The House of Representatives on Thursday approved a compromise defense authorization bill that would allow the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) to build a new low-yield nuclear warhead in fiscal 2019, and the Senate could follow suit as soon as next week.
Shortly after the House approved the conference report for the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) by a vote of 359-54, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) received the bill and made a procedural motion that sets the stage for the upper chamber to approve the report next week. After that, President Donald Trump can sign the measure into law.
The bill overall authorizes more than $15 billion for the NNSA, including full funding for three nuclear-weapon life-extension programs and one major weapon-alteration program.
Besides authorizing the low-yield warhead, a modified version of the existing W76 warhead appropriators in both chambers have already agreed to fund, the 2019 NDAA would essentially maintain a legal requirement that Congress authorize any Department of Energy design work on new or modified nuclear warheads beyond cursory planning.
The unified bill shot down a Senate-backed proposal to increase the NNSA’s independence from the secretary of energy. NDAA conferees essentially punted on reforming the governance of the U.S. nuclear security enterprise, saying Congress should wait until 2020 — a presidential election year — to tackle the issue. The conferees noted they expect the federally funded National Academy of Sciences and National Academy of Public Administration to finish a study on NNSA governance in 2020.
Also not making the cut in the compromise bill was language from Sen. Lindsey Graham’s (R-S.C.) to prohibit the NNSA from closing or repurposing the unfinished Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility at the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C. The agency wants to turn the plutonium-disposal plant, years behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget, into a factory for fissile nuclear-warhead cores called plutonium pits. However, conferees authorized a $220 million 2019 appropriation, plus any funds “otherwise made available for such purposes for fiscal year 2019,” to continue building the plant.
The conference report also requires that the NNSA look into what would happen if the agency is not allowed to turn the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility into a pit plant.
Conferees ordered NNSA Administrator Lisa Gordon-Hagerty to prepare a report about whether the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico could could produce 80 plutonium pits a year by 2030, as the Trump administration ordered in February in the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review. The report would be due 180 days after the NDAA becomes law. Los Alamos is already on the hook to annually produce at least 30 of those pits by 2026; the remaining 50 a year would come from the reconfigured Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility, under the NNSA’s current, and unauthorized, plan.
In another directive to Gordon-Hagerty, the conference report would require the NNSA administrator “to submit to the congressional defense committees a proposal to conduct a survey, similar to the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey, of the employees of the NNSA laboratories and production plants.” The proposal would also be due 180 days after the 2019 NDAA becomes law.
Air Force Nuke Programs Take Flight in NDAA
The unified NDAA also picked up House language requiring the Pentagon to find some way of speeding up two of the Air Force’s main nuclear-weapon modernization the programs, which could hasten the first down-selects in the big missile initiatives.
The bill authorizes some $700 million for the Long-Range Standoff Weapon (LRSO), or 13 percent more than the White House requested. The extra $85 million authorized for fiscal 2019 would pay to speed up the program, according to the NDAA conference report.
The bill likewise authorizes more than requested for the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD) for the budget year beginning Oct. 1: $415 million. The 20 percent boost from the request, about a $70 million plus-up, would pay to accelerate the technology-maturation phase of the program to develop a new interncontinental ballistic missile, conferees wrote.
Exactly how to grease these nuclear modernization efforts would, if the NDAA becomes law, be determined by the undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment, in consultation with the secretary of the Air Force. The two would be on the hook for a report to Congress, due no later than 120 days after the NDAA is signed.
“For the GBSD, the [report] provision would require the plans, when executed, to recapitalize the full intercontinental ballistic missile system without phasing or splitting the program,” lawmakers wrote in the conference report. “For both programs, the provision would require the plans to assess the benefits, risks, feasibility, costs, and cost savings of various options for accelerating the programs.”
Lockheed Martin and Raytheon are maturing designs for the new air-launched LRSO cruise missile under four-and-a-half-year contracts awarded in 2017 and worth about $900 million each. The B-21 Raider bomber Northrop Grumman is developing could carry the LRSO, which would be tipped with W80 nuclear warheads owned by NNSA.
Boeing and Northrop Grumman are working on competing designs for new ICBM systems under GBSD. The three-year contracts are worth about $350 million and $330 million, respectively. The GBSD will replace legacy Minuteman III missiles, which are mostly armed with W78 nuclear warheads.
The Air Force plans to deploy GBSD and LRSO beginning in the late 2020s. The White House requested, and Congress is prepared to give, a big budget increase for the National Nuclear Security Administration’s W80-4 life extension program. The warhead refurbishment would get $655 million in fiscal 2019, almost a 65-percent increase from the 2018 appropriation. The White House wants the extra funding to make sure the warhead will be ready in time to fly aboard LRSO.
