The Reliable Replacement Warhead Program: Background and Current Developments
Congressional research reportJul 27, 2009
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The Reliable Replacement Warhead Program:
Background and Current Developments
Jonathan Medalia
Specialist in Nuclear Weapons Policy
July 27, 2009
Congressional Research Service
7-....
www.crs.gov
RL32929
CRS Report for Congress
Prepared for Members and Committees of Congress
The Reliable Replacement Warhead Program: Background and Current Developments
Summary
Most current U.S. nuclear warheads were built in the 1970s and 1980s and are being retained
longer than was planned. Yet they deteriorate and must be maintained. To correct problems, a Life
Extension Program (LEP), part of a larger Stockpile Stewardship Program (SSP), replaces
components. Modifying some components would require a nuclear test, but the United States has
observed a test moratorium since 1992. Congress and the Administration prefer to avoid a return
to testing, so LEP rebuilds these components as closely as possible to original specifications.
With this approach, the Secretaries of Defense and Energy have certified stockpile safety and
reliability for the past 12 years without nuclear testing.
The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), the Department of Energy (DOE)
component that operates the U.S. nuclear weapons program, would develop the Reliable
Replacement Warhead (RRW). For FY2005, Congress provided an unrequested $9.0 million to
start RRW. The FY2006 RRW appropriation was $24.8 million, and the FY2007 operating plan
had $35.8 million. For FY2008, the request was $88.8 million for NNSA and $30.0 million for
the Navy; Congress appropriated no RRW funds for NNSA and $15 million for the Navy. For
FY2009, DOE requested $10.0 million for RRW. The Navy requested $23.3 million for RRW but
said it prepared its request before Congress eliminated NNSA RRW funds and that the Navy
funds would not be used for RRW. The House Armed Services Committee, in its report H.R.
5658, the FY2009 defense authorization bill, recommended eliminating Navy and NNSA RRW
funds while adding funds for the Navy and NNSA for related purposes. The House defeated an
amendment to add $10.0 million in NNSA RRW funds to H.R. 5658. The Senate Armed Services
Committee recommended retaining NNSA’s request for RRW but eliminating the Navy’s request.
The FY2009 National Defense Authorization Act, P.L. 110-417, contained no RRW funds for the
Navy or NNSA. Both appropriations committees recommended eliminating NNSA RRW funds
for FY2009. Neither P.L. 110-329, Consolidated Security, Disaster Assistance, and Continuing
Appropriations Act, 2009, nor the FY2009 Supplemental Appropriations Act, P.L. 111-32,
contained NNSA RRW funds. Neither appropriations committee marked up the Department of
Defense (DOD) appropriations bill, but P.L. 110-329, Division C, the DOD appropriations bill,
contained no Navy RRW funds. For FY2010, the Administration canceled the RRW program and
requested no RRW funds. No bills contained RRW funds, but a provision in the House and Senate
defense authorization bills would strike Section 4204a of the Atomic Energy Act directing DOE
to establish the RRW program.
NNSA argues it will become harder to certify current warheads with LEP because small changes
may undermine confidence in warheads, perhaps leading to nuclear testing, whereas new-design
replacement warheads created by the RRW program will be easier to certify without testing.
Critics believe LEP and SSP can maintain the stockpile indefinitely. They worry that untested
RRWs may make testing more likely and question cost savings, given high investment cost. They
note that there are no military requirements for new weapons. Others feel that neither LEP nor
RRW can provide high confidence over the long term, and would resume testing. Another point
of view is that either LEP or RRW will work without nuclear testing.
This report provides background and tracks legislation. It will be updated to reflect final FY2010
congressional action on RRW. See also CRS Report RL33748, Nuclear Warheads: The Reliable
Replacement Warhead Program and the Life Extension Program, by Jonathan Medalia, which
compares these two programs in detail.
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The Reliable Replacement Warhead Program: Background and Current Developments
Contents
Background ................................................................................................................................1
Most Recent Developments...................................................................................................1
Issue Definition.....................................................................................................................1
The Need to Maintain Nuclear Warheads for the Long Term..................................................4
The Solution So Far: The Life Extension Program.................................................................6
Is LEP Satisfactory for the Long Term? .................................................................................8
RRW and the Transformation of Nuclear Warheads ............................................................. 10
Yield-to-Weight Ratio ................................................................................................... 10
Nuclear Testing ............................................................................................................. 12
Performance, Schedule, and Cost Tradeoffs................................................................... 12
Environment, Safety, and Health (ES&H)...................................................................... 13
Skill Development and Transfer .................................................................................... 13
RRW and Nuclear Weapons Complex Transformation ......................................................... 14
RRW Program Developments.................................................................................................... 16
Congressional Action on the FY2006 RRW Request.................................................................. 18
Congressional Action on the FY2007 RRW Request.................................................................. 23
Congressional Action on the FY2008 RRW Request.................................................................. 26
Congressional Action on the FY2009 RRW Request.................................................................. 37
Congressional Action on RRW for FY2010 ............................................................................... 41
Chronology, 2007- .................................................................................................................... 41
For Additional Reading ............................................................................................................. 42
Appendixes
Appendix. Nuclear Weapons, Nuclear Weapons Complex, and Stockpile Stewardship
Program................................................................................................................................. 45
Contacts
Author Contact Information ...................................................................................................... 46
Congressional Research Service
The Reliable Replacement Warhead Program: Background and Current Developments
Background
Most Recent Developments
For FY2010, the Administration proposed to terminate the RRW program and requested no funds
for it. The House and Senate Armed Services Committee versions of the FY2010 defense
authorization bill each had a provision that would strike Section 4204a of the Atomic Energy Act,
which directed the Department of Energy to establish the RRW program. Neither committee
recommended providing RRW funds. On June 25, 2009, the House passed the defense
authorization bill with this provision intact. The House and Senate Appropriations Committees
recommended providing no RRW funds for the National Nuclear Security Administration
(NNSA).
Issue Definition
While some argue for abolition of nuclear weapons,1 there is widespread agreement within the
United States that this nation must maintain its nuclear warheads as long as it retains them. Yet
warheads deteriorate with age. The current Life Extension Program (LEP) maintains them by
replacing deteriorated components. The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), the
DOE agency in charge of the nuclear weapons program, however, expresses concerns that LEP
might be unable to maintain warheads for the long term on grounds that the accumulation of
minor but inevitable variations between certain original and replacement components may reduce
confidence that life-extended warheads remain safe and effective. It recommends a new approach,
the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW), described below. On the other hand, a study released
in November 2006 estimates that pits, a key warhead component (see Appendix), should have a
service life of 85 to 100 years or more,2 which some argue makes it unnecessary to replace
current warheads for decades by extending the time for which confidence in them should remain
high.
Reflecting NNSA’s concern, Congress first funded the RRW program in the FY2005
Consolidated Appropriations Act, P.L. 108-447. The entire description of RRW in the conference
report was a “program to improve the reliability, longevity, and certifiability of existing weapons
and their components.”3 No committee report earlier in the FY2005 cycle had mentioned RRW.
Congress authorized the program in the FY2006 National Defense Authorization Act, P.L. 109163, Section 3111.
Congress has spelled out dozens of goals for the RRW program. A key goal is to increase
confidence, without nuclear testing, that warheads will perform as intended over the long term.
Other goals are to increase ease of manufacture and certification, reduce life cycle cost, increase
1
See, for example, George Shultz, William Perry, Henry Kissinger, and Sam Nunn, “A World Free of Nuclear
Weapons,” Wall Street Journal, January 4, 2007, p. 15.
2
R.J. Hemley et al., Pit Lifetime, JSR-06-335, MITRE Corp., November 20, 2006, available at
http://www.nukewatch.org/facts/nwd/JASON_ReportPuAging.pdf.
3
U.S. Congress, Committee of Conference, Making Appropriations for Foreign Operations, Export Financing, and
Related Programs for the Fiscal Year Ending September 30, 2005, and For Other Purposes, report to accompany H.R.
4818, 108th Cong., 2nd sess., 2004, H.Rept. 108-792, reprinted in U.S. Congress, Congressional Record, November 19,
2004, Book II, p. H10556.
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weapon safety and use control, and reduce environmental burden. CRS Report RL33748, Nuclear
Warheads: The Reliable Replacement Warhead Program and the Life Extension Program, by
Jonathan Medalia, details 20 such goals. To achieve them, RRW would trade characteristics
important during the Cold War for those of current importance, as described below. The
Department of Defense (DOD) has approved this tradeoff. It would be impossible to meet all the
goals simultaneously by modifying existing warheads, in part because their designs are so “tight”
that NNSA is concerned that even minor changes might reduce confidence in the reliability of
these warheads over the long term. As such, the RRW program would design new warheads to
replace existing ones. In contrast, LEP makes changes chiefly to maintain weapons, and in
particular minimizes changes to the nuclear explosive package (see Appendix).
RRW is sharply debated. Supporters anticipate that RRW will permit replacing a large stockpile
of nondeployed nuclear warheads with fewer warheads in which DOD can have greater
confidence over the long term, and restructuring the nuclear weapons complex (the “Complex”;
see Appendix) to be smaller, safer, more efficient, and less costly. A Defense Science Board task
force finds that LEP “is clearly not a sustainable approach” and recommended proceeding with
RRW.4 NNSA argued that RRWs “will be re-designed for long-term confidence in reliability and
greater security, and ease of production and maintenance. 5 Critics question whether some of the
tradeoffs and goals are feasible, necessary, or worth potential costs and risks. For example, one
commenter argued, “The plutonium research results [see footnote 2] obliterate the chief rationale
for NNSA’s emerging strategy” of RRW,6 while the New York Times opined that RRW “is a
public-relations disaster in the making overseas” and “a make-work program championed by the
weapons laboratories and belatedly by the Pentagon.”7
Several external reviews of the program have been released. (1) The House Appropriations
Committee directed NNSA to have the JASONs, a group of scientists who advise the government
on defense matters, conduct an independent peer review
to evaluate the competing RRW designs. The JASONs should evaluate the RRW design
recommended by the POG [the RRW Project Officers Group] against the requirements
defined by congressional legislative actions to date and the elements defined in the
Department of Defense’s military characteristics for a reliable replacement warhead
requirements document. The JASON review should also include an analysis on the
feasibility of the fundamental premise of the RRW initiative that a new nuclear warhead can
be designed and produced and certified for use and deployed as an operationally-deployed
nuclear weapon without undergoing an underground nuclear explosion test.8
The report was due March 31, 2007.9 In accordance with a schedule decided by the JASONs,
NNSA, and the House Appropriations Committee, NNSA transmitted the report to Congress on
4
U.S. Department of Defense. Defense Science Board. Report of the Defense Science Board Task Force on Nuclear
Capabilities: Report Summary, December 2006, p. 39, 41.
5
U.S. Department of Energy. National Nuclear Security Administration. Office of Defense Programs. Complex 2030:
An Infrastructure Planning Scenario for a Nuclear Weapons Complex Able to Meet the Threats of the 21st Century,
DOE/NA-0013, October 2006, p. 1.
6
Daryl Kimball, “New Reasons to Reject New Warheads,” Arms Control Today, January/February 2007.
7
“Busywork for Nuclear Scientists,” New York Times, January 15, 2007, p. 18.
8
U.S. Congress. House. Committee on Appropriations. Energy and Water Development Appropriations Bill, 2007,
H.Rept. 109-474 to accompany H.R. 5427, 109th Cong., 2nd sess., 2006, p. 110.
9
Ibid.
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September 28,10 and JASON transmitted the final report, in classified form, to NNSA by October
1.11 (See “Congressional Action on the FY2008 RRW Request,” below, for details.) (2) The
Nuclear Weapons Complex Assessment Committee of the American Association for the
Advancement of Science studied whether RRW is the best path for addressing certain potential
risks of SSP and LEP and for developing a responsive infrastructure in a report released April 24,
2007.12 (3) The FY2006 National Defense Authorization Act, P.L. 109-163, Section 3111,
mandated a report due March 1, 2007. It was to “discuss the relationship of the Reliable
Replacement Warhead program within the Stockpile Stewardship Program (SSP) and its impact
on the current Stockpile Life Extension Programs” and RRW’s “feasibility and implementation.”
The report was delivered to Congress on May 5, 2008.13 It concluded, “DOE and the DoD firmly
believe that it is time for the United States to seek an alternative to the current strategy of
extending the lives of legacy warheads indefinitely,” and “To ensure the viability of its nuclear
deterrent, the United States must initiate and invest in the RRW program now—so there will be
no disconnect between today’s credible deterrent and the one required for the future.”14 (4) P.L.
110-181, FY2008 National Defense Authorization Act, Section 3121, required NNSA to report on
using existing pits for RRW. The report was due on July 28, 2008, and was submitted on August
8. It concluded, “The multiple objectives of the RRW program would be best met by newly
manufactured pits. Until we can achieve adequate pit production capacity, we must plan on using
existing pits for any warhead replacement or life extension programs.” Further, “Gravity bomb
designs, due to the large available weight and volume, allow the most opportunities for desired
improvements and are therefore the most technically feasible candidates for pit reuse.”15
As discussed under “Congressional Action on the FY2008 RRW Request,” below, several
FY2008 reports on defense authorizations and energy-water appropriations have called for other
reports related to RRW, such as linking RRW to broader issues of strategy, nuclear
nonproliferation, and stockpile size.
This report (1) describes the LEP, difficulties ascribed to it by its critics, and their responses; (2)
shows how changed post-Cold War constraints might open opportunities to improve long-term
warhead maintenance and reach other goals; (3) describes RRW and its pros and cons; (4) tracks
RRW program developments and congressional action on budget requests; and (5) presents
options and issues for Congress. An Appendix describes nuclear weapons, the SSP, and the
Complex.
10
Letter of transmittal from Thomas P. D’Agostino, Administrator, National Nuclear Security Administration, to The
Honorable Bill Nelson, Chairman, Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, Committee on Armed Services, United States
Senate, September 28, 2007. See also The MITRE Corporation, JASON, “Reliable Replacement Warhead Executive
Summary,” JSR-07-336E, September 7, 2007, 8 p., available at http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/dod/jason/rrw.pdf.
11
Information provided by Professor Roy Schwitters, Chair of the JASON Steering Committee, email, December 1,
2007.
12
American Association for the Advancement of Science. Center for Science, Technology and Security Policy. Nuclear
Weapons Complex Assessment Committee. C. Bruce Tarter, Chair. “The United States Nuclear Weapons Program:
The Role of the Reliable Replacement Warhead.” April 2007, 34 p. Available at http://cstsp.aaas.org/files/
AAAS%20RRW%20Report.pdf.
13
Information provided by National Nuclear Security Administration, June 16, 2008.
14
U.S. Department of Defense and Department of Energy. “Report on the Feasibility and Implementation of the
Reliable Replacement Warhead Program: Submitted to the Congressional Defense Committees Pursuant to Section
3111 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2006, P.L. 109-163, by the Secretary of Defense and
the Secretary of Energy in Consultation with the Nuclear Weapons Council,” April 2008, p. 13.
15
U.S. Department of Energy. National Nuclear Security Administration. “Report on the Feasibility of Using Existing
Pits for the Reliable Replacement Warhead Program,” p. 14. The letter of transmittal is dated August 8, 2008.
