Pentagon chief orders $10B shakeup of nuclear forces

MINOT AIR FORCE BASE, N.D. — The Pentagon will spend an additional $10 billion to correct deep problems of neglect and mismanagement within the nation’s nuclear forces, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Friday, pledging firm action to support the men and women who handle the world’s most powerful and deadly weapons.

Hagel ordered top-tobottom changes in the nuclear arsenal’s management, which he said had been allowed over the years to backslide, afflicted by broken and missing equipment, poor leadership and inadequate training and staffing.

Hagel told a Pentagon news conference Friday morning — before flying to Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota where many of the nuclear force troubles began — that the Defense Department will boost spending on the nuclear forces by about 10 percent a year for the next five years, saying there is no problem on this issue the Pentagon can’t fix.

That would be a total increase of about $10 billion over the five years. Currently the Pentagon spends about $15 billion a year on the nuclear mission.

“The internal and external reviews I ordered show that a consistent lack of investment and support for our nuclear forces over far too many years has left us with too little margin to cope with mounting stresses,” said Hagel.

To illustrate the degree of decay in the ICBM force, the reviews 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, in North Dakota, Wyoming and Montana. When one crew needed it, it was sent by another, by FedEx.

That “was a metaphor for how far things had fallen,” said Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work, adding that eventually crew members stopped reporting the problem. “They had reported it over and over, and they just worked around it.”

Hagel said Friday each ICBM base now has a tool kit, and will soon have two each.