Air Force secretary nominee pledges to focus on nuclear modernization

The nominee to be the Department of the Air Force’s next secretary pledged on Thursday to focus on its nuclear modernization efforts and continue work to get its troubled intercontinental ballistic missile program back on track.

In his testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Troy Meink, who previously served as the deputy director of the National Reconnaissance Office, also told lawmakers the department needs to act faster to innovate its weapon systems and streamline its acquisition systems.

The Air Force is working on replacing its arsenal of about 450 50-year-old Minuteman III nuclear missiles — the land-based portion of the nation’s nuclear triad — with a new Northrop Grumman-made ICBM called the LGM-35A Sentinel.

But Sentinel’s projected future costs increased dramatically from what Northrop and the Air Force originally expected, triggering a cost overrun process called a critical Nunn-McCurdy breach. The Air Force launched a review of the program to find ways to bring its costs down, which concluded Sentinel is essential and cannot be canceled.

Meink told lawmakers that if confirmed, he planned to review the results of the Sentinel Nunn McCurdy breach study. He also intends to continue overseeing the B-21 Raider stealth bomber program, which will be a key portion of the nation’s air-based segment of the nuclear triad.

Michael Duffey, the administration’s nominee for undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment, called nuclear modernization the “backbone” of the nation’s strategic deterrent in Thursday’s hearing.

“Ensuring that we have a modern, capable nuclear enterprise that not only includes the B-21 — which is a successful acquisition program, by all accounts — but the Columbia-class submarine and the Sentinel nuclear ICBM are critical,” Duffey said, referring to the U.S. Navy’s next-generation nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine.

He pledged to work with the National Nuclear Security Administration and lawmakers to ensure the nation keeps high-quality systems needed for the safe and secure use of nuclear weapons.

Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Arkansas, raised concerns that the Air Force won’t have the budget necessary to carry out its conventional missions while also being on the hook to fund two simultaneous nuclear modernizations.

Meink said the Air Force is now in a historically unique situation as it is conducting modernization programs across all of its core mission areas, including the nuclear upgrades.

“Those systems are pretty expensive,” Meink said.

If confirmed, Meink said, one of his first priorities will be to review all the service’s modernization efforts and readiness needs and see what additional resources it might need to pay for those. Meink plans to come back to Congress with that information to further discuss what needs to be done.

Cotton also pressed Meink on the service’s longstanding pilot shortage, which he said is now about 1,800 pilots.

Meink — who served in the Air Force as a KC-135 Stratotanker navigator — promised to look at how to fix that years-long problem. The solution is not just a matter of raising pilots’ pay, he said, but looking for ways to improve their quality of service and ensure they get enough time flying the jets that are their passion.

“We’ve got to make sure — not just with pilots, but across our highlight skilled areas within our workforce — that they have the opportunity to do what they’ve been trained, what they love to do,” Meink said. “Since I was a navigator, we’ve always struggled with maintaining pilot levels. It is much larger than just the funding.”