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The Need to Maintain Nuclear Warheads for the Long Term
Nuclear warheads must be maintained because they contain thousands of parts that deteriorate at
different rates. Some parts and materials have well-known limits on service life,16 while the
service life of other parts may be unknown or revealed only by multiple inspections of a warhead
type over time. A 1983 report argued that maintenance requires nuclear testing:
Certain chemically reactive materials are inherently required in nuclear weapons, such as
uranium or plutonium, high explosives, and plastics. The fissile materials, both plutonium
and uranium, are subject to corrosion. Plastic-bonded high explosives and other plastics tend
to decompose over extended periods of time ... portions of materials can dissociate into
simpler substances. Vapors given off by one material can migrate to another region of the
weapon and react chemically there.... Materials in the warhead electrical systems ... can
produce effluents that can migrate to regions in the nuclear explosive portion of the
weapon.... The characteristics of high explosives can change with time.... Vital electrical
components can change in character.... 17
A 1987 report, written to rebut the contention of the foregoing report that nuclear testing is
needed to maintain warheads, agreed that aging affects components:
It should also be noted that nuclear weapons engineering has benefitted from a quarter
century of experience in dealing with corrosion, deterioration, and creep since the time that
the W45, W47, and W52 [warheads] entered the stockpile in the early sixties (just after the
test moratorium of 1958-1961).... Most of the reliability problems in the past have resulted
from either an incomplete testing program during the development phase of a weapon or the
aging and deterioration of weapon components during deployment.18
Some feel that deterioration, while a potential problem, has been overstated. A scientific panel
writing in 1999 stated,
there is no such thing as a “design life.” The designers were not asked or permitted to design
a nuclear weapon that would go bad after 20 years. They did their best on a combination of
performance and endurance, and after experience with the weapon in storage there is
certainly no reason to expect all of the nuclear weapons of a given type to become unusable
after 20 or 25 years. In fact, one of the main goals of SBSS [Science-Based Stockpile
Stewardship, an earlier term for the Stockpile Stewardship Program, discussed below] is to
predict the life of the components so that remanufacture may be scheduled, and results to
date indicate a margin of surety extending for decades.... Until now, clear evidence of
warhead deterioration has not been seen in the enduring stockpile, but the plans for
remanufacture still assume that deterioration is inevitable on the timescale of the old,
arbitrarily defined “design lives.”19
16
U.S. General Accounting Office, Nuclear Weapons: Capabilities of DOE’s Limited Life Component Program to
Meet Operational Needs, GAO/RCED-97-52, March 5, 1997, available at http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/
report/gao/rced97052.htm.
17
“Some Little-Publicized Difficulties with a Nuclear Freeze,” prepared by Dr. J.W. Rosengren, R&D Associates,
under Contract to the Office of International Security Affairs, U.S. Department of Energy, October 1983, p. 5-6;
reprinted in U.S. Congress. Senate. Committee on Foreign Relations. Nuclear Testing Issues. 99th Cong., 2nd sess.,
Senate Hearing 99-937, 1986, pp. 167-168.
18
Ray Kidder, Stockpile Reliability and Nuclear Test Bans: Response to J.W. Rosengren’s Defense of His 1983
Report, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, UCID-20990, February 1987, pp. 4-5.
19
Sidney Drell, Raymond Jeanloz, et al., Remanufacture, MITRE Corporation, JASON Program Office, JSR-99-300,
(continued...)
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The deterioration noted above pertained to warheads designed in the 1950s and early 1960s that
are no longer deployed. Newer warheads correct some of these problems. As knowledge of
warhead performance, materials, and deterioration increases, the labs can correct some problems
and forestall others. Still other aging problems have turned out to occur more slowly than was
feared. In particular, it was long recognized that plutonium would deteriorate as it aged, but it was
not known how long it would take for deterioration to impair performance of the pit, the fissile
core of a nuclear weapon’s primary stage (see Appendix). NNSA had estimated that that would
take at least 45 to 60 years, but a November 2006 study found
there is no degradation in performance of primaries of stockpile systems [i.e., warheads] due
to plutonium aging that would be cause for near-term concern regarding their safety and
reliability. Most primary types have credible minimum lifetimes in excess of 100 years as
regards aging of plutonium; those with assessed minimum lifetimes of 100 years or less have
clear mitigation paths that are proposed and/or being implemented.20
During the Cold War, any deterioration problems were limited in their duration because this
nation introduced generations of long-range nuclear-armed bombers and ballistic missiles, each of
which would typically carry a new warhead tailored to its mission. New warheads were usually
introduced long before the warheads they replaced reached the end of their service lives. Three
trends concerning deterioration have emerged since the end of the Cold War. (1) SSP and other
tools, described below, have greatly increased NNSA’s understanding of warhead deterioration
and how to deal with or prevent it. (2) By maintaining the current set of warhead designs for
many years, design and production errors have been subjected to systematic identification and
elimination. (3) Nuclear warheads have much more time to age, as warheads that were expected
to remain in the stockpile for at most 20 years are now being retained indefinitely. The net of
these trends is that understanding of deterioration, while improving, is not perfect, so
deterioration remains a concern.
Current warheads were designed to meet an exacting set of constraints, such as safety parameters,
yield, and conditions (such as temperature) that they would encounter in their lifetimes. Design
compromises were made to meet these constraints. Ambassador Linton Brooks, NNSA
Administrator, said that to meet requirements, “we designed these systems very close to
performance cliffs.”21 That is, designs approached points at which warheads would fail.22 Many
parts were hard to produce or used hazardous materials. Warheads were often hard to assemble.
This approach increased the difficulty of replicating some components and of maintaining
warheads. Ambassador Brooks said, “it is becoming more difficult and costly to certify warhead
remanufacture. The evolution away from tested designs resulting from the inevitable
accumulations of small changes over the extended lifetimes of these systems means that we can
count on increasing uncertainty in the long-term certification of warheads in the stockpile.”23
(...continued)
October 1999, pp. 4, 8.
20
R.J. Hemley et al., Pit Lifetime, JSR-06-335, MITRE Corp., November 20, 2006, p. 1, available at
http://www.nukewatch.org/facts/nwd/JASON_ReportPuAging.pdf.
21
U.S. Congress, Senate Committee on Armed Services, Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, Strategic Forces/Nuclear
Weapons Fiscal Year 2006 Budget, hearing, April 4, 2005.
22
For example, if designers calculated that a certain amount of plutonium was the minimum at which the warhead
would work, they might add only a small extra amount as a margin of assurance.
23
Brooks statement to Senate Armed Services Committee, April 4, 2005, p. 3.
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At issue is whether warheads can be maintained despite the absence of nuclear testing by
replacing deteriorated components with newly made ones built as close as possible to the original
specifications. This debate has been going on for decades. In a 1978 letter to President Carter,
three weapons scientists argued that the United States could go to great lengths in
remanufacturing weapon components:
it is sometimes claimed that remanufacture may become impossible because of increasingly
severe restrictions by EPA or OSHA to protect the environment of the worker ... if the
worker’s environment acceptable until now for the use of asbestos, spray adhesives, or
beryllium should be forbidden by OSHA regulations, those few workers needed to continue
operations with such material could wear plastic-film suits.... It would be wise also to
stockpile in appropriate storage facilities certain commercial materials used in weapons
manufacture which might in the future disappear from the commercial scene.24
However, a 1987 report by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory stated:
•
Exact replication, especially of older systems, is impossible. Material batches are
never quite the same, some materials become unavailable, and equivalent
materials are never exactly equivalent. “Improved” parts often have new,
unexpected failure modes. Vendors go out of business....
•
Documentation has never been sufficiently exact to ensure replication.... We have
never known enough about every detail to specify everything that may be
important....
•
The most important aspect of any product certification is testing; it provides the
data for valid certification.25
The Solution So Far: The Life Extension Program
With the end of the Cold War, the Complex, like the rest of the defense establishment, faced
turmoil. Budgets and personnel were reduced, design of new weapons ended, and a test
moratorium began. For a time, the chief concern of DOE’s nuclear weapons management was
survival of the Complex.
To address this concern and set a course for the nuclear weapons enterprise, Congress, in the
FY1994 National Defense Authorization Act (P.L. 103-160), Section 3138, directed the Secretary
of Energy to “establish a stewardship program to ensure the preservation of the core intellectual
and technical competencies of the United States in nuclear weapons, including weapons design,
system integration, manufacturing, security, use control, reliability assessment, and certification.”
Since then, the Clinton and Bush Administrations have requested, and Congress has approved,
24
Letter from Norris Bradbury, J. Carson Mark, and Richard Garwin to President Jimmy Carter, August 15, 1978,
reprinted in U.S. Congress, House Committee on Foreign Affairs and Its Subcommittee on Arms Control, International
Security and Science, Proposals to Ban Nuclear Testing, H.J.Res. 3, 99th Cong., 1st Sess., hearings, (Washington: GPO,
1985), p. 215.
25
George Miller, Paul Brown, and Carol Alonso, Report to Congress on Stockpile Reliability, Weapon Remanufacture,
and the Role of Nuclear Testing, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, UCRL-53822, October 1987, p. 25. For an
opposing view, see R.E. Kidder, Maintaining the U.S. Stockpile of Nuclear Weapons During a Low-Threshold or
Comprehensive Test Ban, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, UCRL-53820, October 1987, esp. pp. 6-9.
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tens of billions of dollars for this Stockpile Stewardship Program (SSP), which is presented in
NNSA’s budget as “Weapons Activities.”26
SSP uses data from past nuclear tests, small-scale laboratory experiments, large-scale
experimental facilities, examination of warheads, and the like to better understand nuclear
weapon science. It uses this knowledge to improve computer codes that simulate aspects of
weapons performance to aid the nuclear weapons laboratories’ understanding of it. Such advances
help scientists analyze data from past nuclear tests more thoroughly, mining it to extract still more
information. Theory, simulation, and data reinforce each other: theory refines simulation,
simulation helps check theory, theory and simulation guide researchers to look for certain types of
data, and data help check simulation and theory.
A key task of the Complex is to monitor warheads for signs of actual or future deterioration. This
work is done through a program that conducts routine surveillance of warheads in the stockpile
by closely examining 11 warheads of each type per year to search for corrosion, gases, and other
evidence of deterioration. Of the 11, one is taken apart for destructive evaluation, while the other
10 are evaluated nondestructively and returned to the stockpile.27 In addition, an Enhanced
Surveillance Program supports surveillance; its goal “is to develop diagnostic tools and predictive
models that will make it possible to analyze and predict the effects that aging may have on
weapon materials, components, and systems.”28
When routine surveillance detects warhead problems, the Complex applies knowledge gained
through SSP to fix problems through the Life Extension Program (LEP), which attempts “to
extend the expected stockpile lifetime of a warhead or warhead components at least 20 years with
a goal of 30 years”29 beyond the originally-anticipated service life.
A warhead’s components may be divided into two categories: those that are part of the nuclear
explosive package (NEP), and those that are not. As described in the Appendix, the NEP is the
part of the warhead that explodes, as distinct from the more numerous components like the outer
case or arming system. Because non-NEP components can be subjected to extensive experiments
and nonnuclear laboratory tests, they can be modified as needed under LEP to incorporate more
advanced electronics or safer materials. In contrast, NEP components cannot be subjected to
nuclear tests because the United States has observed a moratorium on nuclear testing since 1992.
As a result, LEP seeks to replicate these components using original designs and, insofar as
possible, original materials. In this way, it is hoped, components will be close to the originals so
that they can be qualified for use in warheads. Because NEP components cannot be tested while
other components can be, long-term concern focuses on the former.
Warheads contain several thousand components. While not all need to be refurbished in an LEP,
some are difficult to fabricate, and assembly may be difficult, as discussed earlier. As a result, the
LEP for an individual warhead type is a major campaign requiring extensive preparatory analysis
26
See CRS Report RL34417, Energy and Water Development: FY2009 Appropriations, coordinated by (name re
dacted), section on Nuclear Weapons Stockpile Stewardship.
27
Information provided by NNSA, May 9, 2005.
28
Katie Walter, “Enhanced Surveillance of Aging Weapons,” Science & Technology Review, January/February 1998,
p. 21.
29
U.S. Department of Energy. Office of Chief Financial Officer. FY2009 Congressional Budget Request, DOE/CF-024,
February 2008, vol. 1, National Nuclear Security Administration, p. 101.
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and detailed work on many components that can take many years. For example, NNSA describes
the LEP for the W76 warhead for Trident submarine-launched ballistic missiles as follows:
The W76 LEP will extend the life of the W76 for an additional 30 years with the first
production unit (FPU) targeted in FY 2008. Activities include design, qualification,
certification, production plant Process Prove-In (PPI), and Pilot Production. The preproduction activities will ensure the design of refurbished warheads meets all required
military characteristics. Additional activities include work associated with the
manufacturability of the components including the nuclear explosive package; the Arming,
Firing, and Fuzing (AF&F) system; gas transfer system; and associated cables, elastomers,
valves, pads, cushions, foam supports, telemetries, and miscellaneous parts.30
Stockpile stewardship has made great strides in understanding weapons science, in predicting
how weapons will age, and in predicting how they will fail. Many agree with the following
assessment by NNSA Administrator Thomas D’Agostino:
the Stockpile Stewardship Program is working—today’s stockpile remains safe and reliable
and does not require nuclear testing. This assessment is based on a foundation of past nuclear
tests augmented by cutting edge scientific and engineering experiments and analysis, and
improved warhead surveillance. Most importantly, it derives from the professional (and
independent) judgment of our laboratory directors advised by their weapon program staffs.31
Others reply that the United States cannot have confidence in stockpile stewardship without
conducting nuclear tests to validate the tools and computer models. In this view, it is easier to fit
computer models to data from past nuclear tests than to predict results of future tests.32
Is LEP Satisfactory for the Long Term?
In the turmoil following the end of the Cold War, it is scarcely surprising that the method chosen
to maintain the stockpile—a task that had to be performed in the face of the many changes
affecting the Complex and the many unknowns about its future—was to minimize changes. Now,
with SSP well established, NNSA feels that it is appropriate to use a different approach to
warhead maintenance, one that builds on the success of SSP and challenges the notion underlying
LEP that changes must be held to a minimum.
Advocates of RRW recognize that LEP has worked well and concede that it can probably
maintain warheads over the short term. Their concern is with maintaining reliability of warheads
over the long term. They assert that LEP is not suited to the task because it will become harder to
make it work as the technology under which current warheads were created becomes increasingly
archaic and as materials, equipment, processes, and skills become unavailable. They maintain that
if the labs were to lose confidence that they could replicate NEP components to near-original
designs using near-original materials and processes, the United States could ultimately face a
30
Department of Energy, FY2009 Congressional Budget Request, vol. 1, p. 101.
“Statement of Thomas P. D’Agostino, Administrator, National Nuclear Security Administration, U.S. Department of
Energy, Before the House Committee on Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces,” February 27, 2008, p. 5
(original emphasis).
32
For further discussion of this point, see U.S. Congress. Congressional Research Service. CRS Report RL34394,
Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty: Issues and Arguments, by Jonathan Medalia, section titled, “Can the United
States Maintain the Nuclear Weapons Enterprise Without Testing?”
31
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choice between resuming nuclear tests or accepting reduced confidence in reliability. Instead, for
example, the three nuclear weapons laboratories (Los Alamos, Livermore, and Sandia) argue that
a “vision of sustainable warheads with a sustainable [nuclear] enterprise can best be achieved by
shifting from a program of warhead refurbishment to one of warhead replacement.”33
Advocates of RRW note further that while the current stockpile—most units of which were
manufactured between 1979 and 1989—was designed to deter and, if necessary, defeat the Soviet
Union, the threat, strategy and missions have changed, leaving the United States with the wrong
stockpile for current circumstances. Ambassador Brooks said that current warheads are wrong
technically because “we would [now] manage technical risk differently, for example, by ‘trading’
[warhead] size and weight for increased performance margins, system longevity, and ease of
manufacture.” These warheads were not “designed for longevity” or to minimize cost, and may
be wrong militarily because yields are too high and “do not lend themselves to reduced collateral
damage.” They also lack capabilities against buried targets or biological and chemical munitions,
and they do not take full advantage of precision guidance.34 Furthermore, LEP’s critics believe
the stockpile is wrong politically because it is too large:
We retain “hedge” warheads in large part due to the inability of either today’s nuclear
infrastructure, or the infrastructure we expect to have when the stockpile reductions are fully
implemented in 2012, to manufacture, in a timely way, warheads for replacement or for force
augmentation, or to act to correct unexpected technical problems.35
Finally, they believe the stockpile is wrong in terms of physical security because it was not
designed for a scenario in which terrorists seize control of a nuclear weapon and try to detonate it
in place. According to Brooks, “If we were designing the stockpile today, we would apply new
technologies and approaches to warhead-level use control as a means to reduce physical security
costs.”36
Advocates of LEP challenge each assertion. They believe that LEP can continue to maintain
warheads. They note that criticisms of LEP are vague: not that LEPs will fail, but that lifeextended warheads might at some future point lead to a reduction in confidence. LEP supporters
do not accept even that criticism. As Richard Garwin, IBM Fellow emeritus said,
I don’t agree with the generally stated assumption that confidence and the reliability of our
existing nuclear weapons will inevitably decline with time as the weapons age ... the
Science-Based Stockpile Stewardship Program and, in particular, the advanced scientific
computing capabilities that have been procured at great cost over the last 15 years for the
Stockpile Stewardship Program, have paid off handsomely, as indicated in confidence in
increased pit longevity. Thus, in the case of the essential and sensitive thermonuclear weapon
primaries, the passage of time has brought greater, not lesser, confidence in pit longevity....
