The nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile remains a cornerstone of U.S. national security policy. As a result of changes in arms control, arms reduction, and nonproliferation policies, the President and the Congress in 1993 directed that a science-based Stockpile Stewardship Program be developed to maintain the stockpile without nuclear testing. After the establishment of that program, DOE, in January 1996, created the Stockpile Life Extension Program. The purpose of this program is to develop a standardized approach for planning nuclear weapons refurbishment activities to enable the nuclear weapons complex to extend the operational lives of the weapons in the stockpile well beyond their original design lives. Within NNSA, the Office of Defense Programs is responsible for the stockpile. This responsibility encompasses many different tasks, including the manufacturing, maintenance, refurbishment, surveillance, and dismantlement of weapons in the stockpile; activities associated with the research, design, development, simulation, modeling, and nonnuclear testing of nuclear weapons; and the planning, assessment, and certification of the weapons’ safety and reliability. A national complex of nuclear weapons design laboratories and production facilities supports the Office of Defense Programs’ mission. This complex consists of three national laboratories that design nuclear weapons: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, and Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico and California. The complex also includes the Nevada test site and four production sites: the Pantex plant in Texas, the Y-12 plant in Tennessee, the Kansas City plant in Missouri, and the Savannah River site in South Carolina. NNSA refurbishes nuclear weapons according to a process called Phase 6.X, which was jointly developed with the Department of Defense. This process consists of the following elements: Phase 6.1, concept assessment. This phase consists of studies to provide planning guidance and to develop information so that a decision can be made on whether or not to proceed to a phase 6.2. Phase 6.2, feasibility study. This phase consists of developing design options and studying their feasibility. Phase 6.2A, design definition and cost study. This phase consists of completing definition of selected design option(s) from phase 6.2 through cost analysis. Phase 6.3, development engineering. This phase consists of conducting experiments, tests, and analyses to validate the design option and assess its potential for production. Phase 6.4, production engineering. This phase consists of making a strong commitment of resources to the production facilities to prepare for stockpile production. Phase 6.5, first production. This phase consists of producing a limited number of refurbished weapons and then disassembling and examining some of them for final qualification of the production process. Phase 6.6, full-scale production. This phase consists of ramping up to full-production rates at required levels. As of May 1, 2003, according to NNSA officials, four nuclear weapons were undergoing phase 6.X refurbishment activities. The W-80 warhead, the B-61 bomb, and the W-76 warhead are all in phase 6.3, development engineering, while the W-87 warhead is in phase 6.6, full-scale production. Prior to its budget submission for fiscal year 2001, the Office of Defense Programs divided the operating portion of the Weapons Activities account into two broad program activities—stockpile stewardship and stockpile management. Stockpile stewardship was defined as the set of activities needed to provide the physical and intellectual infrastructure required to meet the scientific and technical requirements of the (overall) Stockpile Stewardship Program. Stockpile management activities included DOE’s historical responsibilities for surveillance, maintenance, refurbishment, and dismantlement of the enduring stockpile. However, each category was dominated by a single large activity known as core stewardship and core management, which made it difficult to determine precisely where funds were being spent. For example, in the Office of Defense Programs’ budget submission for fiscal year 2000, core stewardship accounted for 48 percent of the stockpile stewardship activity’s budget request, while core management accounted for 73 percent of the stockpile management activity’s budget request. The lack of clarity associated with this broad structure caused concern both at DOE and in the Congress. In February 1999, the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Research, Development, and Simulation, who manages the stockpile stewardship activity, began to develop a new program activity structure to improve the planning process for his program and more closely integrate the program with the needs of the stockpile. The new structure was built around three new program activities—Campaigns, Directed Stockpile Work, and Readiness in Technical Base and Facilities. Campaigns are technically challenging, multiyear, multifunctional efforts conducted across the Office of Defense Programs’ laboratories, production plants, and the Nevada test site. They are designed to develop and maintain the critical capabilities needed to enable continued certification of the stockpile into the foreseeable future, without underground testing. Campaigns have milestones and specific end-dates or goals, effectively focusing research and development activities on clearly defined deliverables. Directed