LEGISLATIVE
House NDAA markup addresses EM leadership, national laboratory research, and nuclear modernization
ECA Staff | 6/22/2020
Today the House Armed Services Committee began marking up the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021. The House’s annual defense bill addresses several key DOE national security issues including infrastructure and research at national laboratories, leadership at the Office of Environmental Management (EM), and nuclear weapons modernization.
The legislation includes a provision that would require the President to “participate in at least one large-scale nuclear command, control, and communication exercise within the first year of assuming office.”
While the details about authorized funding levels for DOE’s national security programs are not available yet, the committee's markup called for several new DOE/NNSA-related reports and briefings.
The committee noted that frequent changes in EM leadership “has limited the capacity of EM to carry out its mission,” and, “Since 1991, EM has had nine different assistant secretaries and nine Acting Assistant Secretaries or Senior Advisors. In the past 5 years, the average length of service for EM leadership is 1 year. In addition, EM has been moved under four different Under Secretaries in the past 15 years.” The committee directed the Comptroller General to conduct a review within EM to
examine the office’s evolving mission and its leadership’s capabilities to carry out the mission. A briefing with the findings is due to the committee by November this year.
The committee also expressed concern about “tight schedules and increasing costs” for the expansion of plutonium pit production and other nuclear weapons programs. To address those concerns, the committee requested recent planning documents and a briefing from the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and USSTRATCOM to explain costs and ongoing plans regarding improvements to the nuclear enterprise.
Other reports requested by the House committee include:
- A review of NNSA’s portfolio of construction and infrastructure recapitalization efforts with particular attention to cost and schedule performance and project scope (by September 30, 2020);
- A review of NNSA’s laboratory-, plant-, and site-directed research and development for nuclear weapons production improvement (by November 1, 2020);
- A report on DOE’s cooperative audit strategy for management and operating (M&O) contractors (by February 28, 2021);
- A report from NNSA “detailing a plan to consistently and strategically monitor its industrial base as pertains to nuclear weapon components, subsystems, and materials to determine how this capability should perform its functions and what ongoing resources it will need to be successful” (by February 1, 2021);
and
- A briefing from NNSA regarding “plans to leverage the Stockpile Responsiveness program to increase the responsiveness of the production complex” (by August 1, 2020)
View the House Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee’s markup HERE.
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