Air Force Gen. Anthony Cotton on Friday assumed command of the interagency forces that carry U.S. nuclear weapons.
Cotton, previously commander of Air Force Global Strike Command, took over from Admiral Charles Richard, who has led U.S. Strategic Command since November 2019. Richard will retire from active duty, Strategic Command said. The change of command was webcast.
Cotton had his confirmation hearing in September before the Senate Armed Services Committee and testified about what he said was a litany of supply chain problems plaguing the nuclear weapons enterprise.
The change swings command of the nuclear forces back to an Air Force force officer with a pair of air-delivered weapons a few years away from entering production at the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration.
NNSA’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Laboratory in California is working on both the W80-4 air-launched cruise missile warhead and the W87-0 silo-based intercontinental ballistic missile warhead.
The W80-4 first-production unit — a proof-of-concept article examined by experts to prove the design is ready for combat and mass manufacture — should be ready by September 2027, the NNSA has said. That’s a two-year delay compared with projections the agency had held to as recently as this year.
A non-explosive version of the W87-0, a retooled version of the current W87 warhead from the Air Force’s fleet of Boeing-built Minuteman III missiles, was scheduled for a December 2023 test flight aboard Minuteman III’s replacement, the Northrop Grumman-designed Sentinel missile. The other planned Sentinel warhead, 87-1, is a W87 variant intended to carry a freshly cast plutonium pit and was scheduled for a first production unit around 2030. Livermore is also in charge of that warhead.