Stockpile Work includes the activities that directly support specific weapons in the stockpile. These activities include the current maintenance and day-to-day care of the stockpile, as well as planned life extensions. Readiness in Technical Base and Facilities includes the physical infrastructure and operational readiness required to conduct Campaign and Directed Stockpile Work activities at the production plants, laboratories, and the Nevada test site. This includes ensuring that the infrastructure and facilities are operational, safe, secure, compliant, and ready to operate. Within each of these three activities is a set of more detailed subactivities. For example, within the Campaigns activity are individual campaigns to study, among other things, the primary in a nuclear weapon or to develop a new capability to produce nuclear weapons pits. Similarly, the Directed Stockpile Work activity includes subactivities to conduct surveillance or produce components that need regular replacement within nuclear weapons. Finally, the Readiness in Technical Base and Facilities activity includes subactivities to capture the costs for the operation of its facilities. In submitting its new program activity structure to the Office of the Chief Financial Officer for review and approval for use in the budget submission for fiscal year 2001, the Office of Defense Programs believed that the new structure would, among other things, better reflect its current and future missions; focus budget justification on major program thrusts; and improve the linkage between planning, budgeting, and performance evaluation. Budget requests developed since fiscal year 2001 have been presented using the Campaigns, Directed Stockpile Work, and Readiness in Technical Base and Facilities activity structure. Within the Office of Defense Programs, two organizations share the responsibility for overall weapons refurbishment management. Those organizations are the Office of the Assistant Deputy Administrator for Research, Development, and Simulation and the Office of the Assistant Deputy Administrator for Military Application and Stockpile Operations. The first office directs funding to the laboratories for research and development, while the second office directs funding for engineering development and production to the laboratories and production sites. According to NNSA’s Life Extension Program Management Plan, both organizations also share responsibilities. Both oversee life extension program execution; ensure that the life extension program baseline, if successfully accomplished, will meet customer requirements; and provide life extension program information to higher levels for review. The management plan also stipulates that each life extension shall have one program manager and one deputy program manager, with one being assigned from each of the two aforementioned organizations, and that these two individuals will share program management responsibilities. While NNSA’s fiscal year 2003 budget request did not provide a clear picture of all activity necessary to complete the Stockpile Life Extension Program, NNSA has begun to take action to produce a more comprehensive and reliable picture of the program for fiscal year 2004 and beyond. With respect to fiscal year 2003, NNSA did not develop a comprehensive Stockpile Life Extension Program budget because historically it has developed its budget by broad function—such as research and development—rather than by individual weapon system or program activity such as the Stockpile Life Extension Program. NNSA provided the Congress with supplementary information in its fiscal year 2003 budget request that attempted to capture the budget for the Stockpile Life Extension Program; however, this information was not comprehensive because it did not include the budget for activities necessary to successfully complete the life extension efforts. For example, the budget for high explosives work needed to support three life extension efforts was shown in a different portion of NNSA’s budget request. Recently NNSA has decided, after forming a task force to study the issue, to budget and manage by weapon system beginning with its fiscal year 2004 budget request, with this transition officially taking place with congressional approval of the fiscal year 2005 budget request. As a result, NNSA’s fiscal year 2004 budget request was more comprehensive because it attributed a larger portion of the Defense Programs’ budget to the life extension program. NNSA’s fiscal year 2003 and 2004 budget requests were also not reliable because the data used to develop them had not been formally reviewed—through a process known as validation—as required by DOE directive. Instead, NNSA relied on more informal and less consistent analyses. NNSA officials have stated that a formal budget validation process would be reintroduced for the fiscal year 2005 budget cycle. NNSA’s congressional budget request for fiscal year 2003 did not contain a comprehensive, reliable budget for the Stockpile Life Extension Program or the individual weapon systems undergoing refurbishment. NNSA developed its budget by broad function—such as Campaigns, Directed Stockpile Work, and Readiness in Technical Base and Facilities—rather than by individual weapon system or program activity such as the Stockpile Life Extension Program. While the Congress has accepted previous NNSA budget submissions as structured, it also has requested detailed information on NNSA’s stockpile life extension efforts.