Cooperative Threat Reduction: DOD Needs More Reliable Data to Better Estimate the Cost and Schedule of the Shchuch'ye Facility

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Until destroyed, Russia's stockpile of chemical weapons remains a proliferation threat, vulnerable to theft and diversion. Since 1992, Congress has authorized the Department of Defense (DOD) to provide more than $1 billion for the Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) program to help the Russian Federation construct a chemical weapons destruction facility (CWDF) at Shchuch'ye to eliminate about 14 percent of its stockpile. Over the past several years, DOD has faced numerous challenges that have increased the estimated cost of the facility from about $750 million to more than $1 billion and delayed the facility's operation from 2006 until 2009. DOD has attributed the increase cost and schedule to a variety of factors. In this report, we (1) assess the facility's progress, schedule, and cost and (2) review the status of Russia's efforts to destroy all of its chemical weapons.