Agency Officials Praise New START Treaty Progress

By Cheryl Pellerin

American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON  – Work taking place under the 16-month-old new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty between the United States and Russia fosters transparency and predictability for the world's two largest deployed nuclear arsenals, federal officials told a Senate panel today.

Among those testifying before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations were Rose Gottemoeller, acting undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, and Madelyn R. Creedon, assistant secretary of defense for global strategic affairs.

“Our experience so far demonstrates that the New START's verification regime works and will help push open the door to new and more complicated verification techniques in the future,” said Gottemoeller, who led the U.S. treaty negotiating team as assistant secretary of state for verification and compliance.

The Senate approved the treaty in 2010, and the related legislative process produced a federal commitment to spend $185 billion over 10 years to modernize nuclear warheads and delivery systems.

“When the treaty is fully implemented, it will result in the lowest number of deployed nuclear warheads since the 1950s, the first full decade of the nuclear age,” Gottemoeller said, “and 1,550 warheads deployed on or counted on 700 delivery vehicles -- that is, intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine launch ballistic missiles and bombers.”

When the first START treaty was signed in 1991, she added, the United States and the Soviet Union each had deployed about 10,550 nuclear warheads.

During the first year of the new treaty, the United States and Russia kept pace with each other in conducting inspections, she said, both completing the yearly maximum of 18 inspections. Today, each side can make 25 short-notice inspections a year, and inspections have taken place involving intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, heavy bombers at their operating bases, storage facilities, conversion or elimination facilities, and test ranges.

“Through inspection activities, we have acquired new and valuable information,” Gottemoeller told the panel. “For example, New START includes intrusive reentry vehicle inspections that are designed to confirm the exact number of re-entry vehicles, or warheads, on individual missiles selected for inspection. We are now able to confirm the exact number of warheads on any randomly selected Russian ICBM and SLBM -- something we were not able to do under the 1991 START treaty.”

The exhibition process, another aspect of treaty implementation, gives both parties a chance to see new kinds of strategic offensive arms, view distinguishing features and confirm declared data.

“The United States and Russian Federation have also been sharing a veritable mountain of data with each other,” the undersecretary said.

“Since entry into force we have exchanged over 2,500 notifications through our Nuclear Risk Reduction Centers,” she added. “They help track movement and changes in the status of systems on a day-in, day-out basis.

“That,” Gottemoeller continued, “combined with the databases that we exchange every six months, gives us an opportunity to have a kind of living database -- a truly real-time look at what is going on inside the Russian strategic forces.”

Testifying on the implications for U.S. nuclear forces and policy of the new START treaty, Creedon said implementation is proceeding successfully and the Defense Department is fully engaged in meeting its treaty obligations.

DOD has hosted multiple inspection activities at U.S. strategic facilities and has participated in reciprocal activities at Russian strategic facilities, the assistant secretary added.

“The United States is on track to complete the reductions necessary to comply with the New START treaty's central limits by February 2018,” Creedon said, adding that DOD plans to retain 240 deployed Trident SLBMs on Ohio-class submarines, up to 60 deployed heavy bombers and up to 420 single-warhead Minuteman III ICBMs.

“To meet the treaty's central limits,” she said, “the Obama administration plans to convert or eliminate a yet-to-be-determined combination of ICBM launchers and SLBM launchers [and] our nuclear-capability heavy bombers.”

The service life of the department’s Trident II D5 SLBMs is being extended to 2042, and construction of the first Ohio-class replacement submarine is scheduled to begin in 2021, she added.

The administration plans to sustain Minuteman III ICBMs through 2030, and the United States will maintain two nuclear-capable B-52H strategic bomber wings and one B-2A wing.

The department also is working to complete a comprehensive drawdown plan, a substantial portion of which will be completed to support the fiscal 2014 budget request, Creedon added.

“As the president's budget request for fiscal year 2013 makes clear, DOD is committed to modernizing the delivery systems covered by the New START treaty that underpin nuclear deterrents,” the assistant secretary said.

Maintaining strategic stability, assuring allies and sustaining a safe, secure and effective deterrent requires a partnership between the executive branch and Congress, she added.

Locklear Backs Law of the Sea Treaty

By Karen Parrish

American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON – The Law of the Sea Convention is one avenue toward peacefully resolving competing maritime claims that could otherwise lead to conflict, the leader of U.S. Pacific Command said here today.

Navy Adm. Samuel J. Locklear III spoke to Pentagon reporters following his testimony yesterday as part of a military panel addressing the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on the Law of the Sea Convention.

