wrong so many times over the last 6 months. And, indeed, he is wrong in this respect, also. So let's agree on that.

The fact of the matter is the extension of the Minuteman III for the next 15 to 20 years is not more expensive than the GBSD. In fact, the GBSD cost estimates compared to the Minuteman III are based on a 50- year period of time until 2075.

Oh my goodness. When did we last take up that period of time in any of our cost calculations here? We don't. It is simply a false way of addressing the cost differential.

It is, in fact, cheaper in the next 15 to 20 years to do a life cycle extension when necessary on the Minuteman III missiles, and it is entirely feasible to do so, as said by the military themselves.

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