The Senate this week approved a fiscal 2019 National Defense Authorization Act that would clear the way for the National Nuclear Security Administration to build one, and possibly more, low-yield nuclear warheads.
The bill also would prohibit the semi-autonomous Department of Energy agency from dismantling the unfinished Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility in South Carolina for at least a year, and require the Government Accountability Office to review the savings achieved by combining the management and operations contract for the Pantex nuclear weapons assembly plant and the Y-12 National Security Complex: DOE’s hub for national-defense uranium programs.
Additionally, the upper chamber’s National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) would repeal a provision of law that requires the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) to get permission from Congress to start developing new nuclear warheads, or modifying existing warheads.
Under current law, NNSA may only perform conceptual and feasibility studies for new or modified warheads without congressional authorization. Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee that wrote the 2019 NDAA, tried and failed to amend the bill to preserve Congress’ authority to authorize the start of new warhead development.
According to Reed, the 2019 NDAA the Senate just passed would allow NNSA to starting modifying an existing warhead, or developing a new one, simply by requesting funding to do so. After the agency makes a funding request, Reed said last week, “they can begin reprogramming funds that have already been appropriated to start moving forward with [warhead] development.”
After disposing of Reed’s amendment on procedural grounds, the Senate overwhelmingly approved the 2019 NDAA 85-10, setting the stage for a bicameral conference committee to produce a unified bill that could be signed into law by President Donald Trump. The House passed its 2019 NDAA in May. Congressional leaders had not scheduled the conference at deadline Friday for Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor.
Despite Reed’s attempt to maintain the current level of congressional warhead oversight, he ultimately voted in favor of the NDAA.
On the other hand, one of the Senate’s longest-serving members, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), was among the few “no” votes. The senior Senator from the Golden State said she opposed the bill because of the new low-yield warhead the measure authorizes, and because the bill removes Congress’ ability to check development of future warheads.
“While I support our troops and the many key provisions in the defense bill, I voted against it because of the dangerous provisions authorizing a new low-yield nuclear weapon and removing congressional oversight,” Feinstein wrote this week in a statement posted to her website.
The White House says the U.S. needs a low-yield warhead on a missile — which unlike current low-yield options would not have to be carried to a target by a potentially vulnerable aircraft — to prevent Russia from using similarly powerful warheads to win a conflict Moscow begins, but cannot win, with conventional weapons.
Feinstein, like other Democrats on the Hill, says the current U.S. arsenal is enough to deter Russia from going nuclear on any scale.
NNSA plans to create the low-yield, submarine-launched, ballistic missile warhead by modifying a number of existing W76 warheads now used on the Trident II D5 missiles carried aboard Ohio-class submarines.
Only a day after her “no” vote on the NDAA, Feinstein and Reed proposed a slightly different plan to keep new warhead developments under closer congressional scrutiny: an amendment to a 2019 DOE spending bill the Senate took up this week.
The proposal would forbid the agency from using its 2019 budget to begin development of warheads besides the low-yield W76 the Senate NDAA would authorize, unless Congress approves the development.
Even if the Feinstein-Reed amendment does pass — and Republicans have the votes in the Senate to defeat the measure without any Democratic help — the prohibition it proposes would expire in just a year because it applies only to 2019 funding.
Meanwhile, Feinstein said she would support the 2019 NNSA budget bill, despite the fact that it would actually fund the warhead that prompted her to oppose the NDAA.
All told, the Senate’s 2019 NDAA authorizes more than $15 billion in spending for active nuclear-weapons, nonproliferation, and nuclear-naval programs managed by NNSA.
