Weapons of Mass Destruction

In response to the growing threat posed by the proliferation of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons, the Pentagon announced its Defense Counterproliferation Initiative in 1993. The Initiative calls for the development of offensive and defensive capabilities--to include equipping, training, and preparing U.S. forces, in coalition with the forces of friends and allies--to prevail over adversaries who are capable of deploying weapons of mass destruction. This report describes the Defense Department's (DOD) efforts to make the nuclear, biological, and chemical threat a matter of routine consideration within its organization, activities, and functions and identifies other steps that DOD can take to improve its implementation of the Initiative. GAO also examines the actions of the interagency Counterproliferation Program Review Committee to coordinate the research and development programs of DOD, the Department of Energy, and the U.S. intelligence community to identify and eliminate unnecessary duplication.

GAO noted that: (1) DOD is taking steps to make the nuclear, biological, and chemical threat a matter of routine consideration within its activities and functions, such as training and field exercises and the acquisition of weapon systems and equipment; (2) DOD has given greater emphasis to this threat in policy and planning documents, and the Joint Staff has made considerable effort to determine and prioritize the counterproliferation requirements of the unified commands; (3) the services have increased the importance placed on counterproliferation requirements in their acquisition programs, training, and doctrine; (4) regional unified commands have incorporated counterproliferation concepts, equipment, and tasks into their planning and military exercises; (5) while DOD has taken positive steps, it can do more to integrate and focus its response to the growing threat posed by the proliferation of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons; (6) DOD does not have an overarching joint counterproliferation doctrine document to provide a centralized picture of how DOD should respond in a nuclear, biological, and chemical environment across the spectrum of military operations; (7) such a document will help ensure that counterproliferation is being satisfactorily integrated in the entire body of joint doctrine; (8) DOD also has not taken sufficient action to provide reasonable assurance that its weapon systems and equipment can survive and operate in a biological and chemical environment; (9) studies indicate that DOD's organization structure may be too diffused to effectively manage and integrate DOD's counterproliferation mission; (10) DOD has not developed key strategy documents and management plans to aid in directing and managing its counterproliferation initiatives; (11) internal DOD reviews have identified the need for a comprehensive strategy for countering the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and a military strategy for integrating offensive and defensive capabilities; (12) there is also no management plan to guide, oversee, and integrate departmentwide initiatives; (13) DOD primarily coordinates its counterproliferation activities with DOE and the intelligence community through the Counterproliferation Program Review Committee; (14) DOD, DOE, and intelligence agency officials generally expressed satisfaction with the exchange of information that the Committee had provided about ongoing programs among the agencies; and (15) however, the Committee has taken little action to identify and eliminate undesirable redundancies among research and development programs.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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