SOBER UP I

Posted at 8:17 a.m. ET

The Wall Street Journal, as it often does, brings us back to reality, reminding us that money isn't the most serious problem out there.  This is the first of two pieces we'll run today dealing with the nation's defenses, and the gaping holes in same.  The first, I think, will shock you: 

Since the end of the Cold War, the U.S. nuclear weapons program has suffered from neglect. Warheads are old. There's been no new warhead design since the 1980s, and the last time one was tested was 1992, when the U.S. unilaterally stopped testing. Gen. Kevin Chilton, who heads U.S. Strategic Command, has been sounding the alarm, as has Defense Secretary Robert Gates. So far few seem to be listening.

Even our "soft" allies are doing a better job:

The U.S. is alone among the five declared nuclear nations in not modernizing its arsenal. The U.K. and France are both doing so. Ditto China and Russia. "We're the only ones who aren't," Gen. Chilton says. Congress has refused to fund the Department of Energy's Reliable Replacement Warhead program beyond the concept stage and this year it cut funding even for that.

Please notice all the details you've been given on this story by the mainstream media.  Apparently The New York Times has better things to do, like revealing national secrets.

Congress's behavior should finally convince us why it's necessary to win back the House and Senate in two years.

Our nuclear weapons are old, old, old, General Chilton says.  Some of them still use vacuum tubes.

And here comes the punch line: "This is the technology that we have . . . today." The technology in the weapons the U.S. relies on for its nuclear deterrent dates back to before many of the people in the room were born.

And yet, we are spending trillions to bail out companies with negligent executives.  But we scrimp on the deterrent that keeps us safe.  And more modern weapons are also more secure:

It's possible to design a terrorist-proof nuke, the general says. "We have the capability to design into these weapons today systems that, should they fall into wrong hands -- [should] someone either attempt to detonate them or open them up to take the material out -- that they would become not only nonfunctional, but the material inside would become unusable."

And get this:

The general stresses the need to "revitalize" the infrastructure for producing nuclear weapons. The U.S. hasn't built a nuclear weapon in more than two decades and the manufacturing infrastructure has disappeared. The U.S. today "has no nuclear weapon production capacity," he says flatly. "We can produce a handful of weapons in a laboratory but we've taken down the manufacturing capability." At the height of the Cold War, the U.S. produced 3,000 weapons a year.

And...

There's also the issue of human capital, which is graying. It's "every bit as important as the aging of the weapon systems," the general says. "The last individual to have worked on an actual nuclear test in this country, the last scientist or engineer, will have retired or passed on in the next five years." The younger generation has no practical experience with designing or building nuclear warheads.

This is genuinely alarming, yet the nation is not alarmed. And the views of the president-elect?

The president-elect likes to talk about a nuclear-free world and has said, "I will not authorize the development of new nuclear weapons." He has not weighed in on the Reliable Replacement Warhead program.

Finally...

Gen. Chilton says the modernization of U.S. nuclear weapons is "an important issue for the next administration in their first year." At the very least, he says, the U.S. needs to "go out and do those studies" on design, cost and implementation. As for his own role: "You've got to talk about it. You can't just one day show up and say we have a problem."

This should have the highest priority.  Our deterrent is our lifeline.  But I fear that the leftists in Congress will consider it a point of pride to continue to do nothing.  They're for peace, you know.

November 25,  2008.