The Government Accountability Office said this week it has accepted a request from two senior Democrats in the House of Representatives to study the value of a new nuclear warhead that would be manufactured to fit onto both ICBMs and sea-launched ballistic missiles.
At issue is the National Nuclear Security Administration’s first “interoperable warhead,” or IW-1, which would replace the land-based W78 warhead and the sea-based W-88, according to a March 21 letter from Reps. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) and Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) to Comptroller General Gene Dodaro. The program is expected to cost $12 billion to $19 billion, with the first production unit pushed back about two years ago from fiscal 2025 to fiscal 2030, the lawmakers said.
IW-1 is the first of three planned interoperable nuclear explosive packages under the NNSA’s “3+2” strategy that would be loaded into both submarine-launched and intercontinental ballistic missiles. The agency says the strategy is intended to “rightsize” the national nuclear deterrent that now encompasses 12 warheads and bomb variants.
The money would be spent even as the semiautonomous Department of Energy agency carries out four separate nuclear warhead life-extension programs (the W76-1, W88 Alt 370, B61-12, and W80-4) and large-scale construction projects. While the letter did not specify those projects, the NNSA is building the Uranium Processing Facility at its Y-12 National Security Complex in Tennessee, which carries a price tag of up to $6.5 billion. The agency is also wrestling with a maintenance backlog that tops $3 billion.
The lawmakers said it was not clear how much has been spent on the program to date. The NNSA spends about $9 billion annually on weapons activities, the large majority of its annual funding of over $12 billion.
Smith, ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, “has been concerned about the cost of the estimated $1 trillion nuclear modernization effort, and the drain it is placing on the limited taxpayer dollars available for national security. He is interested in this program as part of that larger concern,” according to a spokesman for committee Democrats.
Beyond the cost, the Democrats also questioned the military need for the IW-1.
“We have questions … about whether the initial requirements and capabilities planned for IW-1 are well justified — particularly in light of recent improvements made to the W88 warhead — or whether there are alternative refurbishment options that could cost less and be performed more quickly to meet military requirements for US nuclear forces,” wrote Smith and Kaptur, ranking member of the House Appropriations energy subcommittee. “Moreover, the justification for the IW-1 has varied from a military requirement to a potential way to exercise design and production skills at the nuclear weapon laboratories.”
They asked for a GAO evaluation that would encompass at least four areas regarding the new warhead: the underlying requirements for and capabilities of the IW-1, and how those match up against the W78 and W88; the amount of consideration the NNSA has given to other options, such as refurbishing the existing warheads, and the expenses involved in each alternative; the impact that IW-1 or other options could have on agency research and development capabilities, infrastructure modernization, and other activities; and the implications of IW-1 and alternatives for warhead certification requirements and possibly resumption of explosive nuclear testing.
GAO spokesman Chuck Young said congressional auditors would first determine the methodology to be employed in the review and its scope. “Until that is complete, I can’t provide any estimated time frames,” he said by email.
The HASC spokesman said Smith has consulted on the issue with the NNSA, which said Friday it would fully support the GAO evaluation.