And with the passage of time and the improvement in computing tools, I believe that
confidence in the reliability of the existing legacy weapons will increase rather than
diminish, just as has been the case with the nuclear weapon pits.37
33
K. Henry O’Brien et al., Sustaining the Nuclear Enterprise—A New Approach, published jointly by Lawrence
Livermore, Los Alamos, and Sandia National Laboratories, UCRL-AR-212442, May 20, 2005, p. 3.
34
Ibid., pp. 2-3.
35
Ibid., p. 3.
36
Ibid., p. 4.
37
U.S. Congress. House. Committee on Appropriations. Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development. Hearing on
(continued...)
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They challenge the assertion that RRW would improve the current stockpile. In this view, new
weapons may not offer much new capability: earth penetrators could not destroy hardened
facilities buried very deeply or at imprecisely-known locations, and nuclear weapons are of
questionable effectiveness against chemical and biological agents.38 They note that Congress
rejected funds for the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator, which many Members perceived as being
a new nuclear weapon, and that the FY2006 National Defense Authorization Act, P.L. 109-163,
Section 3111, set “fulfill[ing] current mission requirements of the existing stockpile” as an
objective for the RRW program. They anticipate that RRWs, like any other product, would have
“birth defects,” whereas such defects have been wrung out of existing warheads, and believe that
such defects could require a larger stockpile. They state that performance margins of current
warheads are adequate and can be improved somewhat if needed, such as by new systems to
deliver boost gas. They question the argument that RRW would reduce physical security costs on
grounds that a terrorist attempt to seize and detonate a nuclear warhead in place is most unlikely
given the high level of security currently in place, and doubt that Congress or NNSA would
reduce the guard force because of RRW.
RRW and the Transformation of Nuclear Warheads
The nuclear stockpile was designed to meet Cold War requirements. For example, high explosive
yield per unit of warhead weight (the “yield-to-weight ratio”) was critically important while cost,
ease of manufacture, and reduction of hazardous material were less so. Now, yield-to-weight has
become less important, the others just mentioned have become more important, new constraints
have appeared in the wake of 9/11, and warheads must continue to be safe and reliable. As a
result, RRW advocates claim, it is possible and necessary to transform the stockpile to reflect
these changes.
With RRW, NNSA and DOD are revisiting tradeoffs underlying the current stockpile in order to
adapt to post-Cold War changes and meet possible future requirements. NNSA and DOD assert
RRW would trade negligible sacrifices to secure major gains. This section presents some Cold
War warhead requirements, how they have changed, and implications of these changes for RRW
and LEP.
Yield-to-Weight Ratio
A major characteristic of warheads for ballistic missiles was a high yield-to-weight ratio.39 Lower
weight let each missile carry more warheads to more distant targets; higher yield made each
warhead better able to destroy its target; and high yield-to-weight enabled these goals to be met at
the same time. For example, the W88 warhead for the Trident II (D5) submarine-launched
ballistic missile uses a conventional high explosive (CHE) that is more sensitive to impact than
insensitive high explosive (IHE) used on many other warhead types. IHE is safer to handle, but
CHE packed more energy per unit weight. A missile could carry the lighter CHE warheads to a
(...continued)
nuclear weapon activities. 109th Congress, 1st Session, March 29, 2007.
38
Roger Speed and Michael May, “Assessing the United States’ Nuclear Posture,” in George Bunn and Christopher
Chyba, eds., U.S. Nuclear Weapons Policy: Confronting Today’s Threats, Center for International Security and
Cooperation, Stanford University, and Brookings Institution Press, Washington, 2006, pp. 256-264.
39
Bombs were less constrained in weight because bombers carry heavier loads than missiles.
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greater distance, so a submarine could stand off farther from its targets. Increased ocean patrol
area forced the Soviet Union to spread out its antisubmarine assets, improving submarine
survivability. Hard-to-manufacture designs, hazardous materials, and other undesirable features
were deemed acceptable tradeoffs to maximize yield-to-weight.
Now, ballistic missiles carry fewer warheads than they did during the Cold War, so each warhead
can be heavier. 40 In particular, the first RRW, “WR1,” which is to replace some W76 warheads
now on the Trident II submarine-launched ballistic missile, will have the yield of the W76 but the
higher weight of the W88, resulting in less yield per unit weight. The added weight is allocated to
design features to improve use control, margin (excess performance designed into a warhead
beyond the minimum required for it to perform as intended), ease of production, and the like.
Some see LEPs of current warheads as satisfactory. Barry Hannah, chairman of the RRW POG,,
explained his views on the project to convert original W76-0 warheads to life-extended W76-1’s:
The W76-1 LEP that is currently underway is an excellent program in terms of technology,
schedule, and cost. I believe it meets the Navy’s needs. While the LEP makes many changes
and some upgrades to components of the original W76-0, it made no changes that put the
warhead’s basic design at risk. For example, the W76-1 LEP POG wanted the W76-1 to
remain as close to the original design as possible for the nuclear explosive package, as small
differences in that package may have major effects on weapon performance. In cases where
we did not fully understand the original manufacturing process for a material or component,
we replicated the original process as exactly as possible. For that reason, we went to
considerable effort to restore the process to manufacture “Fogbank,” a material used in the
W76-0, for the W76-1. We also included changes that increase margins in order to
compensate for problems or uncertainties that component changes or age-related degradation
might introduce. One such change was an improved system to supply boost gas to the
weapon.
I am confident that the W76-1 will extend the life of the W76. The W76-0 was first deployed
in 1978. Since the W76-1 is very close to the W76-0, data on W76-0 aging are directly
relevant to gauging the service life of the W76-1. Observations on deterioration, or lack
thereof, in W76-0 components increase confidence in an extended life for the W76-1. The
W76-0 has aged well, and we have learned some lessons from its aging process that we have
applied to the W76-1. Also, the modified boost gas transfer system supports an extended life.
The W76-1 POG opted for the W76-1 LEP in lieu of the WR-1 RRW for several reasons.
The ability to produce a reasonable number of pits by the time they were needed was in
question. If we had waited until 2020 to have the first WR-1, the W76-1 would have been
out of production for many years and there would have been a risk if WR-1 had failed. Also,
the Navy need for the safety and surety options was not as compelling as other services.
When SLBM warheads are in Navy custody they are under heavy guard by Marines and
other security personnel at bases, or out at sea.41
40
Ballistic missiles carry warheads inside reentry vehicles (RVs). An RV is a streamlined shell that protects its
warhead from the intense heat and other stresses of reentering the atmosphere at high speed. RVs are designed to carry
a specific type of warhead on a specific missile; the maximum stress that the RV encounters is carefully studied.
Increasing warhead weight significantly would increase these stresses, possibly causing the RV to fail and the warhead
to burn up, fail, or miss its target by a wide margin.
41
Information provided by Dr. Barry Hannah, SES, Branch Head, Reentry Systems, Strategic Systems Program, U.S.
Navy, personal interview with the author, February 17, 2009.
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Nuclear Testing
Between 1945 and 1992, the United States conducted over 1,000 nuclear tests, mostly for
weapons design. 42 These tests added confidence that a weapon incorporating hard-to-manufacture
components was made correctly, that a weapon would work at extremes of temperatures it might
experience, and that the design was satisfactory in other ways. Testing also enabled the labs to
validate changes to existing warhead designs. With a congressionally-imposed U.S. nuclear test
moratorium that began in October 199243 and that Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush have
continued to the present, this nation cannot rely on tests to validate designs. Instead, WR1 seeks
to provide high confidence in the design without nuclear testing by being a “close neighbor” of
previously-tested designs, staying within design parameters that past nuclear tests have validated,
and building in high margins. RRW advocates express concern that current warheads were
designed with “thin” margins, and that minor changes as a result of LEPs can erode these margins
further, possibly reducing confidence in these warheads that could testing to restore.
Advocates of LEP have high confidence in current warheads, and believe that this confidence is
growing despite the absence of testing, as noted earlier. The JASON study on pit aging, in this
view, delays by decades the time when pits would have to be manufactured for current warheads,
thus delaying a potentially large risk factor that could lead to testing. In contrast, RRW missile
warheads, such as WR1, would require the manufacture of new pits, and any new product runs
the risk of design or manufacturing defects, which in this case could lead to testing.
Others hold that neither RRW nor LEP provides confidence in the stockpile. In this view, RRW
uses untested designs, while the many changes introduced by LEPs move current warheads away
from tested designs, so the only way to restore confidence is to resume a nuclear test program that
would meet current needs with a much lower rate and yield of testing than during the Cold War.
Performance, Schedule, and Cost Tradeoffs
Performance has always been the dominant consideration for nuclear weapons. Weapons must
meet standards for safety and reliability, and meet other military characteristics. During the Cold
War, schedule was also critical. With new missiles and nuclear-capable aircraft entering the force
at a sustained pace, warheads and bombs had to be ready on a schedule dictated by their delivery
systems. As a result, “our nuclear warheads were not designed ... to minimize DOE and DOD
costs.”44 Now, reducing cost has a higher priority. Cost reduction is also more feasible:
performance is still dominant, but no imminent external threat drives the schedule.
WR1 offers many features that, its backers claim, will reduce costs over its life cycle. It will be
designed for ease of manufacture and reduce use of hazardous material, lowering manufacturing
cost. Enhanced use-control and use-denial features may slow the growth of physical security
costs. Reduced use of hazardous materials and a design that permits easier disassembly will lower
42
The United States conducted 1,030 tests. A total of 1,125 devices were detonated in those tests, of which 891 were
weapon related. (The United Kingdom conducted another 24 tests jointly with the United States at the Nevada Test
Site.) U.S. Department of Energy, Nevada Operations Office, United States Nuclear Tests, July 1945 through
September 1992, DOE/NV-209, rev. 15, December 2000, p. xvi.
43
The moratorium was begun pursuant to Section 507 of P.L. 102-377, FY1993 Energy and Water Development
Appropriations Act, signed into law October 2, 1992.
44
Brooks statement to Senate Armed Services Committee, April 4, 2005, p. 3.
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dismantlement cost. RRW’s proponents also raise concerns that it is becoming more costly to
maintain existing warheads; for example, plants to make certain materials used in current
warheads but that are no longer commercially available may cost millions of dollars to build.
LEP supporters state that delaying pit manufacture for decades by continuing to use existing pits
in current warheads will save many billions of dollars. They note that RRW is linked to a major
upgrade of the nuclear weapons complex, which would be costly, and that the RRW program may
involve manufacture of thousands of new warheads and dismantlement of thousands of old ones,
adding costs. A study by the American Association for the Advancement of Science found, “an
RRW program would likely add to costs in the near term, and it is not yet possible to determine
when (and whether) the RRW could lead to savings in the long term.”45
Environment, Safety, and Health (ES&H)
During the Cold War, the urgency of production and limited knowledge of the ES&H effects of
materials used or created in the nuclear weapons enterprise led to the use of hazardous materials,
dumping contaminants onto the ground or into rivers, exposing citizens to radioactive fallout
from nuclear tests, and the like. Now, ES&H concerns have grown within the Complex, reflecting
their rise in civil society at large, leading to a strong interest in minimizing the use of hazardous
materials in warheads and their production.
RRW advocates note that reduction of hazardous materials is a design goal of RRW. A less
stringent yield-to-weight requirement permits substitution of safer materials, even if they are
somewhat heavier, for some hazardous materials. Manufacturing processes are simpler, reducing
hazardous waste and increasing safety. Substitution of insensitive high explosive for conventional
high explosive, it is argued, would increase worker safety. LEP supporters argue that the ability to
defer pit manufacture for decades improves ES&H, and that existing manufacturing processes are
well understood and have incorporated proper safety precautions.
Skill Development and Transfer
During the Cold War, the design of dozens of warhead types, the conduct of over 1,000 nuclear
tests, and the production of thousands of warheads exercised the full range of nuclear weapon
skills. Now, with no design or testing, no new-design warheads being produced, and with
warheads being refurbished at a slower pace than that at which they were originally produced,
some have raised concern that Complex personnel are not adequately challenged. In this view,
skill development and transfer can no longer be simply a byproduct of the work, but must be an
explicit goal of the nuclear weapons program.
RRW advocates state that since RRW is a new design, designers must confront the full range of
tradeoffs simultaneously, balancing yield, weight, cost, safety, ease of manufacture, use control,
reduction of hazardous material, etc. In contrast, in this view, LEP constrains choices for the
nuclear explosive package because replication is required to minimize divergence from
parameters validated by nuclear testing. LEP supporters cite the American Association for the
45
American Association for the Advancement of Science. Nuclear Weapons Complex Assessment Committee. The
United States Nuclear Weapons Program: The Role of the Reliable Replacement Warhead. April 2007, p. 25. Available
at http://cstsp.aaas.org/files/AAAS%20RRW%20Report.pdf.
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Advancement of Science study: “Although life extension is not equivalent to executing a new
design, it nonetheless employs many of the same tools, processes, and disciplines.”46
RRW and Nuclear Weapons Complex Transformation
Throughout its history, the nuclear weapons complex (the “Complex”) has expanded and
contracted in response to changing demands, whether the rush to produce the first bombs in
World War II, the program to produce many thousands of warheads of many different types
during the Cold War, or the need for more dismantlement and less production with the end of the
Cold War, and many plans for Complex transformation have been drafted over the years.
RRW’s supporters saw RRW as the basis for addressing this transformation. Representative
David Hobson, Chairman of the House Energy and Water Development Appropriations
Subcommittee in the 108th and 109th Congresses, was RRW’s prime sponsor. In introducing the
FY2005 energy and water bill (H.R. 4614) to the House, he emphasized the need to redirect the
Complex:
much of the DOE weapons complex is still sized to support a Cold War stockpile. The
NNSA needs to take a ‘time-out’ on new initiatives until it completes a review of its
weapons complex in relation to security needs, budget constraints, and [a] new stockpile
plan.47
He saw RRW as a key part of his effort to redirect U.S. nuclear strategy, reshape the nuclear
weapons stockpile and Complex to support that strategy, undertake weapons programs consistent
with that strategy, and reject those inconsistent with it.48
Some see RRW as the key to transforming the Complex into the responsive infrastructure
envisioned in the 2001 Nuclear Posture Review. Thomas D’Agostino, then NNSA Deputy
Administrator for Defense Programs, said in 2006,
By “responsive” we refer to the resilience of the nuclear enterprise to unanticipated events or
emerging threats, and the ability to anticipate innovations by an adversary and to counter
them before our deterrent is degraded.... much remains to be done to achieve stockpile and
infrastructure transformation.... The “enabler” for transformation is our concept for the
RRW. The RRW will benefit from relaxed Cold War design constraints that maximized yield
to weight ratios. This will allow us to design replacement components that are easier to
manufacture; are safer and more secure; eliminate environmentally dangerous, reactive, and
unstable materials.... RRW, we believe, will provide enormous leverage for a more efficient
and responsive infrastructure and opportunities for a smaller stockpile.49
46
American Association for the Advancement of Science, The United States Nuclear Weapons Program: The Role of
the Reliable Replacement Warhead, p. 23.
47
Congressional Record, June 25, 2004, p. H5085.
48
Congressman David Hobson, “U.S. Nuclear Security in the 21st Century,” address to the Arms Control Association,
Washington, DC, February 3, 2005. (Transcript as delivered.)
49
“Statement of Thomas P. D’Agostino, Deputy Administrator for Defense Programs, National Nuclear Security
Administration, Before the House Armed Services Committee, Subcommittee on Strategic Forces,” April 5, 2006, p. 3,
6.
