U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis is scheduled to brief House lawmakers Tuesday on the Donald Trump administration’s Nuclear Posture Review: a policy document that proposes refurbishing Department of Energy nuclear infrastructure in part to develop a pair of new warheads for submarine-launched missiles.
Mattis is slated to appear alongside Gen. Paul Selva, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in a hearing of the House Armed Services Committee. Chairman Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) is set to gavel the session in at 10 a.m. Eastern time.
The Nuclear Posture Review will set U.S. nuclear deterrence policy for up to a decade. The official document released Friday calls for “recapitalizing the physical infrastructure needed to produce strategic materials and components for U.S. nuclear weapons”: a directive that was also part of a draft of the document that leaked to the press in early January.
The Energy Department’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration would need the infrastructure refurbishment to start work on a low-yield warhead for existing submarine-launched ballistic missiles: one of two new submarine-based weapons called for in the NPR. The new low-yield warhead would be built from existing weapon parts in the NNSA’s stockpile. The review calls for developing that weapon in the near term, and nuclear experts have speculated the warhead could be finished in a matter of years with the NNSA’s current infrastructure — if the agency and the Defense Department are willing to delay other weapon programs.
Under the continuing resolution funding the government through Feb. 8, the NNSA has a roughly $13 billion annualized budget. The Donald Trump administration sought a $1-billion increase for fiscal 2018, and Congress appeared willing to grant most of that before negotiations collapsed last year and forced a series of continuing resolutions that have now stretched out more than four months into the budget year.
The White House would still have to ask Congress for the funds required to carry out the programs described in the Nuclear Posture Review, and Congress would still have to approve the appropriations. The White House Office of Management and Budget has said it will release its 2019 budget request on Feb. 12.
