At the same time, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), which directs this work through its contractors, has largely gone "dark" as regards public and congressional accountability. 

"Now," Mello says, "there is essentially nothing being released, not to the public and we believe in most cases not to Congress either. Almost none of what I recently heard first-hand from NNSA officials is being openly discussed. 

"The Trump Administration is taking the NNSA in a very hawkish direction. Everything nuclear is to be speeded up. New weapons are going to enter the design and production pipeline with zero public and congressional debate. Journalists need to pay close attention, because at least some information about these new programs and the way the agency is now being run is certain to come out this spring." 

His remarks came after attending the annual "Nuclear Deterrence Summit" (2026 NDS) organized by Exchange Monitor Publications over January 26-28, in Crystal City, VA. 

Mello, a nonprofit nuclear weapons expert and long-time lobbyist, has attended many of these "summits." This year, President Trump's appointees told the assembled contractors that the way the agency was now going to be run was "vastly different." 

These changes are proceeding in what is to us at the Study Group a frustrating absence of hard documentation. We have a more or less complete set of audio recordings, but there is little point in providing these to busy journalists. They are by and large a thin gruel, full of jargon -- but with important statements scattered throughout. 

Before getting to details, and with that prior and continuing lack of transparency as background, there were roughly seven key themes discussed at the 2026 NDS:

• A new nuclear weapons "production mindset" and the "culture change" required to make it possible are now central. The goal is to "go fast," by decreasing weapons design cycle time and increasing production rates for key parts such as plutonium warhead cores ("pits"). The overall time needed for design and development of new nuclear weapons is expected to fall by a factor of 2-3.

• To do this, rules about safety, security, fissile material accountability, personnel reliability, construction standards, and more have been and are being streamlined and in some cases -- notably the maximum radiation dose for workers at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in particular if not also complex-wide -- clearly loosened. Long-standing principles like ALARA ("as low as reasonably achievable," referring to radiation dose) are being set aside where possible under existing federal regulations. Those regulations may be changed as well. It is a rapidly-evolving situation. 

• Several kinds of new nuclear weapons are under conceptual development; two are being considered for approval right now by the interagency Nuclear Weapons Council. New nuclear weapons for specific applications may be made in small numbers to fill "deterrence gaps." Some are for hard and deeply buried targets; others are for novel reentry vehicle designs. 

• Geopolitically, the U.S., and NNSA, have "crossed the threshold into a new world," according to Administrator Brandon Williams. Potential war with China during this decade was mentioned by another senior NNSA executive, for which new nuclear weapons would be needed. (For what, exactly? This was not stated.) This is an entirely new tone. 

• Pit production was in trouble at LANL but is doing better now that 24/7 work was initiated last spring. Instead of a goal of "30" pits per year (ppy) as elucidated in LANL's 2018 pit assignment and in current statute, production of "100" ppy is now explicitly the goal -- should it prove possible. NNSA wants LANL to go into what Administrator Williams called "full production," not just as a "surge" but permanently, as another NNSA senior leader explained to me, which may require new environmental analysis. At the same time, the man who actually manages NNSA on a day-to-day basis, retired Admiral Scott Pappano, said the LANL pit production schedule was not "pressurized," allowing more time to install equipment to reach greater capacity. Plutonium work is to be off-loaded to other NNSA sites to increase LANL's production capacity. 

No one would say how many pits LANL has actually produced so far this year, after producing just one last year. The statutory requirement for this year is 30. LANL and NNSA said they hoped to reach that level of production only by 2028. Meanwhile, as noted above, all the NNSA sites may now be involved in helping LANL produce pits. This is a big change. It was impossible to tell to what degree this new plan was to bail out LANL's pit production program, or to help LANL reach higher production rates. Both, seemingly. 

• NNSA intends, and has begun, to use artificial intelligence (AI) extensively, in every aspect of its work across the entire warhead design and production process. LANL and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) both reported that they have increased the speed of warhead design computation by a factor of 20. 

• Finally, workforce challenges remain as the greatest barrier -- the greatest stated barrier, in any rate -- to achieving all this new efficiency.  

We wrote in more detail about NDS 2026 on Feb. 2 in Bulletin 373: "NNSA to leave 'life extension,' 'stewardship' paradigm to build new weapons; LANL pit aspirations triple; LANL rad exposure standards loosened fivefold."

