W80-4 ‘on schedule,’ first production in FY2027, LLNL official says

LIVERMORE, Ca. — The W80-4 warhead’s final design reviews are complete and its first production unit is still on track for fiscal year 2027, a senior official at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory official told the Exchange Monitor here Tuesday.

“We’re in a phase called production engineering,” Brad Wallin, Livermore’s deputy director for strategic deterrence, told the Monitor at a planned press tour of the Lawrence Livermore and Nevada National Security Site. “[T]hat means we have our design, and we’re working closely with production agencies to make sure that they can make the components for that warhead, initially the first one, but then also at rate production.”

The first production unit is a proof of concept article that is torn apart and scrutinized to ensure it meets military requirements and can be mass produced at the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) Pantex Plant in Texas.

The W80-4, a life-extension for the current W80-1 air-launched cruise missile warhead, will be used on the Air Force’s planned AGM-181 long range standoff cruise missile. The W80-1 now tips a variant of the AGM-86 Air-Launched Cruise Missile.

According to the NNSA’s stockpile stewardship and management plan for fiscal year 2025, which was released in early October, the W80-4 program would complete its final design reviews by fiscal year 2025, which begins Oct. 1.

“We’re right in the throes of working closely with production agencies to be able to do that, and we’re on schedule,” Wallin said.

Boeing’s B-52H will be the first aircraft to carry LRSO, which eventually will fly aboard the B-21 Raider bomber that Northrop Grumman is building.