Democrats in the House and Senate on Tuesday unveiled legislative language that would ban research, development, manufacturing, and fielding of the planned low-yield, submarine-launched ballistic-missile warhead for which Congress and the White House approved $65 million in funding during the fiscal year that begins in 13 days.
Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) sponsored the House bill, with co-sponsors Reps. John Garamendi (D-Calif.), Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), and Adam Smith (D-Wash.). Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) sponsored the Senate bill, according to a Tuesday press release.
The legislation would specifically prohibit spending funds appropriated to the Departments of Energy and Defense in fiscal 2019 for work on the warhead. Both bills were referred to the chambers’ respective Armed Services committees. As of Friday, neither panel had scheduled hearings on the bills.
In its Nuclear Posture Review issued in February, the Donald Trump administration said the United States needs the low-yield warhead to check similarly powerful Russian weapons, which some in the administration fear Moscow might use to win a war it starts, but cannot finish, with conventional weapons.
Opponents of the warhead, including many congressional Democrats, say the existing U.S. arsenal is sufficient to deter the Kremlin from using a low-yield nuclear weapon on any battlefield. They say any use of any nuclear weapon could spiral into a full-scale, civilization-ending nuclear war.
“We already have a nuclear deterrent that is more than adequate to achieve our national security goals. Funding new, low-yield weapons would only draw us further into an unnecessary nuclear arms race and increase the risks of miscalculation,” Smith, ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee and an outspoken opponent of the planned warhead, said in a prepared statement Tuesday.
Nevertheless, a multiagency appropriations package signed into law Friday provides $65 million for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) to create the weapon by dialing back the yield of an unspecified number of existing W76 warheads. The warheads tip Trident II-D5 missiles carried aboard Ohio-class submarines.
In an appropriations subcommittee hearing in April, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said the NNSA expects the low-yield W76 will cost a total of $125 million or so to build over the course of the government’s 2019 and 2020 fiscal years.
Republicans have already mustered majority votes in favor of the low-yield W76 this year, generally voting as a party to support the warhead in appropriations and authorization debates throughout the summer. Unless Democrats win control of Congress in the November midterm elections, they would not be able to numerically overcome the already-recorded Republican support for the weapon.
Even if Democrats do take over in Congress, President Donald Trump ― whose administration asked to build the low-yield W76 in the first pace ― will be in office at least until January 2021.
The NNSA is in the final stages of refurbishing the W76 warhead and plans to use the same personnel and facilities employed for that life-extension program to create the low-yield W76. The W76 life-extension began in 1999 and is expected to cost roughly $4 billion in 2017 dollars, according to the NNSA’s 2018 Stockpile Stewardship and Management Plan. That excludes the direct costs of the low-yield warhead.
