The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) could be ready to perform an underground nuclear-explosive test in a matter of months, a Pentagon official said Tuesday.
“I’ve heard NNSA administrators and lab directors in the past talk about a very quick test with limited diagnostics, though certainly diagnostics, within months,” said Drew Walter, who is performing the duties of deputy assistant secretary of defense for nuclear matters. “A fuller test, fully diagnostic, and lots of data, all the bells and whistles, so to speak, might be measured in years. But ultimately, if the president directed because of a technical issue or a geopolitical issue, a system to go test, I think it would happen relatively rapidly.”
Walter also said that he believes the NNSA has a borehole at the Nevada National Security Site that would be suitable for such a rapid test.
Walter spoke to members of the press on a webcast hosted by the Washington-based nonprofits the Mitchell Institute and the Advanced Nuclear Weapons Alliance. It occurred just days after The Washington Post on Friday reported that the Donald Trump administration discussed a possible nuclear-explosive test in a May 15 meeting.
NNSA headquarters in Washington did not immediately reply to a request for comment on Tuesday.
The United States has observed a nuclear test moratorium since 1992, relying instead on subcritical plutonium experiments to verify that American nuclear weapons retain their designed destructive potency as they age. Some of these experiments are performed at the Nevada National Security Site, which is upgrading its underground U1a Complex to continue, and enhance, the subcritical regime into the latter half of the century.
Separately, Walter said the Defense Department continues its analysis of alternatives for a possible future nuclear-armed, sea-launched cruise missile. The “initial results” of that continuing analysis, in which the Pentagon will broadly outline the characteristics of the missile, should be finished “shortly,” he said.
The early results will feed into “discussions this fall” about how the proposed sea-launched nuke might fit into the Pentagon’s fiscal 2022 budget request, Walter said. The budget request is notionally due in February 2021.