The United Nations treaty opened for signature in December 1982 and took effect in November 1994, after 60 countries had signed. The United States has not ratified the treaty, but the nation’s military leaders have in recent months urged U.S. accession to the agreement.

Locklear told the committee yesterday the convention “is essential to locking in a stable, legal framework for the maritime domain that is favorable to our national interest and preserves our access to this critical region.”

As a Pacific power, the United States has defended freedom, enabled prosperity and protected peace in the region for more than six decades, and it must continue to lead security efforts, the admiral said in testimony.

He told senators, “The convention specifically codifies the rights, the freedoms and the uses of the sea that are critical for our forces to transit through and operate in the waters of the Asia-Pacific region.”

Population and economic growth in the Asia-Pacific make competing maritime claims both more numerous and more contentious, he said.

“Nowhere is this more prevalent than in the South China Sea, where claimants have asserted broad territorial and sovereignty rights over land features, sea space and resources in the area,” Locklear noted.

“The convention is an important component of a rules-based approach that encourages peaceful resolution of these maritime disputes,” he said in testimony. “Moreover, the convention codifies an effective balance of coastal state and maritime state rights, a stable legal framework that we help to negotiate that is favorable to our interests and that we should leverage as a check on states that attempt to assert excessive maritime claims.”

Because the United States is not a party to the convention, he said, “Our challenges are less credible than they might otherwise be.”

Joining the convention would place the United States “in a much stronger position to demand adherence to the rules contained in it -- rules that we have been protecting from the outside since the '80s and before,” he said.

Locklear told reporters today the convention and “customary law” set standards for military vessels’ passage through territorial waters, archipelagos and major straits.

“There are a number of countries in the world -- I think China being one of them -- who from our perspective place excessive claims and excessive restrictions that are not consistent with international [law] and aren't consistent with Law of the Sea,” he added.

Those restrictions, if added together and enacted, would limit international use of roughly a third of the world’s ocean area, Locklear said, and would affect every major strait and every “sea line of communication” -- the primary maritime trade, logistics and naval routes between ports.

All nations concerned with shipping access will be “further at risk if these excessive claims aren't resolved,” the admiral said.

The Law of the Sea Convention could form the basis for an international forum allowing countries to express competing claims, he noted.

“Then there will have to be some compromise,” he added, “because you can't just have continually competing claims that end up causing miscalculation at some point in time, which would lead us to conflict.”

Locklear said there are enough maritime resources “for everybody in the world,” and competing claims should be resolved peacefully.

Responding to a question on U.S.-China military relations, the PACOM commander said he has been encouraged by the receptiveness he has seen from his Chinese counterparts.

“I look forward to continuing our dialogue and to doing some visits,” he added. “I plan to visit [China] within the next several weeks, at their invitation.”

That visit will involve discussions about “military claims and all of the other issues that surround that,” he said.

A productive partnership between the two nations is “very important” to Asia-Pacific security, the admiral said.

“I think the good news is that … we're in a position in the coming months and years to continue to have a productive dialogue,” he added.

Defense, State Leaders Urge Senate to Ratify Law of the Sea Treaty

By Jim Garamone

American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, May 23, 2012 – In the strongest terms possible, defense and diplomatic leaders urged the Senate today to ratify the Law of the Sea Convention.

Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta along with Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, joined Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. All three urged the committee to approve the treaty.

“I strongly believe that accession to this treaty is absolutely essential, not only to our economic interests, our diplomatic interests, but I’m here to say that it is extremely important to our national security interests as well,” Panetta told the Senate panel. “I join a lot of the military voices of the past and present that have spoken so strongly in support of this treaty.”

The treaty, which came into force in 1994, has been waiting for Senate ratification ever since.

Panetta stressed that acceding to the treaty would help maintain the United States as a global naval power. “If we’re going to continue to assert our role as a maritime power, it’s essential that we accede to this important convention,” he told the panel.

“We believe that it is imperative to act now,” Clinton said. “No country is better served by this convention than the United States. As the world’s foremost maritime power, we benefit from the convention’s favorable freedom of navigation provisions. As the country with the world's second-longest coastline, we benefit from its provisions on offshore natural resources.”

A total of 161 countries have approved the treaty. “We’re the only industrial power that has failed to do that,” Panetta said. “And as a result, we don't have a seat at the table.”

Not having a seat means the U.S. is not represented and U.S. claims are not defended. It means being unable to influence nations who are at the table, Panetta said.

Ratifying the treaty, “would ensure that our rights are not whittled away by the excessive claims and erroneous interpretations of others,” Panetta said. “It would give us the power and authority to support and promote the peaceful resolution of disputes within a rules-based order.”

