Hearing of the Emering Threats and Capabilities Subcommittee of the Senate Armed Services Armed Services Committee

Federal News Service

HEADLINE: HEARING OF THE EMERGING THREATS AND CAPABILITIES SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE SENATE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE

SUBJECT: THE DEFENSE NUCLEAR NONPROLIFERATION PROGRAMS OF THE DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY AND THE COOPERATIVE THREAT REDUCTION PROGRAMS OF THE DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE IN REVIEW OF THE DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION REQUEST FOR FISCAL YEAR 2005

CHAIRED BY: SENATOR PAT ROBERTS (R-KS)

LOCATION: 222 RUSSELL SENATE OFFICE BUILDING, WASHINGTON, D.C.

WITNESSES:

PAUL M. LONGSWORTH, DEPUTY ADMINISTRATOR FOR DEFENSE NUCLEAR NONPROLIFERATION, NATIONAL NUCLEAR SECURITY ADMINISTRATION, DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY;

LISA BRONSON, DEPUTY UNDER SECRETARY OF DEFENSE FOR TECHNOLOGY SECURITY POLICY AND COUNTERPROLIFERATION

BODY:
SEN. JACK REED (D-RI): Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Let me join you in welcoming Administrator Longsworth and Secretary Bronson. Thank you very much for being with us today. And I want to thank the chairman for scheduling this hearing on an extraordinarily critical and timely subject.

Preventing the spread of nuclear, chemical and biological technology, materials and weapons is vitally important to our nation's security and to international stability. Our witnesses today are responsible for many of the important nonproliferation and threat reduction programs that are actively engaged to address the dangers presented by nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. These are challenging problems. I want to particularly thank the people in the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy who have been working in the field on these programs, often in very difficult circumstances over the last 10 years. They are committed federal and contractor employees who understand the importance of what they do.

The cooperative efforts in Russia have been ongoing for over 10 years and while much has been done, much remains to be done. For example, the effort to destroy Russian chemical weapons is finally aggressively under way. This effort is a truly cooperative effort with substantial funding and support being provided by Russia, the United States and the international community. To be successful, however, the program will require the continued support of the administration and the Congress.

For example, the authority of the president to waive certain certifications needed to keep this program on track will expire in Fiscal Year 2004. I believe the Department of Defense will be seeking permanent authority to allow annual waivers of the certifications. Permanent authority is important to ensure that the program runs smoothly from year to year. I hope that we will be able to support the president's request in this year's National Defense Authorization Bill.

Both the DOE and the DOD have expanded their programs in the Republics of the Former Soviet Union outside of Russia, expanding the work with countries such as Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Georgia, Ukraine and others. It's important to building strong relationships with the United States.

While what is required in each country is unique, there are opportunities to address chemical, biological and nuclear, including radiological, issues. I look forward today to discussing what your organizations are doing to expand the work in these countries.

In the National Defense Authorization effort Fiscal Year 2004, DOD was authorized to conduct cooperative threat reduction activities outside the Former Soviet Union and the DOE was authorized to conduct materials protection control and accounting activities the Former Soviet Union. We would like to hear what each of you might do utilizing this authority.

There are still challenges to be met including the plutonium reactor shutdown program, the mixed oxide fuel program, bio security and bio early warning programs and the resolution of the current stand-off between Russia and the United States on liability issues. I would very much like to get your thoughts on these and other challenges today.

Again, welcome. We look forward to hearing from you. Thank you, Senator Roberts, for holding this hearing.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

SEN. REED: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for your testimony. Both witnesses and the chairman referred to the president's speech and it was a sobering but also a very ambitious challenge to all of us. I wonder how the budget for this year measures up to the challenge and to the scope of the problem. I know Secretary Bronson said it's only one measure of what you're doing. But, as I understand it, the budget, the DOD budget at least, goes down by $40 million. No significant cuts of programs but the deferral in some cases of programs that were anticipated to begin. Can you comment about how the resources match the nature of the challenge and also the president's commitment to do a great deal more about it?

Secretary Bronson?

MS. BRONSON: I'd be happy to do that. While my testimony goes through, line by line, our budget request, you raise an important point. If you look at the size of our budget request in Fiscal Year 2003, we asked for $414.4 million. Last year, for 2004, we asked for $448.6 million and this year, as you correctly pointed out, we have asked for $409.2 million. The vast majority of that extra $40 million or so was specifically asked for in 2004 to help us with the future chemical weapons destruction facility.

