The Kansas City National Security Campus in March produced a proof-of-concept replacement fuse for an Air Force nuclear weapon, the Sandia National Laboratory said last week.
The Missouri site cranked out the first production unit for the Mark 21 Replacement Fuze, Sandia said in a press release. After this unit clears several more reviews, the fuse can begin mass production, which the Air Force in its 2025 budget request estimated will start by June 2025.
“The first production unit of the replacement fuze was approved through the NNSA’s rigorous Quality Assurance Inspection Procedure in March,” Sandia wrote in a press release. The Air Force in its 2025 budget request estimated the fuse’s first production unit would be ready in May.
The replacement fuse is designed to help detonate more precisely the W87 warheads carried now by Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles and to be carried next decade by Minuteman’s planned successor, Sentinel. The component will fit inside Mk21 reentry vehicles that will house W87 on both missiles.
In 2020, the Air Force said that cascading delays with other nuclear-weapon systems prompted the NNSA to backburner work on the replacement fuse, delaying planned Minuteman III test flights to support the fuse’s development and pushing mass production into fiscal year 2025.
