Bob Kadlec Speaks!

The nominated ASD(ND-CBD) gets his moment before the Senate Armed Services Committee

Followers of this newsletter know that I’ve been particularly interested in following Bob Kadlec’s journey from being nominated as the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear Deterrence and Chemical and Biological Defense (ASD[ND-CBD]) in February to his eventual appearance before the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) to be questioned on his future position. Well, it finally happened last week, on November 4th. He was one of three nominees who sat before the SASC members, the other two being Col (ret) Michael Borders (going to Asst Sec AF for Energy, Installations, and Environments) and Austin Dahmer (for ASD for Strategy, Plans, and Capabilities Forces).¹ I’ll get straight to the point; Kadlec was not the star of the show. He got a few questions on nuclear issues (to which I’ll discuss) while the other two nominees were grilled about current defense policy issues of which they haven’t really been responsible. It is not uncommon for congressional politicians to use hearings to question or express displeasure over executive policy issues.

As a significantly important position relating to DoD’s nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons programs and policy, it’s important to understand who’s filling this position and what agenda he is pursuing. What I’d like to do is to discuss Kadlec’s response to questions in testimony and then look at the “advance policy questions” that were attached to the SASC webpage. For the chem-bio defense analysts, this is the only place where you’ll get any information on where Kadlec may be taking the DoD CB Defense Program. But it’s not a lot of new information.

I’m not going to dwell too long on his background, which is summarized in his opening statement for the record. Of his 46 years of professional experience, 26 years were spent as an Air Force medical physician who supported counterterrorism operations, intelligence analysis, and counterproliferation policy. He taught at the National War College for a few years before moving into the OSD counterproliferation policy office just in time for the 9/11 attack. He retired as a colonel and became GW Bush’s Director for Biodefense Preparedness and Response in the Homeland Security Council for three years. He left to join the U.S. Senate as a senior staffer for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence for bioterrorism and public health issues. He danced back and forth from consulting firms to the Homeland Security Council before ending up at Health and Human Services as the Assistant Secretary of Preparedness and Response (ASPR). In this role, he played a principle role in working Operation Warp Speed and COVID-19 vaccination policies.

I note these points for two reasons - first to say, he’s a learned defense professional. He’s very familiar with military policy, with how Congress works, and with how the White House develops and executes policy. You can agree or disagree with how he handled the COVID-19 pandemic - and he did have some baggage - he understands how the Beltway works. Second, one can see from his background that he’s a biodefense guy. He has no nuclear deterrence in his background, he has no papers or open discussion on nuclear modernization up to this summer, when he was working senators for this job position. Not saying that he can’t learn, because he is a capable and smart player. Nuclear deterrence and modernization aren’t rocket sciences.² As a counter-WMD specialist, I’m certainly not a nuclear deterrence expert, but I can study and talk to the issues after 11 years of observing the DoD nuclear enterprise and teaching non-nuclear Airmen on deterrence basics.

Kadlec identified four priorities in his statements. None of them really address chemical and biological defense or other non-nuclear parts of his future portfolio.

• Maintain and sustain the current nuclear Triad³

• Modernize our nuclear command and control (NC3)

• Accelerate the development and deployment of the Sentinel ICBM, B-21 bomber, Columbia class submarine, and other critical nuclear deterrent capabilities, as well as supporting modernization of NNSA’s nuclear enterprise

• Deploy credible capabilities to deter adversary biological weapons use⁴

During the hearing, Dr. Kadlec received questions from Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI), Sen. Deb Fischer (R-NE), and Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ). Here’s a quick summary.

• Reed started the questioning with his observation that “biological warfare has been underestimated as a potential [sic] going forward…” but ironically had no questions on that topic. He noted that the president had called for DoD to resume nuclear testing immediately, and whether this would be destabilizing. Kadlec sidestepped the question saying that Russia and China had questionable testing activities since 2019, so it’s fair game? But it’s “an important issue” because “some of these kinds of weapons” might be used tactically or operationally.

