The annual defense appropriations process was set to begin in earnest Tuesday, when the House Armed Services Committee planned to reveal early details of its plans for the civilian nuclear weapons complex in 2023.
The strategic forces subcommittee was set to unveil the text of its portion of the annual National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) on Tuesday, ahead of a scheduled subcommittee markup Wednesday.
The subcommittee’s portion of the annual bill, which sets policy and spending limits for defense programs including those at the Department of Energy, often includes congressional direction about specific nuclear weapons programs but usually does not include proposed funding limits. Those typically show up later, just before the full committee marks up the complete NDAA.
The full committee markup of the consolidated bill was scheduled for June 22.
So far, the biggest changes the Joe Biden administration has proposed for the ongoing, 30-year modernization of the U.S. nuclear arsenal that began in 2016 was to cancel a nuclear-tipped, sea-launched cruise missile (SLCM-N) and end life-support efforts for the megaton-capable B83 gravity bomb. The Donald Trump administration added both programs to the modernization regime in 2018, with its nuclear posture review.
The Biden nuclear posture review, which as of Monday was yet to be published in an unclassified form, calls for canceling SLCM-N and putting B83 back on track for retirement, as the Barack Obama administration intended when it kicked off the current modernization.
Republicans in Congress, citing public testimony of senior military officers this year who prefer to keep SLCM-N and B83 on the table, have pledged to fight the administration’s decision to cancel the weapons.
Democrats, who still cling to thin majorities in both chambers of Congress ahead of November’s midterm elections, have the votes to thwart Republican efforts to save the weapons. Last year, House Democrats leveraged their superior numbers to produce legislation that would have defunded both SLCM-N and B83, but the bans did not survive a bicameral conference committee that reinserted the weapons into compromise legislation that ultimately became law.
Meanwhile, DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration is authorized and funded to work on SLCM-N, which will use a variant of the W80-4 warhead, and B83 through Sept. 30.
