Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. NADLER. Mr. Chairman, this amendment would strike a legislative rider that was put in the bill to prevent the Department of Defense from decommissioning nuclear missile silos.

As you know, the Defense Appropriations bill requires the administration to keep 50 soon-to-be-empty silos--silos with no missiles--on warm standby. The missiles in these silos will be eliminated under the New START arms control agreement, and the administration was hoping to be able to destroy the silos eventually and save some money, but this bill will keep them in warm standby forever.

This is not without costs. Under New START, those extra empty silos will have to be counted against our launcher totals, meaning we will have fewer permissible bombers or submarine-based missiles because we have, instead, empty ICBM silos. These silos have been precisely targeted by the Russians for decades. While it is important that we have an appropriate, flexible, and survivable nuclear deterrent, these land-based missiles are the least survivable leg of our deterrent, and, of course, empty silos deter no one. What this rider says is that we should have 50 empty silos and 50 fewer submarine-launched ballistic missiles or bombers.

While it is true that, as an offer of support to Senators whose States have missile bases, the administration proposed to keep these silos warm temporarily, there is absolutely no reason to do so forever. This provision is not about security but about pork and political favoritism. Is it any wonder that the most ardent defenders of this provision are from the States of Montana, Colorado, North Dakota, and Wyoming and is not the chairman of the Armed Forces Committee? is not the ranking member of the Armed Forces Committee? In fact, they had worked out a sunset at one point.

Mr. Chairman, micromanaging our Nation's nuclear defenses is really not in the best interest of our country. Remember, we have some 450 Minuteman III missile silos. My amendment would change the status of 50 empty silos and only if our national security experts determined they wanted to do so. It would not affect any silos with actual missiles in them, and, therefore, it would not affect our deterrent.

I would encourage my colleagues to support this amendment, which would allow the President to remove those silos from warm standby at a time of his choosing, when the military tells him it is appropriate to do so and to avoid the cost of keeping open empty silos without any function or usefulness to the national defense.

But I want to make a broader point about our broader nuclear strategy. I want to call attention to the obsolescence of the concept of the nuclear triad. Something that has been accepted as gospel for many years no longer makes sense. Our nuclear arsenal is designed to serve as a deterrent to prevent anyone from even considering attacking the United States. In order to deter an attack, any potential adversary needs to know that we have enough nuclear weapons that will survive an initial assault and will retaliate with overwhelming force.

As part of the triad, we have ICBMs, which are very vulnerable to an enemy strike; we have bombers, which can be made less vulnerable; and we have submarine-launched missiles, which are not vulnerable. The ICBMs, because they are fixed targets and are vulnerable to attack, need to be launched immediately and are, therefore, at the greatest risk of being launched by mistake or by accident. There is almost no time to verify that a radar contact is actually a flock of incoming missiles and not a flock of seagulls or a sounding rocket.

So why do we even need the ICBMs, which are not only vulnerable but dangerous because you have to use them or lose them, especially when we have the subs and the bombers?

That debate is for another day. Today, all we are saying is that our generals should have the discretion to spend money on nuclear weapons that best protect the interests of the United States. They should not be forced to waste taxpayer dollars to keep empty missile silos warm when they have limited real utility and are not in our strategic best interests. They should not be used to keep these empty silos warm when it means, under the treaty, we can have 50 fewer submarine-launched missiles--real missiles--as opposed to empty silos. It simply makes no sense.

I urge my colleagues to adopt the amendment, which would restore to the President and to the military the flexibility to determine whether we want to keep empty silos or real missiles.

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Mr. NADLER. In reclaiming my time, I am not suggesting what we should do other than that we should leave the administration and the military with the discretion. They may decide they would rather have more submarine-based missiles rather than empty silos or they may not decide that, but that should be a decision for them. Personally, I think I would rather have more missiles than empty silos or maybe save money, but that is my personal preference. We should leave the decision to the administration.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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