• Fischer followed up by focusing on nuclear modernization, which isn’t a surprise. She’s been a strong champion of STRATCOM for years and was instrumental in creating the new ASD(ND-CBD) to have “a clearer mission and greater authorities” on nuclear modernization and nuclear policy. She met with Kadlec in the summer. His impressions from the Strategic Posture Commission’s report were that China and Russia were “aligned against us,” that the problem required urgent attention, and their nuclear weapons represented an existential threat. “We need to accelerate the modernization of our programs of record” as well as developing long-range strike options, SLCM-N, and a resilient NC3 system.

• Kelly returned to the issue of nuclear testing to question the benefit of nuclear testing and the possibility of destabilizing relations with other nuclear-weapon states. Kadlec focused on generalities, saying that testing might be needed for identifying technical uncertainties of nuclear weapons or the capabilities of the nuclear enterprise, but these aren’t major issues. Rather, there could be a “geopolitical context” as to reasons to test, again going to the issue of possible Chinese and Russian testing. Kelly responded that certainly testing would enable China to develop more capable nuclear weapons, and this would be destabilizing. Kadlec refused to take the bait and claimed there were a number of things that were destabilizing, such as new Chinese and Russian nuclear weapons.

• Interestingly, although Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) had issues with Kadlec’s previous work as ASPR, she didn’t ask Kadlec any questions at this hearing but rather focused on the failure of U.S. aid to Gaza programs. In a letter, she argued that his past record in HHS “reveals that you lack the skills, character, and judgement necessary to serve effectively in a critical national security position.” That said, he’s still going to get the Senate confirmation.

Nothing really contentious in the questioning. He didn’t directly address the nuclear testing issue, but he’s reflecting the position of the administration and of course he’s not going to buck that. Nor did the senators really push hard other than to voice their opinions. I’ll say this much - again, Kadlec is not a nuclear guy by experience, but he understood the assignment and didn’t embarrass himself in his answers. Next, I’ll look at the advance questions for issues unrelated to nuclear weapons modernization and testing that are more germane to my past experience.⁵

• There’s a section on arms control, in which he voices support for the Trump administration’s desire to bring in China while moving forward on Russian nuclear arms control. Technically, his office is supposed to be more about DoD compliance and not negotiations, so really the responses to these questions mean nothing. OSD Policy’s DASD for Nuclear and CWMD Policy would be the more appropriate office to work this issue.⁶

• Relative to CBW agents, he believes that “chemical and biological agents pose an ongoing security threat to the United States and our partners” and that “technological and scientific advancements are lowering or eliminating barriers to those who wish to obtain or further develop advanced chemical or biological weapons.” Can’t go wrong with boilerplate language like that. Congress and OSD won’t increase funding to address this challenge though.

• The DoD CB Defense Program’s principal challenge is “further accelerating innovative defensive capability delivery to the Joint Force at speed and scale.” Pure Hegseth rhetoric. With Hegseth attempting to restructure defense acquisition, it will be a significant challenge to avoid the turmoil of radical changes and keep CB defense programs moving forward.

• He’s a fan of the Biodefense Posture Review, which was a truly horrible and ill-structured document. I won’t call it a strategic document, because it wasn’t strategic in nature and it didn’t improve anything. But as a medical guy, Kadlec has to support the general concept of improving DoD readiness against biothreats.

To his credit, he seems to be focusing on preparing for deliberate biological threats and not natural disease outbreaks.

“It is my understanding that the CBDP is responsible for delivering capabilities to the Joint Force to ensure it can deter or prevail against adversarial use of chemical and biological weapons. CBDP is not responsible for preparing for or responding to a naturally occurring pandemic, which falls to other parts of DoW and the U.S. Government, namely the Department of Health and Human Services. If confirmed, I will ensure that the CBDP remains focused on adversarial chemical and biological weapons while remaining ready to assist the Nation in other ways, if directed.” …

It is my understanding that the DoW’s role would be to protect the Joint Force and limit operational impacts during a pandemic, as well as play a supporting role to other departments and agencies of the federal government. If confirmed, I would work closely with the ASW for Health Affairs to ensure the Department is appropriately prioritizing Warfighter chemical-biological defense and force health protection needs.”

