For immediate release 20 March 2019

Initial press release; update to follow when full budget request is released, reportedly this week

Trump requests a 12% increase in nuclear warhead spending, with wide variation between sites

• The budget request for warhead programs is 40% higher than the Cold War peak (1985); the emphasis then, and now, is on production.
• Obama-promised warheads will begin production this year and 2020 alongside Trump’s low-yield submarine warhead.
• The proposed steep increase continues an unprecedented budget run-up that began with Obama’s 2nd term.
• The request includes a roughly $30 billion program for a new-design MIRV-able ICBM warhead with brand-new plutonium cores (“pits”).
• Of interest in New Mexico: requested DOE spending in this state declines slightly – in Albuquerque, [perhaps] noticeably

Contact: Greg Mello, Los Alamos Study Group, 505-265-1200 office, 505-577-8563 cell

Permanent link * Previous press releases

Albuquerque, NM – For fiscal year (FY) 2020 the Trump Administration is proposing a 7th straight year of substantial increases in Department of Energy (DOE) nuclear warhead spending, with further annual increases (exact amounts not yet available) through 2024.

DOE’s semi-autonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) proposes to spend $12.409 billion (B) on nuclear warheads in FY2020, up $1.309 B (11.8%) from last year.

The Administration meanwhile proposes to cut overall DOE spending by $3.895 B or 10.9%.

NNSA programs (nuclear warheads, nuclear nonproliferation, and naval reactors) would rise from 43% to 52%, more than half, of all DOE spending. Warhead production has always been DOE’s largest program.

What FY2020 budget details are available as of this writing can be found in DOE’s FY2020 Budget Press Release & Fact Sheet, Budget in Brief, Laboratory Table, and State Table. Warhead schedules and estimated costs are available in NNSA’s successive Stockpile Stewardship and Management Plans (SSMPs), updated most recently in Oct 2018. Current and prior-year NNSA planning documents are here.

Cold War spending on nuclear weapons design, testing, and production peaked in FY1985 at $8.9 billion (B) (in 2019 dollars). This peak was not exceeded until 19 years later, in FY2004 ($9.1 B) and again in FY2005 ($9.0 B). Since FY2015 every year’s warhead spending has been higher than the Cold War peak, with each year greater than the last.

We will publish an updated historical chart when the budget request details are available, presumably by week's end.

The proposed NNSA budget concentrates more on warhead design, testing, and production and less on general stockpile science. For this reason and others, the funding changes proposed for NNSA’s major sites differ widely.

Multiple parallel warhead production programs are now active, as shown in the chart below from the FY19 SSMP. Some production lines are already running three shifts per day.

With the exception of the W76-2 low-yield Trident warhead and the Sea-Launched Cruise Missile (currently in the earliest stages, as indicated by the blank line in the chart below), all these warhead programs originated under President Obama.

Details of NNSA’s infrastructure renewal and new construction program must wait until issuance of the detailed budget.

For plutonium warhead core (“pit”) production, the “Section 3120” reports – some expected this month, others in April – will be revealing.

This proposed budget will obviously be modified by Congress in the months ahead.

Of local interest, the $249 million (M) cut proposed for the NNSA Albuquerque Complex, partly offset by a proposed $103 M increase in DOE spending at Sandia National Laboratories, could reasonably be expected to cause a two-thirds-to-one-percent decrement in the roughly $45 B Albuquerque area economy, unless offset by other DOE spending not as yet revealed. [This may be incorrect. The proposed spending cuts may be to national contracting, not local spending.]

Comments on the proposed W87-1 warhead (to take just one program of interest!)

The “W78 Replacement Warhead” in the chart above, formerly called “Interoperable Warhead 1” (IW1), is now called the “W87-1 Life Extension Program” (LEP). While serious policy objections can be and have been raised against the W76-2, B61-12, and W80-4 programs, the W87-1 merits close attention not only for its policy implications but also for its wide scope, tight schedule, great cost, and weak technical justifications.

Through 2040 the W87-1 is the only NNSA warhead which requires new pits. If pursued it will use all new parts and be deployed in a new-design reentry vehicle (the Mark 21A) on the proposed new Ground Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD) missiles.

Unlike the previous IW1, the W87-1 would not be deployed on any Navy systems. It is to be strictly an Air Force warhead.

NNSA estimates (p. 4-42) this warhead will cost up to $15.1 B, plus up to $4.4 B in DoD expenses (in then-year dollars), excluding any share of the costs associated with common NNSA capabilities (more than half the Weapons Activities budget) and also excluding the costs of the new pits and the facilities in which they are to be manufactured.

W87-1 production is the sole programmatic driver for the nearly impossible “2030” deadline for producing “80+” pits per year. In 2017, NNSA said “2033” was the earliest possible date. By now, add two years.

The Congressional Budget Office (CB) recently estimated (p. 5) NNSA needs to spend roughly $9 B by 2030 to supply that capacity. Attributing this $9 B to NNSA’s W87-1 high-end estimates, which we believe to be logical although NNSA does not, gives a total of $28.5 B.

There are about 540 W87 warheads. These are the only warheads using insensitive high explosives (IHE) certified for a reentry system. This is more than enough for all 450 (or for all 400 active) ICBM silos.

Deploying an all-W87 ICBM fleet would bring the safety benefits of IHE relatively quickly and cheaply – and without dependence on new pit factories which may or may not be functional by the required date.

Absent W87-1, NNSA’s production workload in the 2020s could be lightened, its workforce and infrastructure issues mitigated, and its budgets kept in check -- even without otherwise desirable stockpile policy changes.

The case for the W87-1 is so weak, and its costs and risks so great, that it is hard to avoid the conclusion that its high costs, production burdens, artificial urgency, and gratuitous belligerence are being seen as virtues.

The sole unique capability the W87-1/Mark 21A would provide (unlike the W87/Mark 12 but like the W78/Mark 12A which it would replace) is the ability to deploy an upload hedge of three multiple independent reentry vehicles (MIRV) warheads on each W87-1-assigned missile. With 200 out of 400 deployed ICBMs thus assigned, the number of deployed ICBMs warheads can, as at present, be doubled at will.

As for hedging against technical failure, the JASON advisory group has noted (p. 5) that in a “well-understood scenario" (which as far as we know describes the W87) multiple designs that meet the same requirements “provide little benefit over a single high-confidence design.”

Congress will need to decide whether the W87-1, or for that matter any MIRV capability, is wise, realistic, and worth the cost and risk.

At the same time Congress must evaluate the overall merit, scale, scope, design, and timing of the $85-140 B GBSD program as a whole – especially in relation to other national needs, which press far more than Congress is remotely close to admitting.

***ENDS***