Los Alamos Daily Post writer Marlene Wilden attended the 2026 NDS and wrote accurately about it. We commend her article to you ("At Nuclear Deterrence Summit, Lab Directors Frame Regulatory Reform As Key To Modernization," LA Daily Post, Feb 5, 2026.)

To reach a larger audience including LANL employees, we distilled some of what we learned in a double-page advertisement in the weekly Santa Fe Reporter ("Not Satire: 'Peace through Atomic Strength' is the nuclear mission now, Allowable radiation exposure at LANL increased 5x to speed plutonium “pit” production for new warheads; no more treaty constraints on nuclear forces," Feb 18, 2026)

***** 

*"The list of missing planning and budgeting documents is long," Mello continued. "At this rate, I don't see how Congress is going to be able to provide much if any oversight over U.S. warhead programs before passing funding bills for the next fiscal year."  We believe the following documents should be available to the public as soon as possible: 

• The annual NNSA Congressional Budget Request (CBR) for fiscal year 2027 (FY27). By law this was required by the first Monday in February (Feb. 2). Mello: "No one we speak to knows when this will be available. It is especially important because last year's CBR, contrary to law, did not include NNSA plans for spending in the four outyears (then: FY27, FY28, FY29, and FY30). "If NNSA was doing 5-year budget planning, it was hiding that planning from Congress." 

While it is has become "usual" for these budget requests to be delayed, and for Congress to subsequently fail to pass its funding bills by the end of the fiscal year, what this and other failures of transparency mean is that failure to adequately review agency plans by Congress has also become "normal." Mello: "Congress largely rubber-stamps warhead budgets. There is very little serious review." 

Of note, these CBRs contain "Project Data Sheets" for NNSA's biggest capital projects. These are nearly always incomplete, reflecting a lack of clear planning and making it difficult for Congress to assess the progress of what are often multi-billion-dollar projects. 

Note: In addition to being incomplete, last year's CBR was filed very late in the budget cycle ("White House proposes 29% increase in nuclear warhead development and production, largest since 1962," Jun 25, 2025). The 2025 Budget Reconciliation Act ("One Big Beautiful Bill Act," Public Law No. 119-21, which became law on July 4, 2025), added $4.8 billion (B) for NNSA in FY26 and $1.2 B for the outyears in mandatory spending (p. 2). See also p. 52 in the OBBBA). 

Further mandatory resources became available to NNSA's warhead programs in the waning days of the last Administration. The Disaster Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act (Public Law 118-158, p.23), provided an additional $1.884 B to Weapons Activities (WA), "to remain available until expended." These funds -- at the time, a 10% plus-up to WA -- were not referenced in the FY26 CBR. To what may be a unique degree among federal agencies, NNSA does not have to return unspent balances to the Treasury. 

For a taste of other ways in which NNSA was considered unique even in the relatively halcyon days of the Obama Administration, see "Structural Features Making NNSA an Unusual Federal Agency," memo for VP Biden, 2016"Structural Features Making NNSA an Unusual Federal Agency," memo for VP Biden, 2016.

• The annual Stockpile Stewardship and Management Plan (SSMP). The most recent one was released in September 2024. (Other past ones.)

• The Danley-requested study of plutonium warhead core ("pit") production ("Energy Department asks its Office of Enterprise Assessments  for 'special study' of pit production 'leadership and management'," Aug 19, 2025. DOE sources tell us this important internal review has been complete for months but is being tightly held.

• DOE's annual evaluations of its management and operating (M&O) contractors' performance. FY25 is still "MIA." (Past ones). We are sure these evaluations have long been complete. 

• The Final Site-Wide Environmental Impact Statement (SWEIS) for LANL. According to NNSA sources interviewed at the 2026 NDS, this document has long been complete and has been privately briefed to preferred stakeholders. ("Nuclear agency releases draft environmental impact statement for Los Alamos National Laboratory," Jan 9, 2025). 

• The Draft programmatic EIS for plutonium pit production. According to NNSA sources interviewed at the 2026 NDS, this document is also complete. ("Nuclear agency begins new environmental analysis of strategies to produce plutonium warhead cores ('pits')...," May 8, 2025).

This list could be extended much further into many other planning and project-specific documents which in many cases were once routinely made public.