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He also said, “We have worked closely with the DoD to establish goals for ‘responsiveness,’ that
is, timelines to address stockpile problems or deal with new or emerging threats. For example, our
goal is to understand and fix most problems in the stockpile within 12 months of their
discovery.”50
To meet these goals, NNSA proposed a “Complex 2030” plan for restructuring the Complex. 51 It
would consolidate fissile material, eliminate some redundancies in R&D facilities, and
consolidate elements of the current Complex. It assumes Complex reconfiguration completed
around 2030. As a result, even if the United States proceeds with RRW, the Complex would, for
decades, need to support current warheads and RRWs simultaneously, so a Complex-in-transition
would support a stockpile-in-transition. Because RRW would be designed in part for ease of
manufacture, advocates claim it would permit a simpler a smaller and less costly Complex. In
NNSA’s view, Complex 2030, combined with easier-to-produce RRWs, would be more
responsive to DOD’s needs than the current Complex. Another plan, by a Secretary of Energy
Advisory Board (SEAB) task force, proposed more consolidation of production, experimental
equipment, and uranium and plutonium than the Complex 2030 plan.52 One of its elements was a
Consolidated Nuclear Production Center (CNPC), which would produce all uranium and
plutonium components for nuclear weapons, as well as assembling, surveilling, and
disassembling weapons, and storing all weapons not in DOD custody.53
In a letter to Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman in November 2006, Representative Hobson
expressed concern that DOE decided not to analyze the SEAB plan and instead considered
Complex 2030 as its proposed action. 54
If the Department is not willing to conduct a thorough and objective analysis of all reform
alternatives including the CNPC, and instead is determined to conduct an obviously
prejudicial process aimed at ensuring the Department’s preferred outcome, then I will not
support funding for the Complex 2030 efforts, including the Reliable Replacement Warhead
(RRW) program. RRW is a deal with Congress, but the deal requires a serious effort by the
Department to modernize, consolidate, and downsize the weapons complex. Absent that,
there is no deal.55
In January 2007, NNSA stated it would evaluate the SEAB plan.56
50
“Statement of Thomas P. D’Agostino ...,” April 5, 2006, p. 4.
51
U.S. Department of Energy. National Nuclear Security Administration. Office of Defense Programs. Complex 2030:
An Infrastructure Planning Scenario for a Nuclear Weapons Complex Able to Meet the Threats of the 21st Century,
DOE/NA-0013, October 2006.
52
U.S. Department of Energy. Secretary of Energy Advisory Board. Nuclear Weapons Complex Infrastructure Task
Force. Recommendations for the Nuclear Weapons Complex of the Future, 2005.
53
Ibid., p. 14.
54
DOE announced this decision in “Notice of Intent to Prepare a Supplement to the Stockpile Stewardship and
Management Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement—Complex 2030,” in U.S. National Archives and
Records Administration. Office of the Federal Register. Federal Register, October 19, 2006, p. 61731-61736.
55
Letter from David L. Hobson, Chairman, Energy and Water Development Appropriations Subcommittee, to Samuel
W. Bodman, Secretary of Energy, November 16, 2006.
56
U.S. Department of Energy. National Nuclear Security Administration. Office of Defense Programs. Report on the
Plan for Transformation of the National Nuclear Security Administration Nuclear Weapons Complex, January 31,
2007, p. iii.
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Representative Peter Visclosky, Chairman of the Energy and Water Development Appropriations
Subcommittee, also expressed concerns about the link between RRW and Complex
transformation:
I am also troubled by the apparent unbridled enthusiasm of the nuclear weapons complex
over the Reliable Replacement Warhead and wish I saw that same enthusiasm replicated, as
far as their dedication to downsizing the complex.... The department [DOE] will have to
develop a modernization plan that is near-term and demonstrates a recognition that the longterm requirements of the nuclear weapons complex are tied to a much smaller nuclear
stockpile.57
NNSA announced a revised plan for Complex reconfiguration, “Complex Transformation,” in
December 2007. NNSA stated that this plan would consolidate nuclear materials within the
Complex, close many buildings, reduce the footprint of the Complex by as much as one-third,
employ fewer workers, and dismantle warheads faster.58 The link to RRW, though, seems less
clear. As discussed below, Congress provided no NNSA funds for RRW for FY2008. NNSA
stated that Complex Transformation “is independent of whether [the nuclear] stockpile consists of
legacy designs or Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) concept designs.”59
RRW Program Developments
Representatives of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the armed services, and NNSA
participate in the Nuclear Weapons Council, which under 10 U.S.C. 179 coordinates their efforts
in this area. The council approved forming a DOD-DOE Project Officers Group (POG) for the
RRW program in March 2005. According to NNSA, the POG is composed of representatives of
NNSA, the nuclear weapon labs (Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore, and Sandia), the Office of
the Secretary of Defense, the U.S. Strategic Command, the Navy, the Air Force, and Lockheed
Martin Space Systems Company.60 There are also observers from the Office of the Chief of Naval
Operations, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, and three nuclear weapon plants (Kansas City,
Pantex, and Y-12).61 In practice, POGs do not take votes, so members and observers participate
on an equal footing. The Nuclear Weapons Council tasked the POG to conduct an 18-month
design competition, which started with the first POG meeting in May 2005. In the competition,
two teams—Los Alamos and Sandia’s New Mexico branch, and Lawrence Livermore and
Sandia’s California branch—were tasked to provide warhead designs consistent with RRW
program objectives. The council set the terms of reference for the designs in a memorandum to
57
U.S. Congress. House. Committee on Appropriations. Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development. Hearing on
DOE’s FY2008 budget for NNSA programs, March 29, 2007.
58
U.S. Department of Energy. National Nuclear Security Administration. “NNSA Releases Draft Plan to Transform
Nuclear Weapons Complex,” press release, December 18, 2007, p. 2. See also Walter Pincus, “Administration Plans to
Shrink U.S. Nuclear Arms Program,” Washington Post, December 19, 2007, p. 1. The Draft Complex Transformation
Supplemental Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement, released in January 2008, is available at
http://www.complextransformationspeis.com/project.html.
59
Department of Energy, FY2009 Congressional Budget Request, vol. 1, p. 18.
60
Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company, a subsidiary of Lockheed Martin Corporation, and its predecessor
organizations have developed and manufactured all U.S. SLBMs. This company is on the POG to provide expertise on
compatibility of candidate SLBM replacement warhead designs with their delivery system, Trident II missiles.
61
The Savannah River Site, another nuclear weapons plant, is not involved in the POG because it does not design
warhead components; its role is to supply tritium for warheads.
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the POG. DOD requested that the study be done as a competition between the two teams rather
than as a collaboration, according to NNSA.
By February 2006, the two teams had become fully confident that their designs would meet
military requirements, would not require nuclear testing to certify, and would meet other criteria
including ease of manufacturing, reduction in the use of hazardous and exotic materials, and
significantly enhanced safety and use control. The teams completed their preliminary designs in
March 2006, and released their designs to the competing team. Over the next few months, the
labs, POG, and NNSA reviewed and analyzed candidate design concepts. On November 30, 2006,
the POG briefed the council on RRW, and the council determined that RRW “is feasible as a
strategy for sustaining the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile for the long-term without
underground nuclear testing.” According to a December 1 press release, the council was expected
to select a preferred design “in the next few weeks.”62 On March 2, 2007, NNSA announced that
the Nuclear Weapons Council had selected the California team’s design. According to NNSA,
The two nuclear weapons laboratories both submitted designs that fully met all RRW
requirements. However, [Acting NNSA Administrator Thomas] D’Agostino noted that
higher confidence in the ability to certify the Livermore design without underground testing
was the primary reason for its selection. That design was more closely tied to previous
underground testing.63
The competing designs were for a submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) replacement
warhead. This was consistent with a statement in a House Armed Services Committee report: “the
committee encourages the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy to focus initial
Reliable Replacement Warhead efforts on replacement warheads for Submarine Launched
Ballistic Missiles.”64 Specifically, the designs sought to provide the military capability of the W76
warhead. In particular, as General James Cartwright, USMC, then Commander of the U.S.
Strategic Command, stated in 2007, the yield of this RRW would be within 1% or 2% of that of
the W76.65 Because of this SLBM focus, the Navy is the POG chair, and the Air Force is co-chair.
At the same time, the designs were made so that they can also be used on land-based
intercontinental ballistic missiles. In this way, the RRW could serve as a backup in case ICBM
warheads encountered a problem. This approach could permit reducing the number of warhead
types, meeting an objective in the House Appropriations Committee’s energy and water report: “A
more reliable replacement warhead will allow long-term savings by phasing out the multiple
redundant Cold War warhead designs that require maintaining multiple obsolete production
technologies to maintain the older warheads.”66
62
U.S. Department of Energy. National Nuclear Security Administration. “Nuclear Weapons Officials Agree to Pursue
RRW Strategy.” Press release, December 1, 2006.
63
U.S. Department of Energy. National Nuclear Security Administration. “Design Selected for Reliable Replacement
Warhead.” Press release, March 2, 2007.
64
U.S. Congress, House Committee on Armed Services, National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2006,
H.Rept. 109-89, to accompany H.R. 1815, 109th Cong., 1st sess., 2005, p. 464.
65
U.S. Congress. House. Committee on Armed Services. Subcommittee on Strategic Forces. Hearing on U.S. Strategic
Command, 110th Congress, 1st Session, March 8, 2007, transcript by CQ Transcriptions.
66
U.S. Congress, House Committee on Appropriations, Energy and Water Development Appropriations Bill, 2006,
H.Rept. 109-86, to accompany H.R. 2419, 109th Cong., 1st sess., 2005, p. 130.
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NNSA requested $88.8 million for FY2008, with most of the funds to be used for a design
definition and cost study. The study was to be completed by the end of 2007.67 The FY2007
National Defense Authorization Act (P.L. 109-364, Section 3111) set as an objective having the
first production unit (FPU, the first complete warhead from a production line certified for
deployment) of RRW in 2012, and NNSA stated in April 2007 that 2012 remained its target date
for FPU. However, a Nuclear Weapons Council memorandum of March 2007 stated, “Given the
level of maturity of the [RRW] design effort to date, our planning target for the First Production
Unit, is 2014 plus or minus two years.”68 Each year, it would be up to Congress to decide whether
to fund the program as requested, modify it, or cancel it.
RRW would involve plants as well as labs. The plants involved in RRW (Kansas City, Pantex,
and Y-12) provided the labs with design information beginning at an early stage. They worked
with the labs and NNSA to identify options for manufacturing processes and infrastructure
transformation, such as steering the labs away from hard-to-manufacture designs. The
contribution of the plants would change over time as the designs became more mature, at which
time designers would be in a position to accept detailed recommendations on manufacturing from
the plants. The results of this work, NNSA states, would be incorporated in the design and cost
study. This role of the plants is in keeping with numerous congressional statements that ease and
safety of manufacture, cost savings, and reduction of hazardous materials are goals of RRW.
As of November 2007, the Navy-led RRW POG was conducting a Phase 2A design definition and
cost study. The Lawrence Livermore, Los Alamos, and Sandia National Laboratories were
working within the POG study to refine the design, review tradeoff options, plan the potential
development program, and estimate costs of the design.69
The FY2008 Consolidated Appropriations Act, P.L. 110-161, eliminated funds for RRW. When it
was signed into law (December 26, 2007), NNSA instructed the laboratories to cease all technical
work on RRW and to document the work done to that point so it would be available for use. In
fact, the congressionally mandated Advanced Certification Campaign is currently drawing on this
work. 70 As specified in P.L. 110-161, this campaign will address means of increasing confidence
in certification of warheads through improved peer review, refinement of computer models,
improved understanding of surety mechanisms and failure modes, and the like. The FY2009 and
FY2010 requests and congressional action on them are discussed below.
Congressional Action on the FY2006 RRW Request
Consistent with congressional action in FY2005, NNSA requested $9.4 million for RRW for
FY2006.71 The request stated that the program “is to demonstrate the feasibility of developing
67
U.S. Department of Defense and Department of Energy. Nuclear Weapons Council. Memorandum for the Nuclear
Weapons Council, “Reliable Replacement Warhead 1 (RRW-1) Path Forward,” by Kenneth Krieg, Chairman, March
18, 2007.
68
Ibid., attachment by RADM S.E, Johnson, U.S. Navy, and T. D’Agostino, NNSA.
69
Information provided by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, November 30, 2007.
70
Information provided by K. Henry O’Brien, RRW Program Manager, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory,
March 6, 2008.
71
U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Management, Budget, and Evaluation/CFO, FY2006 Congressional Budget
Request, vol. I, National Nuclear Security Administration, DOE/ME-0046, February 2005, p. 68. (Hereafter cited as
Department of Energy, FY2006 Congressional Budget Request, vol. I.)
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reliable replacement components that are producible and certifiable for the existing stockpile. The
initial focus will be to provide cost and schedule efficient replacement pits (see Appendix) that
can be certified without Underground Tests.”72
The House Appropriations Committee reported the FY2006 Energy and Water Development
Appropriations Bill, H.R. 2419, on May 18, 2005 (H.Rept. 109-86). The bill passed the House,
416-13, on May 24 with no amendments to the Weapons Activities section. In its report, the
committee offered a “qualified endorsement” of RRW “contingent on the intent of the program
being solely to meet the current military characteristics and requirements of the existing
stockpile.” (p. 128) (Page numbers in this section refer to H.Rept. 109-86.) It did not endorse
RRW if it produces new weapons for new military missions. (p. 128)
The committee saw RRW as part of a new Sustainable Stockpile Initiative, in which DOE would
“develop an integrated RRW implementation plan that challenges the [nuclear weapons] complex
to produce a RRW certifiable design while implementing an accelerated warhead dismantlement
program and an infrastructure reconfiguration proposal that maximizes special nuclear material
[essentially, highly enriched uranium and weapons-grade plutonium] consolidation.” (p. 128)
The committee focused on RRW throughout its discussion of Weapons Activities, linked RRW to
many Weapons Activities programs, and used the potential of RRW as the rationale to reduce or
delay several requested programs. Its many actions and statements on RRW include the
following:
72
•
“The RRW weapon will be designed for ease of manufacturing, maintenance,
dismantlement, and certification without nuclear testing, allowing the NNSA to
transition the weapons complex away from a large, expensive Cold War relic into
a smaller, more efficient modern complex. A more reliable replacement warhead
will allow long-term savings by phasing out the multiple redundant Cold War
warhead designs that require maintaining multiple obsolete production
technologies to maintain the older warheads.” (p. 128)
•
“The Committee directs the Secretary of Energy to establish a Federal Advisory
Committee on the Reliable Replacement Warhead initiative.... ” (p. 128)
•
A rebaselined LEP, an RRW program plan, and a dismantlement plan would
provide “reliable nuclear deterrence” with a stockpile after 2025 that is
significantly smaller than the stockpile level planned for 2012. As a result, “the
current Life Extension Plans will be scoped back to lower levels and the
resources will be redeployed to support the Sustainable Stockpile Initiative.”
Accordingly, the committee recommended reducing the budget request for
Directed Stockpile Work, a major category of Weapons Activities that directly
supports weapons in the stockpile, by $137.3 million to $1,283.7 million. (p. 129)
•
The committee recommended increasing RRW funding from $9.4 million to
$25.0 million “to accelerate the planning effort to initiative a competition
between the NNSA weapons laboratories to develop the design for the RRW reengineered and remanufactured warhead.” (p. 130)
Department of Energy, FY2006 Congressional Budget Request, Vol. I, p. 82.
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•
The committee recommended eliminating the $4.0 million requested to study the
Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator, in part because it “threatens Congressional and
public support for sustainable stockpile initiatives that will actually provide longterm security and deterrent value for the Nation.” (p. 131)
•
Test Readiness is a program to enable the resumption of nuclear testing at
Nevada Test Site should that be deemed necessary. Last year, the committee
opposed a move to reduce the test readiness posture (the time between a
presidential decision to test and the conduct of the test) from 24 to 18 months,
this year, it added RRW to the rationale against an 18-month posture: “The
initiation of the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) program designed to
provide for the continuance of the existing moratorium on underground nuclear
testing by insuring the long-term reliability of the nuclear weapons stockpile
obviates any reason to move to a provocative 18-month test readiness posture.”
(p. 132) Accordingly, it recommended reducing Test Readiness funds from $25.0
million to $15.0 million.