The treaty would also secure U.S. navigational freedoms and global access for military and commercial ships, aircraft and undersea fiber-optic cables.

Panetta suggested the new defense strategy almost demands accession to the Law of the Sea Treaty. “We at the Defense Department have gone through an effort to develop a defense strategy for the future, a defense strategy not only for now, but into the future as well,” the secretary said. “And it emphasizes the strategically vital arc that extends from the western Pacific and eastern Asia into the Indian Ocean region and South Asia on to the Middle East.”

By not ratifying the treaty, the United States undercuts its credibility in that crucial arc. “We’re pushing, for example, for a rules-based order in the region and the peaceful resolution of maritime and territorial disputes in the South China Sea, in the Straits of Hormuz and elsewhere,” Panetta said. “How can we argue that other nations must abide by international rules when we haven’t joined the very treaty that codifies those rules?”

Dempsey hammered home this point, noting that joining the Law of the Sea Convention would strengthen America’s ability to apply sea power. From his standpoint, the treaty codifies the navigational rights and freedoms necessary to project and sustain U.S. military forces. These include the right of transit through international straits, the right to exercise high seas freedoms in foreign exclusive economic zones, and the right of innocent passage through foreign territorial seas.

“And, it reinforces the sovereign immunity of our warships as they conduct operations,” Dempsey said.

Right now, the United States exercises these rights by sailing into these waters or flying over them. “This plays into the hands of foreign states that seek to bend customary law to restrict movement on the oceans,” the chairman said. “And, it puts our warships and aircraft ‘on point’ to constantly challenge claims.”

The United States will defend its interests on the seas, the chairman said.

“But, the force of arms does not have to be -- and should not be -- our only national security instrument,” he said. “Joining the convention would provide us another way to stave off conflict with less risk of escalation.”

Services Strive to Extend Expertise Across Health Care

By Lisa Daniel

American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, March 28, 2012 – Troops deployed to Afghanistan are receiving the best trauma care in the world, and the services are determined to continue that level of expertise as service members return home, the military’s top health professionals told a Senate panel today.

The surgeons general of the Army, Navy and Air Force testified about the status of military health care before the Senate Appropriations Committee’s defense subcommittee.

Lt. Gen. Patricia D. Horoho, the Army’s surgeon general and former chief of its nurse corps, said Army health professionals have a proud history of standing side by side with troops on the battlefield since the nation’s beginning.

Those skills have been well-honed in the past decade of war, Horoho and her Navy and Air Force counterparts said.

“It cannot be overstated that the best trauma care in the world resides in Kandahar,” Horoho said, noting that the NATO hospital complex in Afghanistan’s southern region houses the best military trauma professionals from the 50-nation coalition.

The services strive to continue that top level of care as troops leave the war theater, from hospitals and rehabilitation centers, to when they return home, the surgeons general said. As the United States draws down from Afghanistan, they said, the services need not only to retain those battlefield skills, but also to transition more toward wellness and promotion of overall health.

“Our mission is larger than wartime medicine,” Horoho said.

Vice Adm. (Dr.) Matthew L. Nathan, the Navy’s surgeon general, agreed. “They need to heal in mind, body and spirit,” he said of warfighters.

To that end, the Navy has seen success with its program to help redeployed Marines deal with post-traumatic stress, binge drinking, sleep disorders and other problems, Nathan said.

Each of the surgeons general said the proposed fiscal 2013 budget would meet their service’s health system needs, and agreed with Nathan that they must strive to innovate, operate more jointly, engage with private sector providers, and partner with civilian health departments and agencies, such as the Veterans Affairs Department.

“Interoperability creates systemwide synergies,” Nathan said, and allows for better care at lower cost.

The surgeons general defended the Defense Department’s budget proposal to increase TRICARE enrollment fees on a tiered basis for military retirees as being necessary to bringing down rapidly rising health care costs.

The department’s health care costs rose from $19 billion in 2001 to an expected $51 billion this year, Nathan said. And while the costs have grown, retirees still are paying the same $400 to $500 annual fee they’ve paid for TRICARE since the health plan’s inception in the mid-1990s, while new programs like TRICARE for Life have driven up costs, he said.

“This is an effort to try to find a fair increase in the participation of beneficiaries, in an effort to make it commensurate to the benefits they’ve received in the last few years,” he said.

Air Force Lt. Gen. (Dr.) Charles B. Green acknowledged that military retiree groups have been vocal about opposing the increase. But he added that he will be retiring soon and he supports the higher fees.

“There is a mismatch now with inflation,” he said. “We’ve been giving cost-of-living increases to retirement, but not increasing any of the out-of-pocket costs.”

