The Department of Energy last week finished a final design review on a multibillion-dollar program to homogenize four versions of the existing B61 nuclear gravity bomb, the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration said.
“Production qualification activities at Pantex will begin in October 2018, which will enable Phase 6.5 First Production authorization in September 2019,” according to a Sept. 28 NNSA press release. “The program remains on track for First Production Unit in March 2020.”
The design review took place from Sept. 10-14 at the Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, N.M., during which a team of 12 reviewed three years of data and tests related to the B61 program, as well as the procedures to be followed at NNSA’s Pantex Plant in Amarillo, Texas, where the new version of the bomb will be assembled.
Versions of the B61, the oldest deployed weapon in the U.S. nuclear arsenal, have been deployed since the 1968, according to the Department of Energy. The nongovernmental Federation of American Scientists estimates there are about 500 B61 bombs in the U.S. arsenal, including all variants. It estimates 150 are deployed in Europe with U.S. allies.
The B61-12 life-extension program will homogenize four versions of the nuclear-armed gravity bomb into a single weapon, which would be carried by five different Air Force aircraft. It received nearly $790 million in the current federal budget and will get about $795 million for fiscal 2019, under an appropriations bill signed Sept. 21. The Federation of American Scientists estimates the NNSA will build some 480 B61-12 bombs.
In its 2018 Stockpile Stewardship and Management Plan, the agency estimated the B61-12 program will cost about $8.3 billion and take until fiscal 2025 to complete. That includes some $650 million in costs kept outside the B61-12 life extension program. The agency’s internal Cost Estimation and Program Evaluation office has said the program could cost a total of roughly $10 billion to complete by fiscal 2027, according to a May 31 GAO review.
The life-extension program began development and engineering in 2015, but the NNSA and the Pentagon had been studying an upgrade for the aged gravity bomb for years before that.