•
The committee noted that “Congressional testimony by NNSA officials is
beginning to erode the confidence of the Committee that the Science-based
Stockpile Stewardship is performing as advertised.” Accordingly, it “redirects
ASCI [Advanced Simulation and Computing] funding to maintain current life
extension production capabilities pending the initiation of the Reliable
Replacement Warhead program” and recommended reducing funding from
$660.8 million to $500.8 million. (pp. 133-134)
•
The committee recommended eliminating the $7.7 million requested for the
Modern Pit Facility (see Appendix). It recommended that “NNSA focus its
efforts on how best to lengthen the life of the stockpile and minimize the need for
an enormously expensive infrastructure facility until the long-term strategy for
the physical infrastructure of the weapons complex has incorporated the Reliable
Replacement Warhead strategy.... ” (p. 134)
•
The committee recommended eliminating the $55.0 million requested for
construction of the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Facility Replacement
(CMRR) at Los Alamos. “Construction at the CMRR facility should be delayed
until the Department [of Energy] determines the long-term plan for developing
the responsive infrastructure required to maintain the nation’s existing nuclear
stockpile and support replacement production anticipated for the RRW
initiative.” (p. 136)
The House Armed Services Committee reported the FY2006 National Defense Authorization Bill,
H.R. 1815, on May 20 (H.Rept. 109-89). The bill passed the House, 390-39, on May 25 with no
amendments concerning RRW. The committee recommended providing the amount requested for
RRW. The report stated: “The committee firmly believes that the nation must ensure that the
nuclear stockpile remains reliable, safe, and secure and that national security requires
transforming the Cold War-era nuclear complex. Thus, the committee supports the Reliable
Replacement Warhead program. To clearly articulate the congressional intent underlying this
program authorization, the committee further states the key goals of the program.” (H.Rept. 10989, p. 463) In Section 3111 of H.R. 1815, the committee required the Secretary of Energy, in
consultation with the Secretary of Defense, to carry out the RRW program, and spelled out its
objectives for RRW:
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(b) Objectives- The objectives of the Reliable Replacement Warhead program shall be—
(1) to increase the reliability, safety, and security of the United States nuclear weapons
stockpile;
(2) to further reduce the likelihood of the resumption of nuclear testing;
(3) to remain consistent with basic design parameters by using, to the extent practicable,
components that are well understood or are certifiable without the need to resume
underground nuclear testing;
(4) to ensure that the United States develops a nuclear weapons infrastructure that can
respond to unforeseen problems, to include the ability to produce replacement warheads that
are safer to manufacture, more cost-effective to produce, and less costly to maintain than
existing warheads;
(5) to achieve reductions in the future size of the nuclear weapons stockpile based on
increased reliability of the reliable replacement warheads;
(6) to use the design, certification, and production expertise resident in the nuclear complex
to develop reliable replacement components to fulfill current mission requirements of the
existing stockpile; and
(7) to serve as a complement to, and potentially a more cost-effective and reliable long-term
replacement for, the current Stockpile Life Extension Programs.
The committee’s report (pp. 464-465) described these objectives in more detail. Section 3111 of
H.R. 1815 also required the Nuclear Weapons Council to submit an interim report on RRW by
March 1, 2006, and a final report by March 1, 2007. The final report is to assess characteristics of
warheads to replace existing ones; discuss the relationship of RRW within SSP and its impact on
LEPs; assess the extent to which RRW, if successful, could lead to a reduction in warhead
numbers; discuss RRW design criteria that will minimize the likelihood of nuclear testing;
describe the infrastructure needed to support RRW; and summarize how funds will be used.
Of the committee’s 28 Democratic members, 23 signed a statement of additional views (H.Rept.
109-89, pp. 511-512). According to the statement, “Democrats are willing to explore the concept
of the RRW program, but do not yet embrace it.” They felt that, to merit support, RRW must
reduce or eliminate the need for nuclear testing, lead to dramatic reductions in the arsenal, avoid
introducing new mission or weapon requirements, deemphasize nuclear weapons’ military utility,
increase nuclear security, and “[lead] to ratification and entry into force of the Comprehensive
Test Ban Treaty.” On the latter point, they maintained that a successful RRW program should
erase the main rationale against the treaty, uncertainty about the reliability of the nuclear arsenal.
Therefore, “[w]e believe strongly that ratification of the CTBT [Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty]
is the logical end result of a successful RRW program.... ”
The Senate Armed Services Committee reported the FY2006 National Defense Authorization
Bill, S. 1042, on May 17.73 It recommended providing the amount requested for RRW. It noted
73
Material in this paragraph is from U.S. Congress, Senate Committee on Armed Services, National Defense
Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2006, report to accompany S. 1042, 109th Cong., 1st sess., S.Rept. 109-69,
(Washington: GPO, 2005), p. 482.
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that NNSA Administrator Brooks had presented several goals for RRW in his testimony to the
committee on April 4:
•
increasing warhead security and reliability;
•
developing replacement components that can be manufactured more easily, using
materials that are more readily available and more environmentally benign;
•
developing replacement components that provide high confidence in warhead
safety and reliability;
•
developing these components on a schedule that would reduce the need to
conduct a nuclear test to address a reliability problem;
•
reducing the cost and increasing the responsiveness of the infrastructure; and
•
increasing confidence in the stockpile enough to permit reductions in nondeployed warheads.
“The committee supports these goals and this modest investment in feasibility studies.” It
required NNSA’s Administrator to submit a report to the congressional defense committees by
February 6, 2006, “describing the activities undertaken or planned for any RRW funding in fiscal
years 2005, 2006, and 2007.” The bill passed the Senate, 98-0, on November 15. The reporting
requirement was superseded by a similar requirement in the conference bill.
The defense authorization conference bill, as reported (H.Rept. 109-360) December 8, included
the House provision on RRW, somewhat revised, as Section 3111 of the conference bill.
Conferees stated:
The conferees support the goal of continuing to ensure that the nuclear weapons stockpile
remains safe, secure, and reliable. The conferees believe that the Reliable Replacement
Warhead program is essential to the achievement of this goal and support its establishment
with the objectives as defined in the provision [section 3111], and as further described in the
committee reports of the Committees on Armed Services of the Senate and the House of
Representatives for fiscal year 2006.74
The measure was signed into law (P.L. 109-163) January 6, 2006.
The Senate Appropriations Committee reported H.R. 2419 on June 16.75 It endorsed RRW and
recommended increasing its funding above the FY2006 request.
The Committee recognizes that RRW is early in its development and will not significantly
alter the near-term plans for stockpile support such as LEPs, but NNSA is encouraged to
move aggressively to incorporate benefits from RRW into the stockpile as soon as possible.
The Committee recommends $25,351,000 for RRW to accelerate the planning, development
and design for a comprehensive RRW strategy that improves the reliability, longevity and
certifiability of existing weapons and their components.76
74
U.S. Congress. Committee of Conference, National Defense Authorization Act, conference report to accompany H.R.
1815, 109th Cong., 1st sess., H.Rept. 109-360, 2005, p. 900.
75
U.S. Congress, Senate Committee on Armed Services. Energy and Water Appropriations Bill, 2006, S.Rept. 109-84,
to accompany H.R. 2419. 109th Cong., 1st sess., 2005.
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The bill passed the Senate, 92-3, on July 1, with no change to the RRW provision.
Conferees on the energy and water bill reported H.R. 2419 (H.Rept. 109-275) on November 7,
2005. The House agreed to the conference bill, 399-17, on November 9, and the Senate agreed to
it, 84-4, on November 14. The President signed it into law (P.L. 109-103) November 19. The bill
provides $25.0 million for RRW. Conferees wanted the Complex to use various resources “to
support a Nuclear Weapons Council determination in November 2006.”77 This determination
would be a decision on which design to use for the first reliable replacement warhead. Conferees
also emphasized goals and requirements of the RRW program:
The conferees reiterate the direction provided in fiscal year 2005 that any weapon design
work done under the RRW program must stay within the military requirements of the
existing deployed stockpile and any new weapon design must stay within the design
parameters validated by past nuclear tests. The conferees expect the NNSA to build on the
success of science-based stockpile stewardship to improve manufacturing practices, lower
costs and increase performance margins, to support the Administration’s decision to
significantly reduce the size of the U.S. nuclear stockpile.78
In sum, Congress supported RRW in various ways in the FY2006 budget cycle. Both Armed
Services Committees recommended fully funding the request, both Appropriations Committees
recommended a sharp increase in RRW funding, and Congress appropriated $25.0 million,
reduced to $24.75 million by a rescission.79 The four committees saw RRW as a way to achieve a
wide range of goals for the nuclear weapons program, spelled out many of these goals in
legislation and in committee reports, and required several reports to track the status of RRW.
Congressional Action on the FY2007 RRW Request
NNSA’s FY2007 budget document80 evidenced a program that gained momentum in the
preceding year. The request for RRW was $27.7 million, up from $24.8 million for FY2006. (p.
71) (Page numbers in parentheses in the next few paragraphs refer to NNSA’s FY2007 budget
document.) Outyear budgets are: FY2008, $14.6 million; FY2009, $29.7 million; FY2010, $29.6
million; and FY2011, $28.7 million. (p. 72) The FY2006 budget request document contained few
references to RRW because the program received its first funding just two months before that
document was released. In contrast, the FY2007 document contains 30 or more references to
RRW that show many sites and programs linked to RRW. Programs are discussed below; sites
include Kansas City Plant (p. 620), Livermore (p. 627), Los Alamos (p. 635), Pantex (p. 646),
Sandia (p. 651), and Y-12 (p. 665). What emerges is a program that is drawing on many resources
(...continued)
76
Ibid., p. 155.
U.S. Congress. Committee of Conference, Making Appropriations for Energy and Water Development for the Fiscal
Year Ending September 30, 2006, and for Other Purposes, H.Rept. 109-275, to accompany H.R. 2419. 109th Cong., 1st
sess., 2005, pp. 158-159.
78
Ibid., p. 159.
79
“The FY2006 [amount] includes an across-the-board rescission of 1 percent in accordance with the Department of
Defense Appropriations Act, 2006, P.L. 109-148.” U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Chief Financial Officer,
FY2007 Congressional Budget Request, vol. 1, National Nuclear Security Administration, DOE/CF-002, February
2006, p. 71.
80
Department of Energy, FY2007 Congressional Budget Request, vol. 1.
77
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of the Complex beyond the program’s own budget. This is in accord with a directive in the
FY2006 energy and water conference report:
The conferees expect that the laboratories and plants will also utilize the existing resources in
the Directed Stockpile, Campaigns, and Readiness in Technical Base and Facilities accounts
[the three largest accounts of the Stockpile Stewardship program] where applicable to further
the RRW design options to support a Nuclear Weapons Council determination in November
2006.81
Various programs expect to support RRW in many ways:
•
“During the period FY2007-2011, the Science Campaign will endeavor to make
significant progress toward providing the experimental data and certification
methodologies necessary to support the current stockpile workload and future
requirements that will include the Reliable Replacement Warhead and reflect an
evolving stockpile.” (p. 96)
•
Within the Dynamic Materials Properties program of the Science Campaign, “A
second principal effort is to characterize the reaction kinetics and dynamics of
high explosives, with special emphasis on improving the modeling of insensitive
high explosives that will be used in replacement warheads to provide improved
safety and surety.” (p. 100)
•
Within the Engineering Campaign, Enhanced Surveillance deliverables in the
outyears are planned to support Reliable Replacement Warhead components
assessment” (p. 116) and the Enhanced Surety program “will support studies
such as the Reliable Replacement Warhead.” (p. 118)
•
“Only through ASC [the Advanced Simulation and Computing Campaign]
simulations can National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) determine the
effects of changes to current systems as well as margins and uncertainties in
future and untested systems, such as the RRW.” (p. 176)
•
Within the Pit Manufacturing and Certification Campaign, “Additional personnel
will be hired and additional equipment procured to support manufacture of
existing pit types (or a RRW pit),” and Los Alamos and Livermore “will continue
planning and development of integral experiments in FY2007 in support of
certification of reliable replacement warhead pits.” (p. 191)
The budget document offers many details of the proposed program.
The Nuclear Weapons Council (NWC) approved the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW)
Feasibility Study which began in May 2005, and is expected to take 18 months to complete.
The goal of the RRW Study is to identify designs that will sustain long term confidence in a
safe, secure and reliable stockpile and enable transformation to a responsive nuclear weapon
infrastructure. The Joint DOE/DOD RRW Project Officer’s Group (POG) was tasked to
oversee a laboratory design competition for a RRW warhead with the FPU [first production
unit] goal of FY 2012. The POG will assess technical feasibility including certification
without nuclear testing, design definition, manufacturing, and an initial cost assessment to
determine whether the proposed candidates will meet the RRW study objectives and
81
Committee of Conference, Making Appropriations for Energy and Water Development for the Fiscal Year Ending
September 30, 2006 ... , H.Rept. 109-275, pp. 158-159.
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requirements. At the end of the study, the POG will establish the preferred RRW design
options and recommendations to the NWC Standing and Safety Committee (NWCSSC) and
NWC....
In FY 2007 specific activities include: with NWC approval, proceed with detailed design and
preliminary cost estimates of RRW concepts to confirm that RRW designs provide surety
enhancements, can be certified without nuclear testing, are cost-effective, and will support
both stockpile and infrastructure transformation. (83)
Further, “The RRW budget will increase when the RRW option is selected and starts development
and production engineering activities.” (76)
The John Warner National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2007, P.L. 109-364 (H.R.
5122), increased the amount requested by $20.0 million to support a second RRW design
competition. It required NNSA to submit a plan for transform the Complex to achieve a
responsive infrastructure by 2030 (Section 3111), with a report on the plan due February 1, 2007.
An objective of the plan is “To prepare to produce replacement warheads under the Reliable
Replacement Warhead program at a rate necessary to meet future stockpile requirements,
commencing with a first production unit in 2012 and achieving steady-state production using
modern manufacturing processes by 2025.” It required (Section 3116) NNSA to enter into an
arrangement with the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) to have the latter prepare a study of
Quantification of Margins and Uncertainties, a method to assess the nuclear stockpile. The study
is to evaluate, among other things, “Whether the application of the quantification of margins and
uncertainty used for annual assessments and certification of the nuclear weapons stockpile can be
applied to the planned Reliable Replacement Warhead program so as to carry out the objective of
that program to reduce the likelihood of the resumption of underground testing of nuclear
weapons.” As of June 2008, NAS planned to deliver a classified version to DOE and Congress in
July and planned to make an unclassified version available to the public as soon as possible
thereafter. NAS held the ninth meeting for this project at Los Alamos National Laboratory on
August 13-15.82 NAS also plans to do a phase 2 study on the use of archived underground nuclear
test data for QMU.83
The House Appropriations Committee “supports the RRW, but only if it is part of a larger
package of more comprehensive weapons complex reforms.”84 It criticized NNSA’s Complex
2030 plan as basically modernization in place, and favored a plan by a DOE task force.85 It
recommended $52.7 million for RRW, an increase of $25.0 million, but fenced the latter amount
until DOE provides the committee with a “comprehensive complex transformation plan.”86 It
directed NNSA to engage the JASON Defense Advisory Group to “evaluate the competing RRW
designs” and to analyze “the feasibility of the fundamental premise of the RRW initiative that a
new nuclear warhead can be designed and produced and certified for use and deployed as an
82
National Academy of Sciences, “Project Information,” at http://www8.nationalacademies.org/cp/projectview.aspx?
key=48780.
83
Information provided by National Academy of Sciences, June 16, 2008.
84
U.S. Congress. House Committee on Appropriations. Energy and Water Development Appropriations Bill, 2007,
H.Rept. 109-474 to accompany H.R. 5427, 109th Cong., 2nd sess., 2006, p. 108.
85
Ibid., p. 107. For the task force plan, see U.S. Department of Energy. Secretary of Energy Advisory Board. Nuclear
Weapons Complex Infrastructure Task Force. Recommendations for the Nuclear Weapons Complex of the Future,
2005.
86
House Committee on Appropriations, Energy and Water Development Appropriations Bill, 2007, p. 108, 111.
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operationally-deployed nuclear weapon without undergoing an underground nuclear test.”87 The
report is due March 31, 2007. Professor Roy Schwitters, Chair of the JASON Steering
Committee, met with House Appropriations Committee staff and NNSA officials to set a schedule
for the JASON study; the schedule calls for a preliminary report to be submitted to NNSA by
March 1, 2007, an executive summary of the final report by August 1, 2007, and the final report
by October 1, 2007.88 (As noted, the executive summary was transmitted on September 28 and
the final report by October 1.) The House passed the bill, 404-20, on May 24, 2006, with no
amendments to RRW provisions.
The Senate Appropriations Committee recommended $62.7 million for RRW.
