Development of the nuclear warhead for the Air Force’s next cruise missile so far is not affected by the early parallel development of a sea-launched variant of the warhead for the Navy, the commander of the eighth Air Force said Wednesday.
“I have not heard anything like that at all,” Major General Jason Armagost, commander of the eighth Air Force and the Joint-Global Strike Operations Center, told the Exchange Monitor at a virtual forum hosted by the Washington-based non-government group, the Advanced Nuclear Weapons Alliance Deterrence Center.
“I’ve heard that everything with regards to LRSO [Long Range Standoff weapon], or the next cruise missile to replace the AGM-86, is going well and is on time,” Armagost said.
The Raytheon-made LRSO will replace the AGM-86 air-launched cruise missile developed by Boeing. The LRSO would be tipped with the W80-4, a refurbished version of the AGM-86’s W80-1. The National Nuclear Security Administration’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is handling the modernization of the warhead.
Congress has also ordered that a sea-launched nuclear cruise missile (SLCM-N) be developed by the navy and use a W80-4 variant.
In congressional testimony earlier this year, Jill Hruby, administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration, said the agency needed $70 million in funding for the sea-launched W80-4.
However, Hruby also testified this year that the agency would look into alternatives to the W80-4 that might “be simpler to do without disrupting our current production flow.”
