Reports: Pentagon to overhaul scandal-ridden nuclear force

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel is expected to order top-to-bottom changes that will cost billions of dollars in an effort to fix the management of the world's deadliest weapons, according to media reports.

Hagel ordered two lengthy reviews of the nuclear force and has concluded that problems in the nation's nuclear forces are rooted in a lack of investment, inattention by high-level leaders and sagging morale.

A series of stories by the Associated Press had revealed numerous problems in management, morale, security and safety, leading to several firings, demotions and other disciplinary actions against a range of Air Force personnel from generals to airmen.

The separate Pentagon studies concluded that there are “systemic problems across the nuclear enterprise,” according to senior defense officials, quoted in the New York Times and by the Associated Press.

The senior defense officials discussed the reviews and Hagel's response to them on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to be cited by name.

Fixing the problems will cost billions of dollars, according to the officials. This means the U.S. will be spending a huge amount even as President Barack Obama — who in 2009, as a newly elected president declared his intention to aim for “ a world without nuclear weapons — continues to express a desire for a disarmed world. 

The cost of fixing the current problems will come in addition to the $350 billion the U.S. already plans to invest over the next decade on modernizing and maintaining its nuclear arsenals.

The defense officials said Hagel would propose an amount between $1 billion and $10 billion in additional investment. An exact amount had not yet been determined but the announcement will come 10 days before the deadline to conclude nuclear negotiations with Iran for that country to dismantle its nuclear infrastructure.

Hagel's moves, while not dramatic, are designed to get at the core of the problem, according to officials who spoke with the Associated Press.

Hagel was expected to announce his decisions at a morning news conference Friday and then fly to Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota, home of a Minuteman 3 missile unit whose recent setbacks are emblematic of the trouble dogging the broader force.

The Air Force has been hit hardest by the problems, particularly its Minuteman 3 intercontinental ballistic missile force based in North Dakota, Montana and Wyoming. The Navy, which operates nuclear-armed submarines, had its own exam-cheating scandal this year and has suffered from a shortage of personnel.

Last March nine officers were fired at Malmstrom Air Force Base, Montana, which is the third of the three nuclear missile bases, in response to an exam-cheating scandal there. Last year, Maj. Gen. Michael Carey, commander of the entire ICBM force, was fired after an investigation into a drinking binge and other misconduct while he was in Russia as head of a visiting U.S. government delegation.

Hagel's reviews concluded that the structure of U.S. nuclear forces is so incoherent that it cannot be properly managed in its current form, and that this problem explains why top-level officials often are unaware of trouble below them.

The reviews also found that a combination of problems amount to fundamental flaws, rather than random or periodic slip-ups that can easily be fixed, the defense officials said. They said the nuclear forces are currently meeting the demands of the mission, but are finding it increasingly hard to cope.

To illustrate the degree of decay in the ICBM force, the review found that maintenance crews had access to only one tool set required to tighten bolts on the warhead end of the Minuteman 3 missile, and that this single tool set was being used by crews at all three ICBM bases.

“They started FedExing the one tool” to three bases spread across the country, one official familiar with the contents of the reports told the New York Times. No one had checked in years “to see if new tools were being made,” the official said. This was one of many maintenance problems that had “been around so long that no one reported them anymore.”

The crews now have one tool at each of the three bases.

When Hagel ordered the two reviews in February, shortly after the Air Force announced it was investigating an exam-cheating ring at one ICBM base and a related drug investigation implicating missile crew members, Hagel was said to be flabbergasted that such misbehavior could be infecting the force.

"He said, 'What is going on here?'" one of the senior defense officials recalled.

Among his more significant moves, Hagel authorized the Air Force to put a four-star general in charge of its nuclear forces, the two senior defense officials said.

The top Air Force nuclear commander currently is a three-star. Lt. Gen. Stephen Wilson is responsible not only for the 450 Minuteman ICBMs but also the nuclear bomber force. Hagel has concluded that a four-star would be able to exert more influence within the Air Force, the defense officials said.

Hagel also OK'd a proposal to upgrade the top nuclear force official at Air Force headquarters in the Pentagon from a two-star general to a three-star, the officials said.

The review's authors, retired Air Force Gen. Larry D. Welch and retired Navy Adm. John C. Harvey Jr., found fault with one of the unique features of life in the nuclear forces. It is called the Personnel Reliability Program, designed to monitor the mental fitness of people to be entrusted with the world's deadliest weapons.

Over time, that program has devolved into a burdensome administrative exercise that detracts from the mission, the authors found, according to the senior defense officials. Hagel ordered that it be overhauled.

Hagel concluded that despite tight Pentagon budgets, billions of dollars more will be needed over the next five years to upgrade equipment. That will include a proposal to replace the Vietnam-era UH-1 Huey helicopter fleet that is part of the security forces at ICBM bases. The Air Force declared them out of date years ago but put available resources into other priorities.

Al Jazeera with the Associated Press