OMAHA — Uploading land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles would not push the National Nuclear Security Administration past its limits, the head of the U.S. Strategic Command told the Exchange Monitor here Tuesday.
“We’ve been actually studying that for a couple of years now to see if that is something that would actually perturb what the NNSA has to do moving forward,” Gen. Anthony Cotton, commander of United States Strategic Command, said about the Air Force component that studies uploading land based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM). Cotton’s remarks came at a media roundtable at the 2024 U.S. Strategic Command Deterrence Symposium this week in Omaha, Neb. “And currently, we’re not seeing anything that would drive that,” he added, implying that uploading would not overextend the NNSA.
Cotton also reiterated what he thinks the NNSA is capable of with the “program of record,” or the long-term plan for modernization of nuclear weapons, as well as for the future of modernization. He expanded upon an earlier comment he made to the Monitor in February that 30 plutonium pits a year by 2028 sufficiently meets military needs.
“Based off the timelines we’re seeing in the modernization of our weapons systems, it does,” Cotton said, before adding, “that’s not to say that I’m satisfied with 30 pits a year.”
The plutonium pits at both Los Alamos National Laboratory and Savannah River Site are used as nuclear weapon cores for the W87-1 warhead for the Sentinel missiles Northrop Grumman is building to replace the current Minuteman III fleet some time after 2030, as well as the W93 warhead for the Navy’s submarine-launched ballistic missile.
Cotton then explained that NNSA must flow into modernized systems, and that 80 pits annually will eventually be required, but that NNSA should start with meeting the 30 pits a year before thinking forward.
“NNSA is going to have to continue to build out to meet our initial requirements of having 80 pits a year… available for us,” Cotton concluded.
In answer to a similar question about reshaping the nuclear arsenal to deter adversaries, Cotton mentioned that the “program of record” for weapons must be achieved to ensure that capabilities are met with the systems already in place with aims to smooth the transition to the emerging environment. While he said the system in place is “efficient, it’s safe, it’s credible,” he also said it is “old, and we need to modernize those three legs of the triad” to deter not one, but multiple adversaries.