Todd Jacobson
NS&D Monitor
2/14/2014
Recent surveillance work on the W78 and W88 warheads has revealed that the warheads can be sustained until 2030, allowing the National Nuclear Security Administration to delay work on an interoperable warhead, NNSA weapons program chief Don Cook said this week on the sidelines of the Sixth Annual Nuclear Deterrence Summit. Cook would not comment directly on the delay in the interoperable warhead program, which NS&D Monitor previously reported would be pushed back in favor of continuing work on the W76 and B61 refurbishments as well as a replacement for the air-launched cruise missile warhead. The main reason appears to be that an interoperable warhead that could be used on the ground-based W78 and sea-based W88 warheads is not needed as soon as previously believed. “They are aging, and we know the issues because we have a good surveillance program and there are always challenges in the budget to do the full amount of surveillance we would like to do,” Cook said. “We certainly have enough surveillance data, and we get it every year, we go through an annual cycle, to determine that we have confidence in those two systems, that we’ll have confidence for a bit of a longer period of time.”
Work is expected to continue through the end of the fiscal year on a feasibility study for the warhead. At that point, the health of the W78 and W88 will allow the agency to focus on other things. “The good news is that allows us to turn attention, real attention … in the case of the Navy to complete the W76 life extension program but in the case of the Air Force it’s the B61 and the cruise missile replacement, the warhead that needs the greatest attention. We’ll adjust our resources as they’re available, but there is not an impending crisis,” Cook said.
A Key Part of ‘3+2’
The W78/88 refurbishment is one of the key parts of the Obama Administration’s “3+2” strategy for maintaining the nation’s nuclear stockpile over the next few decades. But while the Administration has touted its potential to help hedge against technical problems in the stockpile and potentially save money, the Administration’s top priority has been getting the W76 refurbishment finished on time and maintaining support for the B61 refurbishment. Other warhead maintenance efforts have also moved in front of the program in priority, including the W88 alt 370 and cruise missile warhead life extension program. “If you look at the timeline for this program, it’s still way far out,” Stephen Young, a senior analyst with the Union of Concerned Scientists, said in December. “There is no pressing need to do this now. So it would certainly make sense in a tight budget time to postpone spending money now. What’s the rush? There is no warhead emergency. This is a proposed plan that some people like, and parts of it might make sense in the long-term, but in the current environment there’s no need to do it now.”
Navy Official: Study Needed
While the Air Force has pushed for the interoperable warhead, the Navy has been somewhat hesitant, and last year the Navy urged the Nuclear Weapons Council to add an option to its W78/W88 study that would focus on refurbishing just the W88 warhead to provide an off ramp in case the interoperable warhead proves to be too challenging, or too expensive. This week, Adm. Terry Benedict, the director of the Navy’s Strategic Systems Programs, reiterated his position that it was important to complete a study of the concept and get a clear idea of how much it might cost. “I’m a strong supporter, as is all of the Navy leadership, in understanding exactly what are the challenges and the risks associated with the IW [interoperable warhead] program and for that we are strong supporters of conducting the 6.2 phase effort where we get down into the technical details to understand where the challenges are,” Benedict said at the Nuclear Deterrence Summit. “Until we do that though I’m not certain we can blindly move forward or aggressively move forward on the IW program. I think we need to understand from a technical basis the challenges that type of an opportunity would have to meet in order to achieve the long-term positive aspects of it.”
Cook said the ongoing study is attempting to answer just how difficult the engineering and integration of the warhead in two different aeroshells. The Air Force will use a larger aeroshell, the Mark 21, while the Mark 5 currently carries the W88 warhead. The NNSA has said it will use a W87 pit in the interoperable warhead. “The key technical issue is an engineering issue,” Cook said. “It’s not an issue of will the warhead work. It’s not an issue of test pedigree. We’re not using a new explosive package. The question becomes do we have enough pits, when do we need to have the plutonium capability. All of those things we generally work.”
At the Nuclear Deterrence Summit, retired Air Force Gen. Larry Welch suggested that the delay to the program had a silver lining. “I think the delay is good news,” he said. “The delay is because the weapons we are concerned with are aging more gracefully than we feared and they don’t need to be replaced as soon.” Welch emphasized that it was important to complete the current study on the warhead. “We need to do the 6.2 work so that we have the answer to what does it take to get satisfactory performance in an adaptable warhead that is adapted to different aeroshells,” Welch said.
Project Faces Skeptical Congress
Congress has also raised questions about the effort, with appropriators on the House and Senate Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittees having also voiced concern about the approach. The FY 2014 omnibus appropriations act cut the Administration’s request for work on the project in half, providing $34.7 million of its $72.7 million request. Language in the bill, however, is carefully crafted to allow the agency to continue to pursue work on a standalone W78 refurbishment, if it chooses, and makes no mention of an interoperable warhead. “It could be simple and straight forward and a lot less expensive,” said one Congressional aide, who likened a potential simple W78 LEP to the refurbishment of the W76. “If they want to do that, they can pursue it.”
Previously, Senate appropriators directed the NNSA to not dismiss a separate life extension program on the W78, which it suggested could be cheaper, and like the W76 LEP, would not require significant design changes. “The Committee is concerned that an integrated warhead may be unnecessarily complex and expensive, increase uncertainty about certification and meeting the full range of military characteristics and stockpile-to-target sequences needed for submarine and intercontinental ballistic missile systems, and fail to address aging issues in a timely manner,” the Senate Appropriations Committee said in the report accompanying its version of the FY 2014 Energy and Water Appropriations Act. The appropriators also questioned the estimated $14 billion price tag for the effort. “Given NNSA’s poor cost estimating practices, the cost is likely to be much higher,” the Senate Appropriations Committee said.