In 2003 and 2004, we went ahead and we got over what I would refer to as the heavy infrastructure construction bump in this project. We are spending this year and we began to spend the money to go ahead and complete the construction and the money to go ahead to buy the capital intensive equipment for that facility. We are not going to have those same kinds of upfront cost in 2005 and 2006.

The amount of money we're asking for the Strategic Offensive Arms Elimination is exactly the same as we asked for last year. The amount of money that we're asking for BW proliferation prevention activities is a bit more than we asked for last year. The amount of money that we're asking for an important new program, the WMD proliferation prevention initiative is also more than we asked for last year. These two programs, the program for preventing biological weapons proliferation and the program for assisting the countries in the Caucasus and Central Asia to deal with their porous borders, these are not capital intensive projects. These are projects where we can achieve results without the kinds of expenditure of money that we have to spend in a case like the chemical weapons destruction facility.

So I would urge close review of what we're trying to do and what we're trying to do with the money in addition to scrutiny of the actual amount that we have asked for, Senator.

SEN. REED: Well, I thank you. That's a very thoughtful response-and I'm going to turn to Mr. Longsworth in a moment-but it strikes me too that you are in a situation that your theater of operations has been extending outside of the former Soviet Union which would augur probably for more challenges and more money. Also there's a refocusing on the war on terror, not just the traditional sort of dismantling of national weapons depots and national weapons systems like in the former Soviet Union. And also the impression I had was that every time we turn around, we discover the scope of this problem is much bigger than we ever thought.

And also time does not seem to be on our side. And so, I will carefully-we all will carefully look at the budget but it seems to me that we can and should do much more. But I thank you for your very careful and thoughtful response.

Mr. Longsworth, same question essentially.

MR. LONGSWORTH: Our budget, as you know, is a 1 percent increase. And, as I noted in my testimony, that's augmented by, you know, the contributions from other G-8 nations, which are also spending increasing amounts of money in Russia. In our budget-I agree with what Ms. Bronson said-some of the things that will have the greatest impact on stemming proliferation are not high-dollar activities. We have a $6 million, $7 million increase in our export control program. That's a very small amount of money that pays big dividends in terms of detecting and creating a capability in other countries to detect and address proliferation that comes through their ports or across their borders. So it isn't all about large capital projects.

Some of these activities don't require large amounts of money to get a big bang and so, we've focused on those. Our radiological dispersal device program, where we're helping other countries to secure-consolidate and secure and, in some cases, dispose of RDD- usable materials, again, those are not large dollar amounts. But, again, it gets a big bang for the buck. No pun intended.

(Laughter.)

SEN. REED: I'm not going to touch that. Let me focus on a specific area. That is the emerging news from Pakistan about proliferation, about diversion of materials. Can you comment in general, starting with you, Mr. Longsworth, about you may be doing in Pakistan today?

MR. LONGSWORTH: I think what the U.S. is doing, I would prefer to defer to closed session.

SEN. REED: Thank you.

Secretary Bronson, similar.

MS. BRONSON: Yes. I think that's best discussed in a closed session.

SEN. REED: Thank you very much. As I mentioned before, in your testimony, Secretary Bronson, you discussed review of CTR programs which was completed in August to ensure that it effectively addresses new threats associated with the global war on terror. From a programmatic perspective, what does this mean, were programs cancelled, postponed, transferred? New programs created? Is the Cooperative Threat Reduction going to shift its focus to support other administration's initiatives.

Can you fill us on the programmatic effect of this review?

MS. BRONSON: The programmatic effect with respect to Russia was that we revalidated all of the project areas that we're currently working on. This includes the project areas on liquid fuel missiles, solid fuel missiles, SSBN dismantlement, spent nuclear fuel and nuclear weapons security and transportation. What we did to these project areas while we revalidated them was that we re-scoped certain specific aspects of them to make sure that the CTR money was used specifically to reduce the threat.

So, for example, in the area of SLBM and ICBM elimination, we used to pay for the re-grading of the silos after the dismantlement took place. For the most part, this is not an activity that contributes to actual threat reduction. So our judgment was, number one, that doesn't contribute to actual threat reduction. Number two, it is a task that can be taken on by the Russians. Number three, it's relatively inexpensive and within the Russians' capabilities. That's a more appropriate task for the Russians to do and we keep our money focused on the actual reduction of the threat.

The same kind of rationale when we looked at the solid fuel missiles. For example, we are only going to dismantle the number of missiles that are related to the actual launchers that are also turned over for destruction or the actual SSBN launch compartments that are turned over for destruction. And that's because we want to be sure that we do not inadvertently contribute to the modernization of the Russian force. If we get launchers and missiles together, then we can be sure that we were actually contributing to the reduction of the threat and this is another type of activity that was revalidated in our review.