The Committee ... recognizes the need to protect against unforeseen challenges and urges the
NNSA to accelerate the transition to a responsive infrastructure and to proceed expeditiously
with the RRW design. The Committee also realizes that a dual track strategy of supporting
eight legacy systems and a RRW program is not sustainable and therefore has taken steps in
this legislation to reduce the number of legacy systems and begin the replacement with RRW
designs. The Committee has also initiated a second design competition for another RRW
design....89
Regarding the second competition, the committee urged DOE and NNSA to “expand the RRW
program immediately to ensure that our strategic forces have at least two different certified RRW
warheads” to guard against failure in one system. It recommended using $10.0 million for this
second competition, with a first production unit goal of 2014,90 and adding $4.0 million to
“accelerate the deployment” of surveillance devices into the RRW design.91 This bill was placed
on the Senate legislative calendar on June 29, but the Senate took no further action on it.
Congress did not pass a separate FY2007 Energy and Water Development Appropriations Act, but
instead included these funds in a continuing resolution (P.L. 110-5, February 15, 2007) to fund
energy and water and many other programs through the balance of FY2007. DOE’s FY2007
operating plan includes $35.8 million for RRW.
Congressional Action on the FY2008 RRW Request
The President submitted his FY2008 budget request to Congress on February 5, 2007. The NNSA
request document presents details of the DOD-NNSA plan for RRW. In November 2006,92
according to the document,
87
Ibid., p. 109-110.
88
Information provided by Roy Schwitters, S.W. Richardson Foundation Regental Professor of Physics, University of
Texas at Austin, and Chair of the JASON Steering Committee, email, January 29, 2007.
89
U.S. Congress. Senate Committee on Appropriations. Energy and Water Appropriations Bill, 2007, S.Rept. 109-274
to accompany H.R. 5427, 109th Cong., 2nd sess., 2006, p. 146.
90
Ibid., p. 148.
91
Ibid., p. 151.
92
U.S. Department of Energy. Office of Chief Financial Officer. FY 2008 Congressional Budget Request. Volume 1,
National Nuclear Security Administration. DOE/CF-014, February 2007, p. 19. Available at http://www.mbe.doe.gov/
budget/08budget/Content/Volumes/Vol_1_NNSA.pdf.
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the NWC [Nuclear Weapons Council] decided that the RRW for submarine launched
ballistic missiles is feasible and should proceed to complete a Phase 2A design definition and
cost study. In addition, the NWC determined that the RRW is to be adopted as the strategy
for maintaining a long term safe, secure and reliable nuclear deterrent and as such also
directed the initiation of a conceptual study for an additional RRW design.93
The document also stated that the
shift in strategy from a Life Extension Program to a RRW program will require substantial
planning and resource realignments between the Departments of Defense and Energy that
will not be completed in time for the FY 2008 budget submission. When planning is
complete, expected at the end of FY 2007, an RRW budget adjustment will be requested.94
It further stated that the budget approach for FY2008 for transforming the nuclear stockpile
included the following goal: “Maintain a relatively level DSW [Directed Stockpile Work] budget
with RRW development funded through reductions in resources required to support legacy
weapons.”95
While NNSA’s RRW budget figures are thus subject to revision, the projected figures as
presented are as follows (in millions): FY2008, $88.769; FY2009, $99.787; FY2010, $109.240;
FY2011, $167.358; and FY2012, $179.933.96 In addition, the Navy requests $30.0 million for
FY2008, and estimates a request of $50.0 million for FY2009, for RRW.97 These figures are DOD
funds to develop a cost estimate and to “[c]ontinue the RRW Program into Phase 3 Engineering
Development, when approved by Congress and the Nuclear Weapons Council.”98 Examples of
this work for RRW include development of an arming, fuzing, and firing system and of “ancillary
reentry body types,” as well as integration of RRW with the Trident II (D5) missile that will carry
the RRW.99 The Navy plans to award contracts for at least $29.5 million of the FY2008 request in
October 2007, and for at least $49.0 million of the FY2009 request in October 2008.100 While
keeping in mind NNSA’s caveats, the projected total for RRW in the NNSA budget for FY2008FY2012 and the Navy budget for FY2008-FY2009 is $725.1 million.
The House Armed Services Committee’s Strategic Forces Subcommittee marked up its portion of
H.R. 1585, the FY2008 defense authorization bill, on May 2, 2007. The full committee retained
the subcommittee’s provisions relating to RRW and completed its markup May 9. The rule for
93
Ibid., p. 88.
Ibid., p. 19.
95
Ibid., p. 64. Directed Stockpile Work, or DSW, is the part of the Weapons Activities budget that involves work
directly on nuclear weapons in the stockpile, such as monitoring their condition; maintaining them through repairs,
refurbishment, life extension, and modifications; R&D in support of specific warheads; and dismantlement. “Legacy
weapons” are those currently in the stockpile, which were designed, tested, manufactured, and deployed during the
Cold War; the Life Extension Program is one of the programs within the Stockpile Stewardship Program that is used to
maintain them.
96
Ibid., pp. 75, 76.
97
U.S. Department of the Navy. Fiscal Year (FY) 2008/2009 Budget Estimates: Justification of Estimates, Research,
Development, Test & Evaluation, Navy, Budget Activity 7, February 2007, at http://www.finance.hq.navy.mil/fmb/
08pres/rdten/RDTEN_ba7_book.pdf, pages (using pdf numbers) 24-25, 40-42.
98
Ibid., pdf p. 41.
99
Ibid.
100
Ibid., pdf p. 42.
94
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considering the bill (H.Res. 403, H.Rept. 110-151) did not make in order any amendments
regarding RRW. H.R. 1585 passed the House, 397-27, on May 17 (roll no. 373).
The bill as passed by the House included several provisions relevant to RRW:
•
A congressional commission on U.S. strategic posture (Section 1046). Among
other things, the commission would recommend a strategic posture and nuclear
weapons strategy. It would include the force structure to support the strategy, “the
number of nuclear weapons required to support the strategy, including the
number of replacement warheads required, if any,” an analysis of the
effectiveness of the strategy, and the size of the Complex needed to support the
strategy. The committee stated in its report that it “believes that there is an urgent
need for a debate over the role of nuclear weapons in U.S. strategic posture ... the
Administration ... has not articulated its views on the role of nuclear weapons in
U.S. strategic posture since issuance of the [Nuclear Posture Review, i.e., at the
end of 2001]. The committee believes clear policy objectives should be
established before Congress commits to ambitious new programs.”101 The
commission’s report would be due by December 1, 2008.
•
A reduction in the Navy’s request for RRW funds from $30.0 million to $5.0
million. The committee noted (p. 191) that the Navy said the funds would permit
continuing RRW into Phase 3 engineering development (see below), but “[t]he
committee does not support moving into Phase 3 activities during fiscal year
2008, but understands that the Navy intends to pursue better design definition [of
RRW] as part of the Phase 2a study during fiscal year 2008.”
•
A reduction in NNSA’s RRW funds, from $88.8 million requested to $68.8
million (pp. 528-529). The committee noted that P.L. 109-163, the FY2006
National Defense Authorization Act, set several objectives for RRW, such as
increasing reliability, safety, and security of the nuclear stockpile, reducing the
likelihood of resumed nuclear testing, and using components that can be certified
without nuclear testing. “The committee believes it is too soon to judge whether
the RRW program can achieve these objectives ... the committee believes the
focus of the RRW program during fiscal year 2008 should be the analysis
necessary to describe in detail how the RRW program will achieve these
objectives.” Further, “[t]he committee supports establishing clear nuclear
weapons requirements before committing to the RRW program, and sees the
planned Phase 2a design review and cost study as consistent with this approach.”
Accordingly, the committee limited FY2008 NNSA RRW funds “for Phase 2a
study activities only.”
•
Elimination of funds ($24.9 million requested) for a Consolidated Plutonium
Center (CPC) (pp. 529-530). This facility would make pits. The committee “finds
that construction of a CPC is only required if the United States moves toward
large-scale production of pits. The committee does not believe the need for such
large scale processing has been established.”
101
U.S. Congress. House. Committee on Armed Services. National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008,
H.Rept. 110-146, to accompany H.R. 1585, 110th Congress, 1st Session, 2007, p. 390.
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•
A study on using existing pits for RRW (pp. 538-539). The committee felt that
the need for CPC had not been established in part because of the prospect of
reusing existing pits in RRWs. In testimony before the Strategic Forces
Subcommittee in March 2007, Thomas D’Agostino, then Acting Administrator of
NNSA, stated that existing pits might be suitable for use in RRW bombs but not
RRW ballistic missile warheads.102 The House-passed bill required NNSA, in
consultation with the Nuclear Weapons Council, to conduct the study, to be
completed by February 1, 2008. The study (section 3111 of H.R. 1585) would
assess the feasibility of pit reuse for RRW, whether it is more desirable to
remanufacture warheads with existing or with newly-manufactured pits, the
number of pits suitable for remanufacture, and “the extent to which
remanufacturing warheads with existing pits, as compared to remanufacturing
warheads with newly manufactured pits, would reduce future requirements for
new pit production.”
•
Eliminate funds for a B61 bomb life extension program (LEP). The prospect of
pit reuse figured into another committee action. The request contained $63.1
million for the B61 LEP account. The B61 is currently undergoing an LEP, but
NNSA planned to begin a Phase 6.2/Phase 6.2A study (see below) for another
LEP for the B61. However, “[t]he committee views the initiation of a new B61
LEP ... as unwarranted while the NNSA examines the feasibility of pit reuse for
the remanufacture of warheads.” Accordingly, it reduced the B61 LEP account by
$4.2 million and directed NNSA “to make no funds available for commencement
of the new B61 LEP.” (p. 530).
In its May 23 markup of the FY2008 Energy and Water Development Appropriations Bill, the
Energy and Water Development Subcommittee eliminated NNSA funds for RRW. (The
subcommittee has jurisdiction over RRW funds in the NNSA request but not in the Navy request.)
Subcommittee Chairman Peter Visclosky’s statement on the subcommittee’s markup included the
following:
REDUCING UNNEEDED NUCLEAR WEAPONS
Without question, there is a need for a comprehensive nuclear defense strategy and stockpile
plan to guide transformation and downsizing of the stockpile and nuclear weapons complex,
and until progress is made on this critical issue, there will be no new facilities or Reliable
Replacement Warhead. Only when a future nuclear weapons strategy is established can the
Department of Energy determine the requirements for the future nuclear weapons stockpile
and nuclear weapons complex plan.
Given the serious international and domestic consequences of the U.S. initiating a new
nuclear weapons production activity, it is critical that the administration lay out a
comprehensive course of action before funding is appropriated. Given the track record of
mismanagement at the agency for projects that have a plan, I don’t think it is asking too
much for a comprehensive nuclear strategy before we build a new nuclear weapon.103
102
U.S. Congress. House. Committee on Armed Services. Subcommittee on Strategic Forces. Hearing on the FY2008
budget request for DOE’s atomic energy program. Testimony of Thomas D’Agostino, Acting Administrator, NNSA,
March 20, 2007.
103
U.S. Congress. House Committee on Appropriations. Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development. “Fiscal
Year 2008 Energy and Water Development Appropriations Bill: Statement of Chairman Peter J. Visclosky,” May 23,
(continued...)
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The House Appropriations Committee marked up the bill on June 6.104 The committee bill
recommended eliminating all NNSA funds for RRW. The report expressed extreme displeasure at
changes in the program: “The Committee finds the RRW program the DoD and NNSA have
pursued at the direction of Congress goes far beyond the scope and purpose of the original
congressional language and intent.... The Committee is unconvinced that pursuing the RRW
design competition to a production phase is necessary at this time.” It expressed concern that this
program might impede nuclear nonproliferation:
A particularly troubling issue for the Committee related to the RRW proposal is the
contradictory U.S. policy position of demanding other nations give up their nuclear
ambitions while the U.S. aggressively pursues a program to build new nuclear warheads. The
Administration needs to develop a policy rationale that explains why the RRW program is
not contradictory and does not undermine our international nuclear nonproliferation goals.
The committee raised further concerns with the Administration’s rationale for the nuclear
weapons program and NNSA’s plan for the Complex. It stated that the RRW program and
Complex 2030 “are being proposed in a policy vacuum without any Administration statement on
the national security environment that the future nuclear deterrent is designed to address.”
Accordingly, “The Committee believes it is premature to proceed with further development of the
RRW or a significant nuclear complex modernization plan, until a three-part planning sequence is
completed.” This sequence has three elements: “a comprehensive nuclear defense and
nonproliferation strategy”; a detailed description translating that strategy into a “specific nuclear
stockpile”; and “a comprehensive, long-term expenditure plan, from fiscal year 2008 through
fiscal year 2030.... ” The Committee did not specify a due date for this plan, but “views
completion of this three-part planning sequence as a necessary condition before considering
additional funding for Complex 2030 and RRW activities.” The House passed the bill, 312-112
(roll no. 641), on July 17, leaving the RRW provisions unchanged.
The Senate Armed Services Committee’s National Defense Authorization Bill, S. 1547, would
reduce the Navy’s RRW request of $30.0 million by $15.0 million, the amount for support of
Phase 3. The committee’s report “recommends no funds for RRW activities beyond phase 2A in
fiscal year 2008.”105 The committee stated that in addition to $88.8 million that the NNSA request
labeled as RRW, the request contained RRW funds in other budget elements: Engineering
Campaigns, $86.4 million; Pit Manufacturing and Certification Campaign, $37.9 million; and
Readiness Campaign, $25.0 million, for a total of $238.1 million. The committee recommended
reducing this amount by $43.0 million and restricting FY2008 RRW work to Phase 2A and below.
“[T]he committee believes that many years of research are necessary before any such decision
[proceeding beyond Phase 2A] can be made or even meaningfully discussed.”106 Further, “The
RRW as envisioned by the NNSA and the NWC [Nuclear Weapons Council] would be a new
warhead.... As a new warhead, there are many policy questions, concerns, and issues that must be
raised, discussed, and resolved before any decision can be made to move to phase 3 or
(...continued)
2007, pp. 3-4, available at http://appropriations.house.gov/pdf/ViscloskyStatementFY2008SubC.pdf.
104
U.S. Congress. House Committee on Appropriations. Energy and Water Development Appropriations Bill, 2008.
110th Congress, 1st Session, 2007, unnumbered full committee print. Quotes in this paragraph are from ibid., pp. 93-98.
105
U.S. Congress. Senate. Committee on Armed Services. National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008,
S.Rept. 110-77 to accompany S. 1547, 110th Congress, 1st Session, 2007, p. 206.
106
Ibid., p. 624.
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beyond.”107 At the same time, “The committee believes that the technical work [on RRW] must
go forward apace with the policy discussion and before any decision on RRW development,
manufacturing, or deployment.”108
The committee discussed its policy concerns in detail. It stated,
The idea of a new nuclear warhead and leadership in nonproliferation are distinctly at odds in
the absence of additional steps and policies to reduce the reliance on nuclear weapons,
accelerate reductions in the size of the stockpile, formalize the moratorium on nuclear
weapons testing, strengthen the nonproliferation regime, and renew commitments to all
aspects of the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons.109
As part of this policy focus, Section 1061 of S. 1547 required a revised nuclear posture review, to
include, among other things, the role of nuclear forces, the relationship among deterrence policy,
targeting, and arms control, the nuclear delivery systems required, the nuclear weapons complex
required, and the stockpile required, “including any plans for replacing or modifying warheads.”
Section 3122 of S. 1547, “Sense of Congress on the Nuclear Nonproliferation Policy of the
United States and the Reliable Replacement Warhead,” is another part of the committee’s policy
focus. Under this section, it would be the sense of Congress that the United States should:
reaffirm its commitment to Article VI of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (discussed below),
initiate talks with Russia to reduce numbers of nuclear weapons, work with other nuclear weapon
states to “decrease reliance on, and the importance of, nuclear weapons,” and “formulate any
decision on whether to manufacture or deploy a reliable replacement warhead within the broader
context of the progress made by the United States toward achieving each of the goals described in
[this section].” Further, under Section 3122, “the Senate should ratify the Comprehensive
Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty.”
