For immediate release 29 December 2020

Permalink * Prior press releases

Exploding costs at U.S. warhead agency

DOE plan for producing, managing warheads focuses on inadequacies, headwinds in efforts to design and build multiple warheads simultaneously

Contact: Greg Mello, 505-265-1200 office, 505-577-8563 cell

Albuquerque, NM --The day after the President signed an appropriations bill providing unprecedented increases in nuclear warhead spending, the Department of Energy's (DOE's) National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) finally published the unclassified portion of its FY2021 Stockpile Stewardship and Management Plan (FY21 SSMP).

The FY21 SSMP is a partial update of the FY20 SSMP, containing new information regarding U.S. nuclear warhead --

• programs and projects, which have increased in number and scope since the previous edition,
• schedules, some of which are delayed, and
• budgets, which are now much higher.

The new plan appears many months after it could have helped inform congressional decisions and a full 17 months after the FY20 SSMP.

Timing aside, this SSMP is notable for its repeated emphasis on the challenges NNSA faces in successfully executing its increasingly-ambitious plans. Key challenges include:

• NNSA's aging and unsafe infrastructure, which is inadequate for the increased pace and scope of U.S. nuclear weapons programs.
  

One issue is safety. "Many key facilities...do not meet modern safety standards," (p. x). The implications of this statement are nowhere elaborated.

To address some of the most crucial infrastructure deficiencies, a "[t]imeline for key infrastructure and capability investments for future warheads," is presented, with some brand-new requirements ("dependencies") and the helpful annotation that "DOE/NNSA can meet DoD requirements on time only if all planned dependencies are in place" (p. 1-6).

As one knowledgable official put it to us this fall, NNSA's warhead modernization programs are "outstripping the infrastructure."

In NNSA's words,

"The current stockpile program of record represents a continued increase in scope, including restarting production operations that have been dormant for decades and increasing overall production rates of many components. DOE/NNSA is restoring capabilities and enhancing capacity at the production plants to address current stockpile needs and to prepare for future uncertainty." (p. 1-7, emphasis added)

• NNSA does not have the technologies it needs to develop, certify, and produce new nuclear weapon variants quickly and concurrently. NNSA's language:

"The nuclear weapons stockpile needs updated technologies that require investment in new processes, technologies, and tools to produce, qualify, and certify warheads in accordance with stringent and evolving stockpile specifications and requirements. The increased number of concurrent weapon system builds requires three things:

– Maturing new options with shortened development cycles
– Advancing the ability to predict weapon performance in configurations that were not tested underground
– Evaluating the impact of new materials and processes, the reuse of aging components in future systems, and enhancing production throughput." (pp. 1-7,8. emphasis added)

• NNSA does not have trustworthy supply chains "to protect against potential counterfeit and sabotage." (p. 1-8) The outsourcing model that was the basis for nonnuclear manufacturing infrastructure decisions in the first decade of this century has not been successful overall.

• NNSA does not have enough "high-quality individuals" to staff its programs. (p. 1-8). While  thousands of additional staff are being hired into a workforce now numbering over 50,000 persons, a considerable number are also retiring, or quitting. Voluntary separations are occuring most frequently in the age categories most important for passing on skills to a new generation (pp. 4-8). Over one-third of the workforce is now eligible for retirement (p. 4-6).

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has previously found that NNSA's present workload and schedule may be more than it can manage (see also more recently here).

The current warhead design and production schedule (p. 2-6) can be compared with last year's version and with the update provided in May 2020 to the GAO (slide 8). In the FY21 SSMP's new schedule, the W88 (Trident) warhead Alteration ("Alt") 370 and the B61-12 gravity bomb Life Extension Program (LEP) have both slipped since the FY20 SSMP was published, by one and two years respectively. Part of that slippage has occured since May of 2020.

This plan is the first to include the W93 warhead as a program of record. Development of this warhead was funded for the first time with the President's signature of the Consolidated Appropriations Act (H.R. 133) two days ago. This and other expected production schedules in the 2030s are now classified, but the W93 First Production Unit (FPU) schedule can be deduced from budget documents to be FY2032 --  two years earlier than was expected last year (slide 8) and according to reliable sources, four years earlier than was decided last December by the Nuclear Weapons Council. Advancing the W93 schedule to its present version provides an additional $1.853 billion in funding to the weapons laboratories over the FY21-25 period (pp. 111,116).

