ARLINGTON, Va. —The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) in January completed its first low-yield, submarine-launched ballistic-missile warhead, which now awaits a final design review in Texas before the agency can ship it to the Navy, an agency official said here Tuesday.
The NNSA assembled the first W76-2 warhead, a modified version of the recently refurbished W76-1, at the Pantex Plant in Amarillo, Texas, in January, John Evans, NNSA acting assistant deputy administrator for stockpile management, said in a question-and-answer session at the ExchangeMonitor’s annual Nuclear Deterrence Summit.
The weapon now requires a final review before the NNSA can declare it an official “first production unit.” After that review, slated for February, the agency can begin preparations to send the weapon to the Navy. Like the much higher-yield W76-1, the W72-2 will fit on Trident II-D5 missiles carried aboard Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines.
In January, when it acknowledged it had started building the first W76-2, the NNSA said it would start delivering low-yield warheads to the Navy by Sept. 30. The DOE branch has not said exactly how many W76-1 missiles will be converted into the W76-2, only that it is a “small number.” How long it takes to get the first W76-2 to a submarine will depend on the Navy, Evans said.
“We will produce that and then they [the Navy] will have to accept them and work with their schedulers to deliver the final product,” he said.
The Donald Trump administration called for a low-yield warhead in February 2018 in the latest U.S. Nuclear Posture Review. The administration claims the United States needs the warhead to dissuade Russia from using a similarly powerful nuclear weapon to win a war it starts, but cannot finish, with conventional weapons.
Opponents of the low-yield warhead, including new House Armed Services Committee Chairman Adam Smith (D-Wash.), say it should be banned because any nuclear attack — including a low-yield one — will inevitably escalate into an arsenal-emptying, civilization-ending nuclear exchange. Smith is a co-sponsor on an all-Democrat bill to ban the low-yield warhead.
Evans said the Department of the Defense requires the NNSA to finish work on the W76-2 warhead in fiscal 2024.
“The military requirement is for us to complete by 2024,” Evans said in response to an audience question. If “we complete early, so much the better. We will not be late. Once we start, we’re going to ramp up activities and complete as soon as we can.”
Congress approved $65 million for the weapon in the current fiscal 2019, as the White House requested. The NNSA last year thought it would need another $60 million for the W76-2 in fiscal 2020, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said in an appropriations markup hearing in April 2018.
The 2018 Nuclear Posture Review that hatched the W76-2 also called for researching a nuclear-tipped, sea-launched cruise missile. The NNSA plans to request funding for that study in its fiscal 2020 budget, according to the 2019 Stockpile Stewardship and Management Plan the agency released late last year.
The Trump administration plans to release at least an outline of its 2020 budget request in March, Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor’s affiliate publication Defense Daily has reported.
