Strategic Perspective on Nuclear Modernization with Dave Hoagland

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.

David Hoagland

David A. Hoagland serves as NNSA’s Acting Deputy Administrator for Defense Programs, with responsibility for maintaining the safety, security, and reliability of the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile.

Prior to his current role, Hoagland served as the Executive Principal Assistant Deputy Administrator for Defense Programs, coordinating efforts across eleven program offices and eight field sites to modernize the nuclear weapons enterprise.

As NNSA’s Deputy Associate Administrator for Counterterrorism and Counterproliferation (CTCP) and later Acting Associate Administrator for CTCP, Hoagland was responsible for countering the global threat of nuclear terrorism and nuclear proliferation and responding to nuclear incidents and accidents worldwide. He also held the position of NNSA’s Acting Associate Administrator for Defense Nuclear Security.

Hoagland previously served on the National Security Council (NSC) staff from 2014-2017 as the Director for Countering Nuclear Terrorism. In this role he was responsible for developing U.S. national security policy on matters ranging from nuclear terrorism to global nuclear proliferation and contributed to policy on South Asia and other regional nuclear issues. Hoagland led the development of Presidential Policy Directive-33, guiding whole-of-government efforts to detect and provide early warning of nuclear proliferation. He also led the implementation of policy governing the response to weapons of mass destruction terrorism in the United States and overseas.

Prior to serving at the NSC, Hoagland directed the Department of Energy’s specialized capabilities to search for, diagnose, stabilize, and render safe nuclear and radiological devices, overseeing technology development for the Department of Energy, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Department of Defense to counter nuclear terrorism and proliferation. Earlier in his career, Hoagland served as a Naval Special Warfare Officer, with deployments to the Middle East, Europe,