A "Future Strategic Land-Based Warhead (FSLW)" (an additional warhead, i.e. other than the W87-1, for the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent, GBSD, "enabling replacement of the W87"), a "Future Strategic Sea-Based Warhead (FSSW)" to replace the W88, a "Future Air-Delivered Warhead (FAW)," and (another) "Submarine-Launched Warhead" to replace the W76-1 and its W76-2 low-yield variant are notionally indicated for the 2030-2045 period (p. 2-6).

NNSA's infrastructure is described as a "$121 billion enterprise" (p. 4-2) that is in need of dramatic reinvestment. Some 15 major line-item construction projects are underway, with 10 more under review. An additional 61 line-item projects are proposed for the next 25 years (pp. 4-3 through 4-5). NNSA's hidden reliance on DOE Environmental Management (EM) facilities and activities is never mentioned.

Perhaps the most striking change -- the signature element -- in this new report is the dramatic increase in the 25-year long-term budget estimate for NNSA Weapons Activities. Spot comparisons of total annual expected costs in 2026 and 2044 (p. 5-39 in this report) with estimates for the same years in the FY20 SSMP (p. 8-45) return a 29% increase in each case. NNSA's entire estimated cost curve for the coming 25 years has apparently risen by roughly that much -- 29% -- in a single year, more or less tracking the 23% increase in Weapons Activities annual spending from FY20 to FY21 ($15.35 billion enacted this past weekend vs. $12.47 enacted billion last year; see here and p. 7 here).

In 2019, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) found that NNSA's projected 10-year Weapons Activities costs had risen 25% since its prior report just two years before (p. 7). The present increases are on top of those observed by CBO in 2019.

They are also double the observed 12+% per year real increase in costs for NNSA Weapons Activities in the 8 years since 2013 (see first chart, here).

NNSA's costs are currently about triple what the U.S. paid for comparable activities during the Cold War, when a much larger arsenal was being supported and many new warheads were being developed and produced.

Total 30-year nuclear weapons costs would exceed $2 trillion, if roughly $600 billion environmental liabilities are included (pp. 6-9), counting only the programs and projects in place in 2018.

Study Group director Greg Mello:

"NNSA's new stockpile management plan describes a dramatic increase in the scope and pace of nuclear weapons activities -- as well as the significant headwinds these expanded programs are facing. Significant delays and cost overruns are documented. Future fiascos are "cooked in" because of the mismatch between NNSA's grand aspirations, its aging infrastructure, and its inadequate workforce. Money alone cannot solve these problems, let alone with the arbitrarily-rushed schedule and with the expanded scope of operations NNSA and DoD are pursuing.

"NNSA's fundamental problem is that nuclear weapons are not solutions to any of the real challenges we face, and everybody knows this. It is hard to manage grotesquely obsolete programs.

"In the case of NNSA, its programs are designed mostly to benefit contractors, buttress political careers with nuclear pork, and satisfy the ideological narratives and commitments developed in the narrowest echo chambers of secret government. Programs for new nuclear weapons, which is exactly what NNSA is talking about in this report, do not solve actual problems in the national interest.

"NNSA has trouble recruiting and keeping new staff. Imagine a comparable agency devoted to providing every home, business, and community with locally-owned renewable energy and much more efficient energy use and transportation. Young people would flock to those kind of careers -- and at DOE job fairs, they have, though the number of openings is small. Not just thousands of jobs producing the latest doomsday weapons, but millions of solid careers building resilience and a fresh sense of hope and purpose in our communities are possible. The dollar cost of NNSA's nuclear weapons programs does not begin to count the true opportunity cost of these backward-looking programs.

"Our priorities are upside down. We need life-affirming, not death-oriented, DOE and related federal programs and we need them now, at scale.

"The marginal deterrence value of the nth nuclear weapon is zero. As the Joint Chiefs concluded in 2013, the U.S. could decrease the size of its arsenal by one-third without sacrificing any security whatsoever, under all conceivable scenarios. We would go much further, noting that our own arsenals, and the enormous conventional forces of NATO and other allies, are themselves the threat that sustains nearly all the world's nuclear weapons. NATO countries collectively spend more on their militaries than the entire rest of the world combined. We are the problem, and we hold the keys to solving it."

*****ENDS*****