The House of Representatives this week approved a fiscal 2020 minibus spending bill that would slow development of the next-generation, nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), bar deployment of a low-yield nuclear missile, and provide more money than sought to research the use of low-enriched uranium as fuel for the nuclear Navy.
The bill went through on an essentially party-line vote of 226-203, supported by all but seven voting Democrats and opposed by all Republicans. It fully funds almost all requests for nuclear modernization programs in the Department of Energy and the Department of Defense, but it would slow deployment of next-generation ICBM by limiting DOE funds to build their warheads and Pentagon funds to design the missiles.
The Senate had yet to write any appropriations bills at deadline Friday for Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor. However, the Senate Armed Services Committee has already authorized full for nuclear modernization programs in 2020 as part of the upper chamber’s annual National Defense Authorization Act. The Senate plans to debate that bill next week.
The House’s minibus bill, which funds DOE, the Pentagon, and other federal agencies, would limit 2020 spending on the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) W87-1 warhead program: the effort to make new copies of old warheads for use on new ICBMs the Defense Department wants to deploy starting around 2030. If the House bill becomes law, the NNSA would get $53 million, less than half the funding it seeks in 2020, for early work on the W87-1 warhead life-extension program.
The bill also would throttle back the NNSA’s plan to build the fissile cores of those warheads by providing less money than requested to build plutonium pit factories. It provides only about $410 million for the the agency’s Plutonium Sustainment account for 2020: around $300 million less than the agency requested to start designing and building new factories at the Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Savannah River Site to crank out plutonium pits for the W87-1 program starting in the middle of next decade.
The difference between the approved and requested plutonium funding is about 75% of what the NNSA sought to start designing the Savannah River Plutonium Processing Facility: a pit factory the agency wants to produce 50 warheads cores a year by 2030. The NNSA wants to build that facility from the remains of the the canceled Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility.
The 2018 Nuclear Posture Review called on NNSA to make 80 pits year by 2030. The Energy Department branch decided to make 30 a year starting in 2026 at Los Alamos, and 50 a year by 2030 at Savannah River.
The House is trying to tap the brakes on that effort. Besides the limiting funding in the minibus, the House’s version of the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act — which could hit the floor late next week or early the week after — directs NNSA to focus only on making 30 pits a year at Los Alamos by 2026.
For the Pentagon, the House minibus provides only about $460 million ofor the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent intercontinental ballistic missile itself. That is an increase over the 2019 budget, but 20% less than the $570 million the Defense Department requested.
During two days of floor debate, no lawmaker attempted to amend the minibus to provide either the plutonium funding the NNSA wanted or the ICBM funding the Pentagon requested. Boeing and Northrop Grumman are in the final year of a three-year competition to design the new solid-fueled Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent missiles.
One change to the NNSA portion of the bill amendment squeaked through on a party-line vote as part of a package of amendments: a directive to provide $5 million more for the agency’s Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation account to continue researching the use of low-enriched uranium as fuel for nuclear-powered warships and submarines. The amendment would leave the program with $25 million in funding for 2020.
Future Columbia-class ballistic missile submarines are already planning to use high-enriched uranium, as the legacy Ohio-class submarines do.
Also during floor debate, the House shot down one amendment that would have allowed the Navy to deploy the low-yield, submarine-launched W76-2 ballistic missile warhead, and another that would have prohibited the Pentagon from working on its proposed Long Range Standoff Weapon: the cruise missile planned to replace the 1980s-vintage Air Launched Cruise Missile in 2025.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal’s (D-Wash.) amendment to prohibit research in 2020 on the Long Range Standoff Weapon went down 289 to 138. About half of the majority’s caucus, 98 Democrats, joined all but one voting Republican — Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) — to defeat the Jayapal amendment.
Rep. Peter Visclosky (D-Ind.), chair of the House Appropriations defense subcommittee, said Jayapal’s proposal “goes too far.”
The minibus, which includes the requested $713 million for the new cruise missile and the requested $900 million for NNSA to modernize its W80 warhead, funds “a balanced policy” for nuclear weapons, Visclosky told Jayapal. The Indiana Democrat pointed to the bill’s provisions that constrain development of the next-generation ICBMs, and prohibit deployment of the proposed W76-2 submarine-launched, low-yield warhead.
With regard to the low-yield warhead, Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) offered an amendment written by Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) to provide some $19.5 million the Navy requested to deploy the weapon this year on Ohio-class ballistic-missile submarines. Democrats overwhelmingly banded together to defeat the pro-W76-2 amendment 236-192.
Three Democrats voted in favor of Cheney’s amendment to fund deployment of the low-yield warhead: Reps. Joe Cunningham (D-S.C.), Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) and Jeff Van Drew (D-N.J.). Three Republicans voted against the amendment, and therefore to keep the weapon out of submarines for at least a year: Reps. Justin Amash (R-Mich.), Warren Davidson (R-Ohio) and Massie.
The 2020 fiscal year begins Oct. 1. If the House, Senate and White House cannot agree on DOE and DOD budgets before then, those agencies, and the rest of the federal government, will either shut down, or receive a stop-gap appropriations bill called a continuing resolution that freezes budgets at the 2019 level.
Click here to view and download the Exchange Monitor’s NNSA budget tracker as a Google Sheet.
