In his Senate nomination hearing this week, Secretary of Defense designate Lloyd Austin, since approved for a floor vote in the upper chamber, would not commit outright to supporting the National Nuclear Security Administration’s plan to build two factories to produce new plutonium pits.
The Senate confirmed Biden to lead the Pentagon on Friday.
“Maintaining a credible, reliable, safe and sustainable nuclear capability is of utmost importance, of the highest importance. And so [pits] is a component of that,” Austin told Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), in Tuesday’s hearing, tacitly refusing the invitation by the senior U.S. Senator from New Mexico to firmly endorse what is currently a legal requirement to produce 30 plutonium pits a year at the Los Alamos National Laboratory by 2026.
The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) is also on the hook, by statute, to produce 80 pits a year by 2030, with production of the fissile warhead cores split between Los Alamos’ refurbished PF-4 Plutonium Facility and a planned factory at the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C., called the Savannah River Plutonium Processing Facility.
In his written answers to advance policy questions from Senators, Austin said that, “if confirmed, I will review the US nuclear modernization program as a high priority program, including the country’s capacity to produce plutonium pits and other stockpile components.”
Austin was similarly generic in his testimony during the most nuclear parts of Tuesday’s hearing, sometimes seeking to avoid confrontations with Senators who might have parochial interests in a nuclear weapons complex and arsenal that his boss, President Joe Biden, may seek to cut.
Biden, sworn in as President Wednesday, tapped Austin for the top Pentagon post in early December. The Senate approved Austin’s nomination Friday, along with a waiver allowing the recently retired general to serve as secretary, even though federal law prohibits commissioned officers from ascending to the civilian post until seven years after they last served.
Multiple times in his written answers, Austin generically promised to “review, early on, the US nuclear modernization program as a high priority program, including nuclear warhead programs.” He lumped into this statement the W80-4 and W87-1 warhead refurbishments: programs to retool warheads for next-generation cruise missiles and intercontinental ballistic missiles, and which at deadline were still about five years, at the earliest, from entering the NNSA’s production queue.
Congressional Democrats, particularly those most interested in shrinking the nuclear arsenal, are itching to see the incoming Biden administration write its own nuclear posture review. Lawmakers such as House Armed Services Chair Adam Smith (D-Wash.) believe such a review would provide leverage for altering either the nuclear arsenal as deployed, or the complex that furnishes it.
Austin also testified that he supported extending the New START nuclear arms-control treaty between the U.S. and Russia. Under the Donald Trump administration, Washington and Moscow failed to reach an accord on an extension.
The U.S. and Russian presidents can extend the treaty by five years, if they act by Feb. 5. The treaty limits the U.S. and Russia to 1,550 deployed strategic nuclear warheads on a total of no more than 700 fielded intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarines, and heavy bombers. The Biden administration said Thursday that it wanted a five-year extension.