Another example is with --

SEN. REED: Excuse me for interrupting but the thrust of my question is more about how does this new focus on the global war on terrorism affect programmatic issues? Could you --

MS. BRONSON: I misunderstood the question. I thought you were asking more about the re-scoping. With respect to the global war on terrorism, what we have done over the last two years is to look at two projects and specifics. One is the weapons of mass destruction proliferation prevention initiative and this is the initiative to go ahead and create infrastructure, training and capabilities in countries like Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan so that they can be partners in the global war against terrorism by doing a better job of policing their own borders. And so what we have done in the last two years is gone ahead and completed implementing agreements with a number of countries in the region. We have made in the area five specific visits to the region for the purpose of assessing how we can improve their border security, how we can improve their training, what kinds of equipment that these countries in the region would need to increase their ability to police their borders.

Similarly, in the area of biological weapons proliferation, we have been working with a number of countries to enhance their ability to better detect either unusual outbreaks of disease or events that could be precipitated by biological weapons of terrorism so that they can be part of the overall network in combating potential bioterrorism.

SEN. REED: Thank you. Let me follow up with two specific questions about the dismantling of ballistic missile submarines in the former Soviet Union. Recently, there's some change I think you've made in these arrangements. Will that affect the overall number of submarines that we propose to or will be able to dismantle? I understand also there's been a recent decision not to build a spent fuel storage facility. Will that impact the number of these submarines that can be dismantled?

MS. BRONSON: The overall number of submarines that can be dismantled will not be affected by what we have done. The key rate limiting step in the number of submarines we can dismantle is the number of submarines that Russia is prepared to turn over to us.

SEN. REED: But is the relationship between what we do and their willingness to turn submarines over to us?

MS. BRONSON: We have found no relationship between the two, Senator.

SEN. REED: So, even though we've made changes in terms of-as I understand it, previously there was a complete dismantlement of the submarine into scrap and now the proposal is just to remove the nuclear components but not funding and allowing the dismantled-leaving basically the remaining part of the ship. And that will not inhibit the willingness of the Russians to turn these ships over to us?

MS. BRONSON: We briefed the Russians on this and when we briefed them, they had no objection.

SEN. REED: Thank you. One final question and then I'd like to recognize on behalf of the chairman Senator Akaka.

I understand, Mr. Longsworth, that you recently announced a program to work with Iraqi scientists and can you just describe in general details how this program will be structured? Are these nuclear weapons scientists or just scientists in general and how will you address the perennial issue of liability, which is --

MR. LONGSWORTH: Let me start at the tail end of your question. It is interesting that in other countries, we haven't had the same liability roadblocks that we've had with Russia. Other countries are willing to accept the liability standard that we have asked for again to protect U.S. workers and companies.

SEN. REED: Can I just interject here? It is my understanding that there are arrangements with Russia that have liability protections that are already up and running. But we are asking for more expansive protections in general now and I guess it begs the question, if we can get some programs up and running with one form of liability, why do we have to use-you know, change the score?

MR. LONGSWORTH: I think right now, most of our programs that have not-we've suspended several programs that had separate liability provisions in them, most notably the '98 Plutonium Disposition agreement and the NCI, Nuclear Cities Initiative agreement. The rest of our programs are attached to the CTR umbrella agreement which has not expired yet and Ms. Bronson can talk more about that. So we, today-our programs use CTR liability protections as their umbrella agreement.

SEN. REED: Again, I diverted you for a moment. Just a quick point on Iraq and I'm going to cease work.

MR. LONGSWORTH: Yes. This is a cooperative effort we're doing with the nations in the Gulf region. This is not a U.S. initiative. This will not have a U.S. face on it. It will have an Arab face on it. We're cooperating with the other nations. They have formed an organization that will go into Iraq and much to the kind of opposite of what we're trying to do in Russia. In Russia, we're trying to make sure that scientists that leave the lab have some soft landing so that they don't go work for a rogue element. In Iraq, it's the opposite. We're trying to bring the scientists and give them legitimate work. So it's the inverse of what we're trying to do in Russia.

But we will provide some funding. Regional partners will provide additional funding. And the intent is to employ scientists that could support WMD programs and it's WMD across the board. It's not just nuclear because the skills you need for-you need physicists, you need chemists, you need engineers in all of those types of weapons programs. So this is something that we'll address, WMD generally. Obviously our principal interest parochially for our program is nuclear. But the people that we will employ could work in a broad range of WMD programs.

SEN. REED: Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.