Todd Jacobson
NS&D Monitor
3/6/2015
National Nuclear Security Administration officials defended the agency’s decision to accelerate work on the W80-4 warhead in questioning this week from Democrats and Republicans on the House Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee, making a case for additional funding for the warhead that will be used on the Air Force’s new Long-Range Standoff weapon. The Administration moved up the planned First Production Unit on the cruise missile warhead from 2025 to 2027 and requested $195 million for work on the warhead refurbishment in Fiscal Year 2016, up from $9.4 million in FY 2015.
The funding request not only represents a significant increase from FY 2015, it is nearly triple what has been requested for previous warhead refurbishment efforts during the same point in development, Subcommittee Chair Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho) said at a March 4 budget hearing. “Why is this effort so much more expensive than previous life extension programs?” Simpson said.
Funding for the cruise missile warhead is likely to be heavily scrutinized in the NNSA’s budget request. Because the President’s budget is well over Budget Control Act funding caps, the subcommittee will be forced to make tough choices, Simpson said. Budget caps are essentially the same as last year, Simpson said, suggesting that “every increase over last year’s amount will have to be offset by some other activity. With the magnitude of the defense needs we are facing, tough decisions must be made.”
NNSA Accelerating Funding of Technology Maturation
NNSA weapons program chief Don Cook said the large increase represented an effort to address technology readiness earlier in the refurbishment process and take a “more aggressive” start to the program with the First Production Unit moved up two years. “What we learned from the W76-1 and the B61-12 was we had funded the technology maturation too late,” Cook said. Cook also noted that the Government Accountability Office recently recommended the agency accelerate funding for technology maturation efforts.
The NNSA will move from the 6.1 phase of the warhead refurbishment (concept assessment) to the 6.2 phase (feasibility study and down select) in July, Cook told NS&D Monitor on the sidelines of the hearing. Most of the technology maturation work occurs in the 6.2 phase, which will take about two years, Cook said. When you do the technology maturation work early, “you get the Technology Readiness Level up, you make good decisions, the risk is already reduced, and now in making the final decisions on what to put in weapon systems, then the risk is at a very manageable level,” Cook said.
Cook also said accelerating work on the W80-4 would help level the workload at the NNSA’s labs and production plants and allow the agency to take advantage of common non-nuclear parts that will be used in the B61-12 as well as the new cruise missile warhead. NNSA Administrator Frank Klotz said an “issue” with the missile platform was also making it necessary to refurbish the warhead now. “We recognize the existing warhead is an older warhead,” Cook said. “There might be some modest risk in having a later date.”
STRATCOM Chief: Current ALCM Having ‘Reliability Problems’
There is more risk in the missile platform, Adm. Cecil Haney, the commander of U.S. Strategic Command, confirmed this week. Testifying at a Senate Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee hearing March 4, Haney said the air-launched cruise missile was having some “reliability problems” that necessitated an acceleration of the refurbishment program. “Our preference was always to start that program earlier. Budget realities wouldn’t allow us to do it last year. … There was very strong interest in trying to accelerate that program if we could find a way to do it and we did so,” said Frank Kendall, the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics.
After the hearing, Kendall said an ongoing review is underway to see if work on the warhead needs to be further moved up. “We’re seeing, I think it’s fair to say, more problems than we had anticipated,” he said.
Officials: LRSO, B61 Not Redundant
Responding to questions from Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.), Haney emphasized that the LRSO is needed to maintain the deterrence capabilities of the B-52 bomber, which is expected to last until the 2040s. “We need to have a reliable air-launched cruise missile, the LRSO we talk about today, in order to address … how countries are developing more and more anti-access and denial capabilities.” The LRSO will “give us further reach and make more complex their decision matrix associated with escalating their way out of a conflict,” Haney added.
Michael Elliott, the deputy director for strategic stability plans and policy directorate for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the aging B-52 is no longer able to penetrate more modern defense systems of other countries. Addressing questions about the redundancy of having a gravity bomb (the B61) and an air-launched cruise missile, which have been raised by some opponents of the LRSO, Elliott said the LRSO will extend the “usability” of the B52 in its “primary role in deterring attacks on the United States.” The B61 and LRSO are “equally important and serve a very different purpose in our plans,” Elliott said.