The Senate Appropriations Committee reported S. 1751, the Energy and Water Development
Appropriations Bill, on July 9.110 The report stated, “The Committee is divided on the Reliable
Replacement Warhead (RRW) program, but unified in its desire to review and discuss our
national strategic defense policy and the role of nuclear weapons in the post-cold war and postSeptember 11th world.” The committee recommended $66.0 million for NNSA for RRW in order
to complete Phase 2A. It made clear that it was not committed to proceeding with Phase 3 but
wanted “a more vigorous analysis and debate” first. It wanted more information to help with this
decision, such as characteristics of the future stockpile, the possible effects of RRW on U.S.
nuclear nonproliferation efforts, and comparative costs of RRW vs. LEP. To this end, it favored a
bipartisan, congressionally-created commission “to evaluate and make recommendations on the
role of nuclear weapons in our future strategic posture.... That Commission report can form the
basis of information and advice from which the President and the Congress can make decisions
about the future of RRW and other weapons programs.” At the same time, “[i]t will be incumbent
upon NNSA to provide specific details as to how many RRW weapons will be manufactured, how
the Department of Defense intends to integrate the system into the stockpile and how many
weapons from the existing deterrent can be retired.” Although the committee recommended funds
107
Ibid., p. 625.
Ibid., p. 627.
109
Ibid., p. 626.
108
110
U.S. Congress. Senate. Committee on Appropriations. Energy and Water Appropriations Bill, 2008, S.Rept. 110127, to accompany S. 1751, 110th Congress, 1st Session, 2007. Quotes in this paragraph are from ibid., pp. 150-153.
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to continue Phase 2A work on the first RRW type, it barred the use of funds for initial research on
a second RRW type.
On July 20, the Secretaries of Energy, Defense, and State issued a statement urging Congress to
fully fund RRW for FY2008.111 They stressed the “essential role that nuclear weapons play in
maintaining deterrence,” argued that “it becomes increasingly difficult to certify the existing
stockpile of weapons,” and said that pursuit of RRW “is critical to sustaining long-term
confidence in our deterrent capability.” Further, “[d]elays on RRW also raise the prospect of
having to return to underground testing to certify existing weapons.” Responding to this
statement, Representatives Skelton and Tauscher wrote a letter to the secretaries, stating in part:
We see promise in the proposed RRW program, but we take issue with your assertion that
any delay in RRW would “force the United States to maintain a large stockpile of nuclear
weapons and sustain it through increasingly costly and risky Life Extension Programs,” and
“raise the prospect of having to return to underground nuclear testing to certify existing
weapons.”
As we stated in the report accompanying the National Defense Authorization Act for FY
2008, it is too early to know whether RRW can deliver on the objectives that have been
established for the program, and the prudent course at this point is rigorous study of the
feasibility of achieving those objectives.112
Representatives Hobson and Visclosky also responded to the statement. They said, “the Joint
Statement reads as a description of the status quo,” and continued,
the Joint Statement goes so far as to imply that RRW is the only available option for
addressing the concerns about the existing stockpile of legacy nuclear weapons. Particularly
troubling is the direct link between a resumption of nuclear testing and the provision of
funding for RRW:
“Delays on RRW also raise the prospect of having to return to underground nuclear testing
to certify existing weapons.”
It is irresponsible for the Administration to make such an assertion.... There is no record of
congressional testimony or reports sent to Congress by the Administration claiming that the
safety, security, or reliability of the existing legacy stockpile is on a performance cliff such
that a resumption of testing to verify performance of the warheads would be a necessity.113
Funds for the Navy’s RRW work fall under the jurisdiction of the Defense Appropriations
Subcommittee. The House Appropriations Committee reported the defense appropriations bill
111
“National Security and Nuclear Weapons: Maintaining Deterrence in the 21st Century: A Statement by the Secretary
of Energy, Secretary of Defense and Secretary of State,” July 2007, 3 p.; available at http://www.globalsecurity.org/
wmd/library/report/2007/ns-nw-21st-century_jul2007.htm.
112
Letter from Representative Ike Skelton, Chairman, House Armed Services Committee, and Representative Ellen
Tauscher, Chairman, Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, House Armed Services Committee, to Secretary Samuel W.
Bodman, Department of Energy, Secretary Robert M. Gates, Department of Defense, and Secretary Condoleezza Rice,
Department of State, July 26, 2007.
113
Letter from Representative David Hobson, Ranking Minority Member, and Representative Peter J. Visclosky,
Chairman, Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development, House Appropriations Committee, to The Honorable
Robert Gates, Secretary of Defense, The Honorable Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of State, and The Honorable Samuel
Bodman, Secretary of Energy, August 1, 2007.
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(H.R. 3222, H.Rept. 110-279) on July 30. It recommended eliminating the $30.0 million Navy
request for RRW. The House passed this bill, 395-13, on August 5 (roll no. 846), leaving this
provision unchanged.
On August 1, Senator Feinstein introduced S. 1914, Nuclear Policy and Posture Review Act of
2007. Subsection (c) of this bill would require the President to report to Congress on the results of
a nuclear policy review by September 1, 2009, and to report to Congress on the results of a
nuclear posture review by March 1, 2010. The bill also provides, “no funds may be appropriated
or otherwise made available for the Reliable Replacement Warhead Program for fiscal years
2008, 2009, or 2010 until the reports required under subsection (c) have been submitted to
Congress.”
A Phase 3 decision could be delayed to FY2010 or beyond for several reasons. The House Armed
Services Committee called for a report on U.S. strategic posture, due December 2008, stating,
“The committee believes clear policy objectives should be established before Congress commits
to ambitious new programs.”114 The Senate Armed Services Committee called for a nuclear
posture review, to be submitted to Congress in December 2009.115 Congress may wish to evaluate
these reports before deciding how to proceed with RRW. There may also be interest in examining
what approach to RRW a new presidential administration may adopt in 2009. Staff at the
Lawrence Livermore, Los Alamos, and Sandia National Laboratories have indicated that were a
delay to occur, continuing Phase 2A through FY2008 and FY2009 would allow more time for indepth study of RRW issues such as safety, use control, cost, and manufacturing, thereby
potentially reducing technical risk. They believe that this work could be accomplished by a small
core team at modest cost.116
The Senate Appropriations Committee reported H.R. 3222, the Department of Defense
Appropriations Bill, on September 14. It recommended reducing Navy RRW funding by $15.0
million. 117
As noted earlier, the JASON Defense Advisory Group delivered a classified report on RRW,
along with an unclassified executive summary, to Congress on September 28. The report was
required by the FY2007 House Appropriations Committee’s report (H.Rept. 109-474) on energy
and water appropriations. The JASON report stated that the design for the first RRW type, WR1,
“is pursued with the above principles [on how to assess confidence and provide for successful
certification] in mind, but certification is not yet assured. The certification plan presented needs
further development.... Substantial work remains on the physical understanding of the surety
mechanisms that are of high priority to the RRW program.”118 It recommended steps to “ensure
that the new manufacturing processes [proposed for RW1] do not have a deleterious effect on
WR1 performance” and made several recommendations to establish a peer review to establish
114
U.S. Congress. House. Committee on Armed Services. National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008,
H.Rept. 110-146, to accompany H.R. 1585, 110th Congress, 1st Session, 2007, p. 390.
115
U.S. Congress. Senate. Committee on Armed Services. National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008,
S.Rept. 110-77 to accompany S. 1547, 110th Congress, 1st Session, 2007, p. 395.
116
Information provided by Lawrence Livermore, Los Alamos, and Sandia National Laboratories, multiple personal
communications, August 2007.
117
U.S. Congress. Senate. Committee on Appropriations. Department of Defense Appropriations Bill, 2008, S.Rept.
110-155, to accompany H.R. 3222, 110th Congress, 1st Session, 2007, p. 228.
118
The MITRE Corporation, JASON, “Reliable Replacement Warhead Executive Summary,” JSR-07-336E, September
7, 2007, p. 6.
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confidence in the warhead’s design, such as having the effectiveness of the peer review
mechanism “examined periodically by an independent organization” and having the review team
“broadly constituted” with “authority to pose formal tests of a computational or experimental
nature to the design team.”119
NNSA lauded the report, saying that it confirmed that NNSA’s “approach towards developing a
Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) was proceeding with appropriate scientific principles”
and “concluded that NNSA’s current approach, with additional technical, experimental and peer
review enhancements, could determine that RRW can be certified for the stockpile without the
need to conduct an underground nuclear test.” Further, NNSA Administrator Thomas D’Agostino
said, “I am pleased that the JASON panel feels that we are on the right track.”120 In a subsequent
letter, D’Agostino stated, “Resolution of issues raised in the JASON’s study can only be achieved
if this [RRW] R&D effort is allowed to proceed and is funded along the lines of the request
submitted last February.... ”121
Representatives Visclosky and Hobson, in a statement on the JASON report, said, “Once again,
independent sources have raised serious questions that must be addressed before proceeding with
the RRW.... Only when the Department of Energy has completed the work recommended by the
JASON report, can the nation appropriately consider what role an RRW might play as a 21st
century nuclear deterrent.”122
In October, DOD appealed items in the FY2008 defense appropriations bill. One such item was
RRW. DOD asked that Congress provide the $15 million that the Senate provided for the Navy’s
RRW effort rather than the House-passed $0. It stated that $15.0 million is “the minimum level of
funding needed by the Navy to begin Phase 2A activities in FY2008, and with at least the same
level of funding in FY2009, to complete the effort within 2 years, one year later than the date that
could have been achieved with the President’s original budget request for this item.” DOD
indicated how the money would be spent: it “is required to begin the Navy portion of Phase 2A
and for risk reduction analysis and preliminary development of a follow-on Arming, Fuzing and
Firing (AF&F) subsystem for all weapons associated with the Mk5 aeroshell deployed on the
TRIDENT II D5 Fleet Ballistic Missile System.”123 (These funds would not be used to develop
WR1 itself; that task is the responsibility of NNSA.) The nuclear warhead currently associated
with the Mk5 is the W88. According to Steve Henry, Deputy Assistant to the Secretary of Defense
for Nuclear Matters,
The W88 is housed in a MK5 aeroshell. Because of the MK5 size, it was also the aeroshell
for the proposed RRW. In the not too distant future, a W88 LEP will have to be performed
119
Ibid., pp. 7-8.
U.S. Department of Energy. National Nuclear Security Administration. “Independent Scientific Review Confirms
Technical Approach to RRW,” news release, September 28, 2007, p. 1.
121
Letter from Thomas P. D’Agostino, Administrator, NNSA, to The Honorable Carl Levin, Chairman, Committee on
Armed Services, United States Senate, October 5, 2007, p. 2.
122
“Visclosky and Hobson: Work Outlined in JASON Report Must Be Completed before Considering RRW,”
September 27, 2007.
123
U.S. Department of Defense. FY 2008 Defense Appropriation Appeals. October 2007, p. R&D-52. An aeroshell is
the cone-shaped shell that carries an individual warhead on a ballistic missile. It protects the warhead against burnup as
it reenters the atmosphere at high speed and minimizes degradation of accuracy.
120
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and the AF&F will require replacement. The future AF&F for the MK5 aeroshell is the same
AF&F regardless of the NEP [nuclear explosive package] (W88 LEP’d or an RRW). 124
Thus, the new AF&F subsystem could be used with the life-extended W88 and WR1, but if WR1
does not go forward, the AF&F subsystem would still be used with the life-extended W88. In
March 2008, the Navy provided further details on how it plans to use RRW funds:
The FY 08 RRW funding is currently on hold, so no work has been performed to date but,
SSP has been directed by the Office of Secretary of Defense (OSD) to use the FY 08 and FY
09 RRW funding to support Mk5A life extension efforts. Once the FY 08 funds are released
and the FY 09 funds are appropriated, SSP will use the RRW funds for risk reduction
analysis and preliminary development of a follow-on Arming, Fusing and Firing (AF&F)
subsystem for all weapons associated with the Mk5 aeroshell deployed on the TRIDENT II
(D5) Fleet Ballistic Missile System. Specific Mk5A AF&F efforts directed by the Office of
Secretary of Defense (OSD) supports a number of tasks needed to address early technology
for the life extension program for the MK5/W88 nuclear weapon system. Below is a list of
some of the major areas of technology to be pursued:
•
define new safety architectures for the AF&F
•
design of high density high power radar
•
Non-volatile radiation hardened memory
•
Radiation hardened application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs)
•
High density thermal battery development
•
Radiation hardened Wide band analog electronics
•
Low noise radar receivers utilizing commercial parts
•
Fuze modeling and test analysis
In support of this effort, the above technologies will be synthesized into bench top systems
for test purposes.125
On November 6, conferees on the defense appropriations bill filed their report (H.Rept. 110-434),
which included $15.0 million for the Navy for RRW. (Adjustments reduced this figure to $14.455
million. 126) On November 8, the House agreed to the conference report, 400-15, and the Senate
did so by voice vote.
An article in November 2007 offered some support for RRW. It reported that a letter to Senators
Jon Kyl and Pete Domenici from former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said, “I believe that
research and design of the RRW should continue.” The article also cited a letter by former
Secretary of State George Shultz and Sidney Drell, professor emeritus of physics at Stanford
University, to Kissinger that stated, “research work on new RRW designs should certainly go
ahead. Such work would make possible the decision to implement the construction phase of the
124
Personal communication, March 7, 2008.
Information provided by Strategic Systems Program, U.S. Navy, March 18, 2008. The Mk5A is an upgrade to the
Mk5.
126
U.S. Department of the Navy. Fiscal Year (FY) 2009 Budget Estimates: Justification of Estimates. Research,
Development, Test & Evaluation, Navy Budget Activity 7, February 2008, Exhibit R-2, page 1 of 2.
125
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program were that to be desired at some future time. The design work itself is relatively small in
cost and need not be viewed in any way as an eventual commitment to go ahead.”127
The conference version of H.R. 1585, FY2008 National Defense Authorization Act, provided
$66.0 million for RRW. It contained several provisions on RRW.
•
It barred moving RRW beyond Phase 2A in FY2008 (section 3111). The
conference report stated, “The conferees believe clarification of the United
States’ long-term nuclear weapons policy is a prerequisite to any major decisions
on the size and composition of the nuclear weapons stockpile and the complex
that supports it. To that end, the conference agreement includes section 1062
establishing a congressionally appointed bipartisan commission to examine U.S.
nuclear policy and strategic posture, and section 1070, requiring that a new
Nuclear Posture Review be submitted to Congress in December 2009.”128
•
It required a study on the use of existing pits in the RRW program (section 3121)
•
It included a sense of Congress provision that the United States should make any
decisions on RRW in the context of progress made toward several goals related to
nuclear nonproliferation and arms reduction (section 3126)
•
As an aid to future decisions on nuclear weapons and related matters, it provided
for establishing a commission on nuclear policy and strategic posture (section
1062), with a report due December 1, 2008, and required a new nuclear posture
review be submitted to Congress by February 1, 2010 (section 1070).129
On December 12, the House agreed to the conference report on H.R. 1585, 370-49. On December
14, the Senate agreed to the conference report, 90-3. President Bush vetoed the measure on
December 28 for reasons having to do with Iraqi economic issues; he signed a bill revised to
accommodate these concerns, H.R. 4986, into law (P.L. 110-181) on January 28, 2008.
On December 16, the House Rules Committee posted the FY2008 consolidated appropriations
bill (the House amendments to Senate amendment to H.R. 2764, State, Foreign Operations, and
Related Programs Appropriations Act, 2008). The House and Senate agreed to this bill through an
exchange of amendments, December 17-19, and the President signed the Consolidated
Appropriations Act, FY2008, into law (P.L. 110-161) December 26. P.L. 110-161 eliminated
NNSA RRW funds. According to the explanatory statement,
The amended bill provides no funds for the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW), as
proposed by the House. As stated in both the House and Senate reports, Congress believes a
127
Jon Fox, “Former Secretaries of State Support New Warhead,” Global Security Newswire, November 15, 2007. The
article does not provide the date of the letters.
128
U.S. Congress. Committee of Conference. National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008. H.Rept. 110477, conference report to accompany H.R. 1585. 110th Congress, 1st Session, 2007, p. 1290.
129
Regarding the due date for this report, Section 1070 states, “The report shall be submitted concurrently with the
quadrennial defense review required to be submitted under section 118 of title 10, United States Code, in 2009.”
However, 10 U.S.C. 118 requires the Secretary of Defense to conduct a quadrennial defense review every four years in
the year following a year divisible by four. Further, “The report [on the quadrennial defense review] shall be submitted
in the year following the year in which the review is conducted, but not later than the date on which the President
submits the budget for the next fiscal year to Congress under section 1105 (a) of title 31.” Since that section requires
the President to submit the budget by the first Monday in February, this means that the nuclear posture review, the
quadrennial defense review, and the FY2011 budget request are all due to Congress on February 1, 2010.
