Organizing for Deterrence and Urgency with Drew Walter

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Organizing for Deterrence and Urgency with Drew Walter

When

May 8, 2026    
10:00 am – 11:00 am

Where

Details

Drew Walter, Acting Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of War for Nuclear Deterrence, Chemical, and Biological Defense, Policy and Programs will give an update on how the U.S. nuclear enterprise is getting after both longstanding and emerging deterrence challenges, including via recent and potential future organizational changes within the Office of the Secretary of War and the Nuclear Weapons Council. It will include reflections on how the Department of War is ensuring the safety, security, and effectiveness of the U.S. nuclear deterrent amid force modernization, aging infrastructure, and changing nuclear threats.

Speakers

Peter Huessy 

Host of Huessy Seminars, Mr. Peter Huessy is President of his own defense consulting firm, Geostrategic Analysis, founded in 1981, and through 2021, Director of Strategic Deterrent Studies at the Mitchell Institute on Aerospace Studies. He was the senior defense consultant at the National Defense University Foundation for 22 years. He was the National Security Fellow at the AFPC, and Senior Defense Consultant at the Air Force Association from 2011-2016.

Mr. Huessy has served as an expert defense and national security analyst for over 50 years, helping his clients cover congressional activities, arms control group efforts, nuclear armed states actions, and US administration nuclear related policy, budgets, and strategies, while monitoring budget and policy developments on nuclear deterrence, ICBM modernization, nuclear arms control, and overall nuclear modernization. He has also covered nuclear terrorism, counterterrorism, immigration, state-sponsored terrorism, missile defense, weapons of mass destruction, especially US-Israeli joint defense efforts, nuclear deterrence, arms control, proliferation, as well as tactical and strategic air, airlift, space and nuclear matters and such state and non-state actors as North Korea, China, Iran, Syria, Venezuela and Hezbollah, Hamas, and Al Qaeda. This also includes monitoring activities of think tanks, non-governmental organizations, and other US government departments, as well as projecting future actions of Congress in this area. His specialty is developing and implementing public policy campaigns to secure support for important national security objectives. And analyzing nuclear related technology and its impact on public policy, a study of which he prepared for the Aerospace Corporation in 2019.

 

Drew Walter

Mr. Drew Walter is the Acting Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of War for Nuclear Deterrence, Chemical, and Biological Defense Policy and Programs. He serves as a principal advisor to senior Department leadership on nuclear weapons and energy, CBRN defense, chemical demilitarization, and treaty management, and oversees offices responsible for nuclear deterrence, counter‑WMD policy, and the Defense Threat Reduction Agency.
Previously, Mr. Walter served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of War for Nuclear Matters and as a Senior Advisor supporting nuclear deterrent modernization and sustainment efforts. Before joining the Department in 2018, he worked on nuclear deterrence and nonproliferation policy as a professional staff member of the U.S. House Armed Services Committee and began his career at Sandia National Laboratories. He holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mechanical engineering from the Rochester Institute of Technology.

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