The U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration should prioritize work on existing warheads, but also modify some of those warheads for new nuclear capabilities, according to a draft of President Donald Trump’s Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) that leaked Thursday.
Also, according to the leaked document, the agency should remain ready to resume explosive nuclear tests, and develop a road map to rightsize the U.S. weapons complex for a more aggressive nuclear stance.
These and many other policy prescriptions were spelled out an unclassified draft of the NPR leaked Thursday by Ashley Feinberg, senior reporter at HuffPost. The document is dated “January 18.”
hello here is the 64-page draft of trump’s nuclear posture review coming out next month https://t.co/EQ8AoNZBKy pic.twitter.com/NWZHPMQBHS
— Ashley Feinberg (@ashleyfeinberg) January 12, 2018
Trump ordered the Pentagon, in cooperation with the Department of Energy’s (DOE) semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), to start work on the review in January 2017, shortly after he took office.
The report places a premium on maintaining existing U.S. warheads rather than fast-tracking development of a refurbishment such as the interoperable warhead the Barack Obama administration proposed in 2013. That planned warhead, to be built mostly from old warhead parts for use on multiple missiles, would replace the W-78 that tips the Air Force’s intercontinental ballistic missiles, along with the W-88 on the Navy’s submarine-launched ballistic missiles.
Also according to the leaked draft, the NNSA would tweak existing warheads to “develop for deployment a low-yield SLBM [submarine launched ballistic missile] warhead to ensure a prompt response option that is able to penetrate adversary defenses.”
Creating a less-powerful submarine-launched missile “will help counter any mistaken perception of an exploitable ‘gap’ in U.S. regional deterrence capabilities,” the leaked draft reads.
The director of disarmament and threat reduction policy at the Washington-based Arms Control Association, which generally favors fewer nuclear weapons, on Friday questioned the rationale for less-powerful nukes.
In general, call for more limited nuclear options is a solution in search of a problem. No evidence more usable nukes necessary/wld enhance deterrence. Not effective counter to possible Russia limited attack. Plays into Moscow’s hands. Costly. Divisive.
— Kingston Reif (@KingstonAReif) January 12, 2018
The report also says the “NNSA will maintain the capability to resume underground nuclear explosive testing if called upon to do so,” and that the U.S. “will not seek Senate ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.” However, the U.S. will continue to observe a testing moratorium established in 1992 in reciprocation to a unilateral test ban by the Soviet Union.
Meanwhile, the draft report generally called for more spending on the NNSA’s nuclear weapons complex.
“Over the past several decades, the U.S. nuclear weapons infrastructure has suffered the effects of aging and underfunding,” the report reads. “There is now no margin for further delay in recapitalizing the physical infrastructure needed to produce strategic materials and components for U.S. nuclear weapons.”
To that end, the draft report made several recommendations for the NNSA. These include:
- Developing “the enduring capability and capacity to produce plutonium pits at a rate of no fewer than 80 pits per year by 2030.” That ups expectations for the NNSA, which previously said it aimed to produce 50 to 80 of the nuclear-warhead cores per year by 2030 at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.
In 2017, Los Alamos’ pit production plant reopened after a three-year safety pause and produced only two demonstration pits — proof of concept items that will not be deployed in the nuclear arsenal. Recently, the agency has considered relocating pit production to the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C.
- Fully funding the Uranium Processing Facility to “ensure availability of sufficient low-enriched uranium to meet military requirements.”
Bechtel National is building the Uranium Processing Facility at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn. The NNSA has promised Congress the new plant will be done by 2025 and cost no more than $6.5 billion. More details are to be available in March, when the NNSA plans to set a cost and schedule baseline for the facility’s Main Process Building. That is according to the White House’s 2018 budget request.
- Developing “an NNSA roadmap that sizes production capacity to modernization and hedging requirements.”
The leaked review did not say when, or even if, the NNSA would published this road map.
The Department of Energy declined to comment on the leaked draft Friday. The Pentagon said it would not comment on the pre-decisional document.
Reif, with the Arms Control Association, said Congress is slated to be briefed on the latest Nuclear Posture Review next week. The report calls for “significant and sustained investments” in the NNSA, and on that point Congress and the administration already have something of an accord.
The Trump administration requested a billion-dollar year-over-year budget raise for the NNSA in fiscal 2018, to about $14 billion. The House and Senate, in 2018 budget bills drafted over the summer but never reconciled and signed into law, agreed to grant most of the requested increase.
Assuming the recommendations in the leaked draft remain unchanged in the final report — Feinberg said the official NPR would appear in February after Trump’s first State of the Union address — the ball will be in Congress’ court.
There, however, appropriations committees are still handicapped by the Budget Control Act of 2011, which prescribes harsh across-the-board funding cuts for defense and non-defense programs if Congress blows past certain spending caps.
Lifting those spending caps, at least temporarily, is something key lawmakers in the U.S. Senate are discussing as part of negotiations to finalize a 2018 budget and end the string of stopgap bills that have frozen federal funding at 2017 levels since Oct. 1. The current temporary spending measure runs out Jan. 19.
Trump’s State of the Union address is on the slate for Jan. 30.
