The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) should either delay by a year its promised delivery date for the proof-of-concept unit of the next-generation nuclear cruise-missile warhead, or justify why it won’t, according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO).
Citing congressional requirements and Pentagon schedule demands, the semiautonomous Department of Energy nuclear weapons agency promised to deliver the first production unit of the W80-4 in 2025 — even after the agency’s own schedule risk analysis for the program pointed to a 2026 delivery.
Therefore, GAO stated in the report, the NNSA should “adopt a W80-4 program [first production unit] delivery date based on the program’s schedule risk analysis, or document its justification for not doing so.”
A first production unit is the initial copy of a weapon made on the assembly line intended to mass produce it. NNSA personnel take the hardware apart and study it to prove both the design and the process are ready for mass production.
In its reply to GAO, the NNSA disagreed with office’s recommendations, citing what agency Administrator Lisa Gordon-Hagerty called “a fundamental difference in philosophy regarding the use of risk analysis.”
Essentially, Gordon-Hagerty wrote in her reply to the report, the risk analysis GAO studied is out of date and contains a significant amount of necessary guesswork about when the W80-4 would be ready.
“While the initial risk analysis clearly defines certain inherent risk areas to be managed, the probabilities are still highly speculative and not informed by mitigation strategies to be developed as part of on-going program planning,” Gordon-Hagerty wrote.
Among other things, the NNSA has said it can use additive manufacturing — sometimes called 3D-printing — to manufacture W80-4 components more quickly
So, with the wonky, broad-brush steadfastness that have marked her two-plus years leading the DOE branch, the administrator repeated that the joint Pentagon-DOE Nuclear Weapons Council — the interagency nuclear-weapons acquisition group — wants the warhead ready in fiscal 2025.
Gordon-Hagerty did say the “NNSA is committed to transparency” about the W80-4’s development cycle, and will update the GAO about the warhead’s cost and schedule in a baseline cost report due “early” in fiscal 2022, which begins Oct. 1, 2021.
W80-4 is the intended tip of the planned Long-Range Standoff Weapon cruise missile slated for deployment around 2030. It will be a refurb of the W80-1 now used on AGM-86b air-launched cruise missiles. Based on its classified Weapons Design and Cost Report report, the NNSA estimates W80-4 will cost about $11.2 billion from 2019 through 2031 to build all the W80-4 warheads needed for the new cruise missile. The Air Force plans to buy about 1,000 missiles.
