Hon. Fred S. Celec
Member of the Advisory Board

The Honorable Fred S. Celec was confirmed by the Senate as the Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Nuclear and Chemical and Biological Defense Programs (ATSD(NCB)) on July 24, 2008. In this position, he was the principal staff assistant and advisor to the Secretary of Defense and Deputy Secretary of Defense and the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics for all matters concerning the formulation of policy and plans for nuclear, chemical, and biological defense programs. As ATSD(NCB), Celec was also directly responsible to the Secretary and Deputy Secretary of Defense for matters associated with nuclear weapons safety and security, chemical weapons demilitarization, chemical and biological defense programs, and smoke and obscurants.

Prior to his appointment by then President Bush, Mr. Celec was part of the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA) staff working for the congressionally mandated Electro-Magnetic Pulse Commission. While at IDA he worked on a variety of tasks including the U.S. capability to exercise treaty monitoring rights under the Threshold Test Ban Treaty, the DOD’s Nuclear Weapons Physical Security Program to protect our nation’s nuclear weapons, and development of an Interagency Program to secure radiological and nuclear materials of potential threat to the U.S. worldwide.

Mr. Celec retired from government service in August 2003 as the Deputy Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Nuclear Matters with 18 years as a civil servant and 21 years in the Air Force. Mr. Celec originally joined the Office of the Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Nuclear and Chemical and Biological Defense Programs as the Deputy for Nuclear Matters in 1996. In this position he was responsible for overseeing all U.S. nuclear weapons and delivery programs. Among those were U.S. programs to recover lost or stolen nuclear weapons, improvised nuclear weapons, as well as security programs to prevent unauthorized use of U.S. nuclear weapons.

From 1985 until his move to the Pentagon, Mr. Celec was part of the Defense Nuclear Agency (DNA) (now Defense Threat Reduction Agency) staff and worked security issues associated with the NATO Senior Level Weapons Protection Group. He became Deputy Director for Operations at DNA in 1987, and was responsible for stockpile management, CINC Nuclear Support, the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, Verification Technology, Nuclear Weapon Accident Exercises, and the Department of Energy Science Based Stockpile Stewardship Program.

Mr. Celec has had assignments on the Air Staff working strategic force structure issues; at the State Department working both nuclear and chemical issues; and at SHAPE where he worked nuclear operations. He has also participated in almost two dozen underground nuclear tests.