Nuclear Security Agency Director Pledges Renewed Focus
By Jim Garamone
DoD News, Defense Media Activity
WASHINGTON, Oct. 30, 2014 – The National Nuclear Security Administration, which maintains the nation's nuclear weapons, must reinvigorate its focus for this crucial deterrent capability, the agency's director said here yesterday.
Speaking at a Defense Writers Group breakfast, Frank G. Klotz acknowledged that there are issues associated with the management of the nuclear enterprise that must be fixed.
Nuke Stockpile Safe
But despite these issues, said Klotz, a retired Air Force lieutenant general who has been in charge of the National Nuclear Security Administration for six months, the bottom line is that the agency's Stockpile Stewardship Program is able to assess the health and safety and the security of the U.S. nuclear arsenal.
The director gave a bit of history to put the administration's problems in perspective.
The United States voluntarily put in place a moratorium on nuclear explosive testing in 1992 – a moratorium observed by four successive presidents from both political parties. At the time, Klotz said, there were those who believed it was impossible to ensure these fearsome weapons would work without periodic testing. The agency had to have the level of development for diagnostic tools, test facilities and the high-performance computers to conduct a stewardship program.
"Guess what?" he said. "We did."
Challenges Remain
But challenges remain, Klotz said. "My generation came of age in the Cold War, when nuclear deterrence and our nuclear deterrent forces were center stage," he added. "At the end of the Cold War, it was almost as if we had all heaved a sigh of collective relief and said 'Thank goodness we don't have to worry about that any more.'"
At the same time, he said, the focus of the U.S. national security departments shifted to conflicts in the Balkans, in the Middle East and to the issue of combating terrorism across the globe. There were more pressing spending priorities, and money to maintain the nuclear enterprise just was not there.
"As a result, the attention, the focus and the resources that were given to our nuclear deterrent forces were not what they were in the past," Klotz said.
"Quite frankly, we lost focus," he told the defense writers. "The situation we find ourselves in 20 years later is we reinstituted that focus and we stepped up to making the types of investments we need to make in order to continue to ensure this part of our national security policy … is able to function the way it is supposed to."
Klotz said the agency simply has to do a better job managing capital projects.
Multifaceted Agency Mission
Klotz stressed that his organization does more than the nuclear stockpile mission. "We also have extraordinarily important missions with respect to nuclear nonproliferation and trying to promote … safety and security across the United States and the globe," he said.
The agency also has responsibility for emergency response to a radiological or nuclear incident, so NNSA personnel continually train and prepare teams at home and abroad, and the administration has a special responsibility for naval reactors.
Doing all these missions requires focus, the administrator said, but he added that the people of the agency are ready for all of their missions.
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