WASHINGTON — Some new Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent intercontinental ballistic missiles might be deployed into silos with warheads from their predecessor, the Minuteman III, a senior National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) official said here Wednesday.
The fleet of next-generation missiles will use about a 50-50 mix of old W87-0 warheads, used on Minuteman III today, and planned W87-1 warheads, which will be based on the W87-0 design but feature brand new plutonium pits.
The NNSA plans to start casting new W87-1 pits in 2024 at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. The first war-ready version of the new warhead, called the first production unit, would notionally be ready in 2030, according to the agency’s Stockpile Stewardship and Management Plan.
But the W87-0 could be certified to tip the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD) in the mid- or late-2020s, Charles Verdon, NNSA deputy administrator for defense programs, told reporters here after a hearing of the House Appropriations energy and water subcommittee.
“The way it’s planned, it may be that we’re putting on 87-0s on first but then quickly rolling on the 87-1s,” Verdon said.
Certifying the old W87-0s on GBSD would involve flying non-nuclear dummy versions of the warhead on the new missile. The Air Force has said it will award the roughly $25 billion contract to build the solid-fueled GBSD missiles between July and September of this year, and Northrop Grumman looks alml but certain to get the work.
Early use of the W87-0 short-circuits a scenario in which the brand new GBSD missiles are ready to sink into silos before their planned warheads.
The NNSA faces tremendous pressure to begin opeating its planned complex for production of plutonium pits, the fissile cores to nuclear weapons. The 10 W87-1 pits a year planned at Los Alamos for 2024 will tax the laboratory’s personnel and infrastructure, even after planned upgrades — and those pits are only the beginning of the NNSA’s plans.
To outfit a deployed GBSD fleet of 400 ICBMs intended to operate into the 2080s (plus another 200 spares and test missiles) the NNSA plans to refurbish Los Alamos’ production capacity and build an all-new factory at the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C.
The NNSA expects the complex to cost $30 billion to build and operate for a few decades, and by 2030 to generate 80 pits each year. The requested 2021 budget for those factories is $1.4 billion, up from about $800 million for 2020.
