Big nuclear weapons programs could be delayed if the government cannot agree on a 2022 budget and instead stretches last year’s budgets through the rest of the current fiscal year, the Air Force’s chief of staff said Wednesday in congressional testimony.
Gen. C.Q. Brown, the Air Force chief of staff, said the service could lose $3.5 billion in purchasing power under a full-year continuing resolution, delaying the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent intercontinental ballistic missile, the Long-Range Standoff weapon cruise missile and the B-21 bomber that eventually is will be the sole carrier vehicle for air-launched nuclear weapons.
“A year-long CR could irreversibly delay the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent initial operating capability passed 2029, Long-Range Standoff Weapon by over a year and the convention initial operational capability and nuclear certification of the B-21 up to a year. Additionally, advancement of our two hypersonic weapons could be prevented,” Brown said alongside other military leaders in a hearing of the House Appropriations defense subcommittee.
The Ground Based Strategic Deterrent, to be built by Northrop Grumman, will eventually replace the Boeing-built Minuteman III as the land-based leg of the U.S. nuclear arsenal. The new silo-based missiles will first be tipped by W87-0 warheads, provided by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and scheduled for a first test flight in December 2023. Later missiles will use W87-1 warheads from Livermore: new builds based on the existing W87, but with fresh cores, or pits, scheduled to be cast at the Los Alamos National Laboratory starting in 2026.
GBSD will cost more than $250 billion over its decades-long deployment, the Air Force has said. The service’s current plan is to procure some 400 of the missiles to replace the Minuteman III fleet one-for-one, plus more than 200 additional copies for testing and spares.
The Raytheon-designed Long Range Standoff Weapon will use W80-4 warheads, also to be provided by Livermore. It too would debut around 2030, the Air Force has said. Based on the weapon’s classified Weapons Design and Cost Report report, the NNSA estimates W80-4 will cost about $11.2 billion over the roughly 12 years running 2019 through 2031. The Air Force plans to buy about 1,000 Long Range Standoff Weapon missiles, the non-profit Federation of American Scientists estimates.
