Problems with components are mostly responsible for the two-year delay to the warhead for the next nuclear-tipped air-launched cruise missile, the head of the National Nuclear Security Administration told lawmakers Wednesday.
There are “few components that are pacing the schedule” for the W80-4, Jill Hruby, administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) told the Senate Armed Services Committee during a hearing.
An NNSA spokesperson did not immediately reply Wednesday to a request for comment about the type, number and condition of the components Hruby testified about. The NNSA in 2022 acknowledged that a “handful” of components had delayed the first copy of the warhead by two years to fiscal year 2027.
On Wednesday, Hruby briefly summarized the nature of the changes the NNSA has made to keep W80-4 on the rails.
“[W]e have placed a priority on those [W80-4] components,” Hruby said. “We’ve increased the number of people, we’ve increased the way we track those programs to make sure that we don’t realize any risk.”
The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is preparing W80-4 for the Long Range Standoff weapon cruise missile. The NNSA expects to deliver the proof-of-concept version of the warhead, or first production unit, in fiscal year 2027 and says the weapon will still be ready for the Air Force to take delivery of a working cruise missile in 2030 or so.
The NNSA in 2022 said the W80-4 first-production date would slip by two years, from fiscal year 2025. The agency’s public explanation for the slip gradually shifted specifically to components after officials generally attributed it to COVID-19.
Of all the NNSA’s five ongoing nuclear-weapon modernization programs, only W80-4 was badly affected by the pandemic response, a senior NNSA official said in 2022. NNSA had forecast a W80-4 delay since 2021, initially attributing the slowdown to the pandemic.
