NNSA’S COOK CLARIFIES PLANS FOR THE W76

The refurbishment of the W76 warhead was another victim of the NNSA’s belt-tightening as the agency pledged to slow down work on the warhead to free up money for life extension work on another nuclear bomb, the B61. But NNSA Defense Programs chief Don Cook told NW&M Monitor on the sidelines of the Fourth Annual Nuclear Deterrence Summit that the decision to scale back the W76 refurbishment had been carefully planned to not impact the Navy’s operational requirements. He said that the NNSA would still meet all production requirements by the end of 2018, but it pushed back production of extra warheads—or a hedge force—until 2021. The exact number of W76 warheads being refurbished through the program is classified. “This will give us an ability to meet all operational requirements, build a hedge after that, and that was the flexibility we were willing to take,” Cook said.