Horoho, Nathan and Green said they also are looking for redundancies and other cost savings in programs to affect future budgets.

Navy Hosts Senate Energy Subcommittee Hearing

By Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class (SW/AW) Phil Beaufort, U.S. Fleet Forces Public Affairs

NORFOLK (NNS) -- The Navy hosted a field hearing for the Senate Energy subcommittee on water and power aboard multipurpose amphibious assault ship USS Kearsarge (LHD 3), moored at Naval Station Norfolk, March 12.

The subcommittee received testimony on energy and water policies being implemented by Department of the Navy (DoN) operations and facilities.

During his testimony, Secretary of the Navy (SECNAV) Ray Mabus spoke of the DoN's fuel and water conservation efforts and the importance of energy independence.

"Today, the United States controls just two percent of known global oil reserves, but we consume over 20 percent of the world's oil," said Mabus. "The math is clear, even if we opened up every possible source of oil available to us, it wouldn't be enough to supply our needs."

Mabus said the Navy and Marine Corps cannot remain content or complacent in how they use, produce or procure energy.

"For every dollar charged for a barrel of oil, the [DoN] spends $30 million. When unrest in some oil producing regions broke out last year, the price of a barrel increased by $30, which increased the Navy's fuel bill by over $1 billion," said Mabus. "That additional $1 billion in fuel costs, that we could not have planned for, left us having to take money out of operations, meaning our Sailors and Marines steamed less, flew less and trained less."

Mabus said Navy's investments in biofuels have brought costs down and he believes those prices will continue to come down with increased demand.

"Alternative fuels cannot become competitive with oil unless there is a demand for them. But demand at a commercial scale will never be possible unless there is the supply to meet that demand," said Mabus. "Purchases of small amounts for our research efforts has shown dramatic results in lowering the cost of biofuels, which cost half as much today as they did just two years ago."

Former U.S. Sen. and former Secretary of the Navy John Warner, led one of the panels and spoke about the impact further Navy research and development will have going forward.

"Since we are here to talk specifically about the Navy, I would note that the Navy is on the leading edge across all initiatives, especially when it comes to development and use of biofuel," said Warner. "Navy scientists and engineers have developed great expertise in assessing both the advantages, and even the limitations, of biofuels. Their research and development has proven the concepts of 'drop in fuels' in aircraft and ships."

The Navy plans to launch what Mabus calls the "Great Green Fleet" during this year's Rim of the Pacific Exercise. Mabus said the ships and aircraft of RIMPAC will demonstrate their ability to run on biofuel later this summer and the Green Fleet will deploy operating on biofuel in 2016.

"The Great Green Fleet is not about some environmental agenda," said Mabus. "It is about maintaining America's military and economic leadership across the globe in the 21st Century. In the middle of the 19th Century, it was the Navy that shifted from sail to steam. In the early 20th Century, we shifted again from steam to oil, and in the middle of the 20th Century it was the Navy that pioneered nuclear power. At each of those transitions, there were those who questioned the need, challenged the cost or simply opposed change of any kind."

In addition to the Green Fleet, Mabus unveiled a number of short- and long-term DoN energy goals he said are designed to achieve energy security and independence.

* Energy Efficient Acquisition: Evaluation of energy factors will be mandatory when awarding contracts for systems and buildings.

* Reduce Non-Tactical Petroleum Use: By 2015, DoN will reduce petroleum use in the commercial fleet by 50 percent.

* Increase Alternative Energy Ashore: By 2020, DoN will produce at least 50 percent of shore-based energy requirements from alternative sources; 50 percent of DON installations will be net-zero.

* Increase Alternative Energy Use DoN-Wide: By 2020, 50 percent of total DoN energy consumption will come from alternative sources.

"Maximizing the combat capability of our platforms through energy efficiency and energy innovation is what the Navy's energy program is about," said Vice Adm. Philip Cullom, deputy chief of naval operations for fleet readiness and logistics.

Cullom addressed the congressional panel about the need to take this sea-change to the deckplate in order for it to succeed.

"We are driving this change through formal education, in the training pipeline and on the deckplate," said Cullom. "With contributions from every Sailor, at every level, we will achieve our energy vision so that we remain 'Paratus et Potens'...'Ready and Able.'"

In addition to Mabus, Warner and Cullom, Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Energy Tom Hicks, Rear Adm. Tim Alexander, commander of Navy Region Mid-Atlantic; Maj. Gen James Kessler, commander of Marine Corps Installations Command; and Col. Bob Charette, director of Marine Corps Expeditionary Energy Office, each provided testimony.