YES YES YES. Yes to all of this! Long overdue clarification to what the DoD CB Defense Program is supposed to do, and I look forward to this refocused effort. The proof will be in the tasting of the pudding, however. We’ll see how next year’s CBDP Budget looks like. The Cooperative Threat Reduction section, while short, is interesting in that he says that CTR needs to come into the Western Hemisphere and the U.S. southern border, where it’s never implemented been before. There are no nuclear or biological weapons in the Western Hemisphere that would fall under a “threat reduction” program. But when a former ASD changed the CTR to basically become a funding program for other nations’ public health programs, it stopped being a defense program for threat reduction. I still don’t know who would be the beneficiary of CTR funds. Mexico? Funding for a Latin American country that Trump likes? Who knows? Funding for this effort would come from pulling out of Eastern European CTR programs. Strange times.

The last major section is on “CBRNE” consequence management,⁷ specifically providing military support to civil authorities for their response to domestic CBRN incidents. There is no new information here, and this really isn’t his field anyway. Kadlec acknowledges the need to coordinate on domestic CBRN response issues with USNORTHCOM and ASD for Homeland Defense and Hemispheric Affairs and to procure gear for DoD forces involved in domestic CBRN response (the National Guard’s CBRN Response Force and USMC CBIRF in particular). He promises to continue to support the military components in their preparations for responding to any future domestic CBRN incidents. No real changes here.

There’s no doubt that Bob Kadlec will be confirmed, particularly with this Senate. Despite Sen. Warren’s objections, he’s not that objectionable and Trump probably likes him, which means he’s untouchable. I still don’t think that a biodefense person is the best qualified to be in this position - that includes past ASDs who also had this similar background - but he can’t screw it up with Soofer as his principal director. I’ll still say that Sen. Fischer’s “great idea” to put nuclear deterrence policy under the OSD acquisition is a really, really bad idea that contorts the usual practice of DoD policy. But that ship has sailed. On with the show.

1. Someone changed the title of the position without notifying the Senate, and the SASC chair was not amused.

2. Well, some of it is, obviously, but if you are a technical expert involved in debating nuclear modernization programs, then you’re probably not set up to be a policy analyst anyway.

3. This is like the Iowa corn ethanol pledge for presidential candidates. If you don’t say that you support the Triad, you don’t get nominated for this position.

4. I recognize that this concept alludes to developing enough capabilities so as to deter an adversary’s use of biological weapons, but I’ve said in the past and will remain on the point that “deterrence by denial” doesn’t work for deliberate biological threats. Also lacks the information “deter whom from what?” An attack on the United States? An attack on U.S. military forces? An attack on U.S. allies during a security crisis? It’s a poorly worded and generally unachievable strategic goal, but the medical community can’t help but use these kind of terms as rationale for getting more money into research and production of new medical biological countermeasures.

5. Let me say, if you are interested in his articulation on nuclear matters, please do read the document. There’s a lot of very specific nuclear discussion on multiple issues. I’m sure that Rob Soofer (acting principal director, ASD[ND-CBD]) and his staff wrote these answers.

6. Strangely enough Dr. Rob Soofer is listed as the DASD for Nuclear and CWMD Policy, which falls under OSD policy, as well as the acting PD for ASD(ND-CBD), which falls under OSD acquisition. But hey, I guess, why not put a government civilian in charge of two significant positions, it appears to be standard operation procedures for this administration.

7. I don’t like the term “CBRNE” consequence management used in relation to counter-WMD policy, because there is no “E” in WMD response. Other people do the “E” in consequence management, ideally the states and DHS.