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new strategic nuclear deterrent mission assessment for the 21st century is required to define
the associated stockpile requirements and determine the scope of the weapons complex
modernization plans. The NNSA is directed to develop a long-term scientific capability
roadmap for the national laboratories to be submitted to the Committees on
Appropriations.130
Commenting on the bill, according to a press report, Representative Peter Visclosky, Chairman of
the House Energy and Water Development Appropriations Subcommittee, said, “[m]oving
forward on a new nuclear weapon is not something this nation should do without great
consideration ... the U.S. needs a comprehensive nuclear defense strategy, and a revised stockpile
plan to guide the transformation and downsizing of the [nuclear weapons] complex,” while an
NNSA spokesman said that eliminating NNSA RRW funding means “we will likely have to go
down a path of a full-life extension program for nuclear weapons in our stockpile, which in the
long run will be more costly, without introducing modern safety and security measures into our
weapons.”131
Congressional Action on the FY2009 RRW Request
For FY2009, DOE requests $10.0 million and projects a request the same sum for each year
FY2010-FY2013.132 It justified the request as follows:
$10 million is requested to enable maturation of the RRW design to address questions raised
by the JASON review of RRW feasibility study activities. Design refinement is necessary to
establish parameters for potential impact on certification. Without further design work, there
is insufficient detail available to use this design to resolve certification questions raised by
the JASONs review. This funding will also facilitate documenting the Phase 2A RRW work
that has been completed through 2007 (prior to the FY 2008 Consolidated Appropriations
Act (P.L. 110-161)) to support future administration decisions on options for our nuclear
weapons stockpile. The Department of Defense and the Joint DoD-DOE Nuclear Weapons
Council fully support continuing efforts to examine how the RRW concept can address
issues of safety, security and long-term reliability of the nation’s nuclear deterrent.133
In February 2008, NNSA Administrator Thomas D’Agostino testified that proceeding with the
RRW study will provide information crucial to completing the review of the nuclear posture in a
timely manner. Further, it would address concerns about U.S. ability to maintain the stockpile for
the long term with LEP, offer the prospect of improving warhead surety, and address the
maintenance of nuclear skills.134 In the same hearing, General Kevin Chilton, USAF, Commander,
U.S. Strategic Command, argued for “a warhead that is designed for the 21st century,” with
greater emphasis on reliability, safety, security, and maintainability, rather than on maximizing
130
U.S. House. Committee on Appropriations. Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2008. Unnumbered committee print
on H.R. 2764/P.L. 110-161, 110th Congress, 1st Session, January 2008, Book 1 of 2, p. 583. Available at
http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/house/appropriations/08conappro.html.
131
Walter Pincus, “Nuclear Warhead Cut from Spending Bill,” Washington Post, December 18, 2007, p. 2.
132
U.S. Department of Energy. FY2009 Congressional Budget Request, vol. 1, National Nuclear Security
Administration, pp. 91-92.
133
Department of Energy, FY2009 Congressional Budget Request, vol. 1, p. 25. The JASON study referenced is JSR07-336E, “Reliable Replacement Warhead Executive Summary,” cited earlier.
134
U.S. Congress. House. Committee on Armed Services. Subcommittee on Strategic Forces. Hearing on FY2009
budget for strategic defense programs, 110th Congress, 2nd Session, February 27, 2008, transcript by CQ Transcriptions.
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yield to weight.135 According to one report, he also said that without completing the RRW study
“he would be ill-prepared to advise the incoming president next year on how best to modernize
the atomic arsenal.”136
Others expressed opposition to RRW. Regarding the need to improve surety, Daryl Kimball,
Executive Director of the Arms Control Association, said, “Should we spend billions of dollars to
replace existing warhead types in our arsenal to reduce by an infinitesimal amount [the
possibility] that al-Qaeda could detonate it?”137 And former Senator Sam Nunn said, “In this
world atmosphere, in this climate, for us to build a new warhead now would be a real setback to
all of our nonproliferation efforts, so I am opposed to it.... At this moment I think it would be a
mistake for America to go forward with that program.”138
For FY2009, the Navy requests $23.3 million under “Reliable Replacement Warhead,” a
reduction from a planned request of $50.0 million.139 The previous section details how the Navy
plans to use FY2008 and FY2009 RRW funds.
In its markup of the FY2009 defense authorization bill, reported in a press release of May 1,
2008, the Senate Armed Services Committee recommended retaining NNSA’s request for RRW
but eliminating the Navy’s request.140 The Senate passed the bill on September 17, 88-8, without
amending the RRW provisions.
In its May 7 markup of its portion of the defense authorization bill, the Strategic Forces
Subcommittee of House Armed Services Committee recommended eliminating NNSA and Navy
funds for RRW. Chairwoman Tauscher said in a statement that these funds were “re-directed to
higher priority nuclear weapons research.”141 In its May 16 report on the authorization bill, H.R.
5658, the House Armed Services Committee adopted these positions and explained them in some
detail. Regarding the Navy’s request, the committee “finds that the activities described in the
budget request are premature and not executable in fiscal year 2009.” Noting that this request was
for an AF&F system (described under “Congressional Action on the FY2008 RRW Request,”
above), the committee eliminated funds for RRW and authorized $13.3 million for research into
integrated AF&F systems. 142 Regarding the NNSA request, the committee stated that the $10.0
million request was to “address questions raised by the JASON review of RRW feasibility study
135
Ibid.
Elaine Grossman, “U.S. General Calls for Faster Action on Reliable Replacement Warhead,” Global Security
Newswire, March 6, 2008.
137
Ibid. Bracketed text in original.
138
Greg Webb, “Leading U.S. Scientist Criticizes Warhead Effort,” Global Security Newswire, February 27, 2008.
139
U.S. Department of the Navy. Fiscal Year (FY) 2009 Budget Estimates: Justification of Estimates. Research,
Development, Test & Evaluation, Navy Budget Activity 7. February 2008. Exhibit R-2, pages 1 and 2.
140
U.S. Senate. Committee on Armed Services. “Senate Armed Services Committee Completes Markup of National
Defense Authorization Bill for Fiscal Year 2009.” Press release, May 1, 2008, p. 20, at http://armedservices.senate.gov/press/09mark.pdf. See also U.S. Senate. Committee on Armed Services. National Defense
Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2009. S.Rept. 110-335, to accompany S. 3001, 110th Congress, 2nd Session, 2008, p.
492.
141
U.S. Congress. House. Committee on Armed Services. “Statement of Chairwoman Ellen Tauscher, Strategic Forces
Subcommittee Mark-Up, H.R. 5658, National Defense Authorization Act for FY2009,” May 7, 2008, available at
http://armedservices.house.gov/apps/list/speech/armedsvc_dem/tauscheros050708.shtml.
142
U.S. Congress. House. Committee on Armed Services. Duncan Hunter National Defense Authorization Act for
Fiscal Year 2009. H.Rept. 110-652, on H.R. 5658. 110th Congress, 2nd Session, 2008, pp. 201-202.
136
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activities.” However, it noted, other funds requested by NNSA, in Advanced Certification and
Enhanced Surety, would also examine these certification issues. The committee stated its support
for research on certification and stewardship issues “critical to sustaining and modernizing the
Stockpile Stewardship Program (SSP), whether or not the RRW program proceeds.” Accordingly,
it recommended eliminating the $10.0 million requested for RRW and adding $10.0 million
within Advanced Certification to address issues raised by the JASON review and for “other high
priority SSP challenges.”143 On May 22, Representative Stevan Pearce offered H.Amdt. 1052 to
H.R. 5658. The amendment would increase funding for RRW by $10.0 million in Title XXXI,
Department of Energy National Security Programs, while offsetting that amount by a like amount
“to be derived from energy conservation on military installations.” The amendment failed by a
vote of 145 to 271 (roll no. 358). Also on May 22, the House passed the bill, 384-23 (roll no.
365).
The House and Senate had an informal conference on the defense authorization bill. According to
the Joint Explanatory Statement, “The result of these negotiations comprised the House
amendment to S. 3001, which was considered and passed under suspension of the Rules of the
House of Representatives on September 24, 2008, by a vote of 392-39. By unanimous consent,
the Senate agreed with the House amendment to S. 3001 on September 27, 2008.”144 The
resulting bill had no RRW funds for the Navy or NNSA.145 It was signed into law, P.L. 110-417,
on October 14, 2008.
The House Appropriations Committee marked up the FY2009 energy-water appropriations bill on
June 25 and released a committee print version of its report in June. 146 The committee eliminated
the $10.0 million NNSA request for RRW. The committee was highly critical of this request:
The Committee is aware of the advantages of a modern warhead design and strongly
supports improved surety. The Committee also understands that high margin provides
protection against failure due to compound unknowns. The Committee supports trading off
Cold War high yield for improved reliability, in order to move to a smaller stockpile
requiring a smaller and cheaper weapons complex with no need for nuclear testing.
That said, the Committee remains to be convinced that a new warhead design will lead to
these benefits. The Committee will not spend the taxpayers’ money for a new generation of
warheads promoted as leading to nuclear reductions absent a specific glide path to a
specified, much smaller force of nuclear weapons. Similarly, the Committee finds no logic in
spending the taxpayers’ money on a new generation of warheads promoted as avoiding the
need for nuclear testing, while the Secretary of State insists that “the Administration does not
support the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.” ...
Before the Committee will consider funding for most new programs, substantial changes to
the existing nuclear weapons complex, or funding for the RRW, the Committee insists that
the following sequence be completed:
143
Ibid., pp. 561-562.
U.S. Congress, House Committee on Armed Services, Duncan Hunter National Defense Authorization Act for
Fiscal Year 2009, Joint Explanatory Statement to Accompany S. 3001, committee print, 110th Cong., 2nd sess.,
September 2008, Committee Print HASC No. 10 (Washington: GPO, 2008), “Note from the Director of Legislative
Operations,” p. iii.
145
Ibid., pp. 527, 816.
144
146
U.S. Congress. House. Committee on Appropriations. Energy and Water Development Appropriations Bill, 2009.
Unnumbered committee print. 110th Congress, 2nd Session, 2008.
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(1) replacement of Cold War strategies with a 21st Century nuclear deterrent strategy sharply
focused on today’s and tomorrow’s threats, and capable of serving the national security
needs of future Administrations and future Congresses without need for nuclear testing;
(2) determination of the size and nature of the nuclear stockpile sufficient to serve that
strategy;
(3) determination of the size and nature of the nuclear weapons complex needed to support
that future stockpile.147
The committee stated that while plans to execute these steps were laid out in the FY2008
Omnibus Appropriations Act, “none of the required plans have been submitted.”148 The
committee approved the bill by voice vote on June 25; the report (H.Rept. 110-921) was released
December 10, 2008. The Senate Appropriations Committee reported S. 3258, the FY2009 energywater appropriation bill, on July 14. It recommended no NNSA funds for RRW.149 The House and
Senate versions of this bill were not brought to the floor. Instead, funding for NNSA 150and many
other agencies was made available through the continuing resolution component of H.R. 2638,
Consolidated Security, Disaster Assistance, and Continuing Appropriations Act, 2009, for the
period October 1, 2008-March 6, 2009 or until enactment of the applicable regular appropriations
bill. Section 104 provided that “No appropriation or funds made available or authority granted
pursuant to section 101 shall be used to initiate or resume any project or activity for which
appropriations, funds, or other authority were not available during fiscal year 2008.” RRW was
one such activity; accordingly, the bill provided no NNSA funds for RRW. H.R. 2638 was signed
into law, P.L. 110-329, on September 30, 2008. P.L. 111-6, a one-sentence continuing resolution,
extended the expiration of P.L. 110-329 through March 11, 2009. P.L. 111-8, Omnibus
Appropriations Act, 2009, provided funds for the balance of FY2009. It provided no NNSA funds
for RRW.
The Administration requested $23.3 million in RRW funds for the Navy in the Department of
Defense appropriations bill. These funds were part of an $80.1 million request for Program
Element 11221N, strategic submarine and weapons system support. While the Defense
Appropriations Subcommittees marked up the bill, the full committees did not report their
respective bills. Instead, the Department of Defense appropriations bill was contained in H.R.
2638, Division C, as a regular appropriations bill. That bill eliminated Navy RRW funds.151
147
148
Ibid., pp. 123-124.
Ibid., p. 124.
149
U.S. Congress, Senate Committee on Appropriations, Energy and Water Development Appropriations Bill, 2009,
Report to Accompany S. 3258, 110th Cong., 2nd sess., July 14, 2008, S.Rept. 110-416 (Washington: GPO, 2008), p.
120.
150
Representative David Obey, “Explanatory Statement Submitted by Mr. Obey, Chairman of the House Committee on
Appropriations, Regarding H.R. 1105, Omnibus Appropriations Act, 2009,” Remarks in the House, Congressional
Record, daily edition, February 23, 2009, p. H1962.
151
U.S. Congress, House Committee on Appropriations, Consolidated Security, Disaster Assistance, and Continuing
Appropriations Act, 2009, Division C, Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2009, unnumbered committee print,
110th Cong., 2nd sess., October 2008, (Washington: GPO, 2008), p. 367.
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Congressional Action on RRW for FY2010
For FY2010, the Administration requested no funds for RRW and included the program in a list
of programs to be terminated. An Office of Management and Budget report called RRW “not
consistent with Presidential commitments to move towards a nuclear-free world.”152 The House
Armed Services Committee reported H.R. 2647, the FY2010 defense authorization bill, on June
18, 2009. Section 3112 of the bill would strike Section 4204a of the Atomic Energy Act directing
DOE to establish the RRW program.153 The bill passed the House, 389-22, with 1 present, June
25. The Senate Armed Services Committee reported S. 1390, FY2010 defense authorization bill,
on July 2. Section 3113 would strike Section 4204a of the Atomic Energy Act.154 The bill passed
the Senate, 87-7, on July 23. No amendments on RRW were offered to either bill.
The House Appropriations Committee reported H.R. 3183, FY2010 energy and water
development appropriations bill, on July 13. It contained no funds for RRW. The House passed
the bill, 320-97, on July 17, with no amendments on RRW. The Senate Appropriations Committee
reported its energy-water bill on July 9. It contained no funds for RRW.
With the termination of the RRW program, the section on policy options and issues for RRW that
appeared in previous updates of this report has become moot and is deleted.
Chronology, 200706/25/09—
The House passed H.R. 2647, FY2010 National Defense Authorization Act, 389-22, with 1 present.
The measure would strike Section 4204a of the Atomic Energy Act directing DOE to establish the
RRW program.
03/11/09—
P.L. 111-8, FY2009 Omnibus Appropriations Act, was signed into law. It provided no NNSA funds
for RRW.
08/08/08—
NNSA delivered to Congress a report on using existing pits for the RRW program, required by P.L.
110-181, FY2008 National Defense Authorization Act, section 3121.
05/22/08—
The House defeated, 145-271, H.Amdt. 1052 to H.R. 5658, the FY2009 defense authorization bill, to
add $10.0 million to NNSA’s budget for RRW.
05/16/08—
The House Armed Services Committee reported H.R. 5658, the Duncan Hunter National Defense
Authorization Act for FY2009.
05/05/08—
The Secretaries of Defense and Energy transmitted “Report on the Feasibility and Implementation of
the Reliable Replacement Warhead Program” to Congress. Congress required the report in the
FY2006 National Defense Authorization Act, P.L. 108-163, Section 3111.
12/26/07—
President Bush signed P.L. 110-161, FY2008 Consolidated Appropriations Act, into law. The measure
contains no NNSA funds to develop RRW.
152
U.S. Executive Office of the President. Office of Management and Budget, Terminations, Reductions, and Savings:
Budget of the U.S. Government, Fiscal Year 2010, Washington, DC, 2009, p. 55, http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/
budget/fy2010/assets/trs.pdf.
153
U.S. Congress, House Committee on Armed Services, National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010,
Report on H.R. 2647 Together with Additional and Supplemental Views, 111th Cong., 1st sess., June 18, 2009, H.Rept.
111-166 (Washington: GPO, 2009), p. 588.
154
U.S. Congress, Senate Committee on Armed Services, National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010,
Report to Accompany S. 1390, 111th Cong., 1st sess., July 2, 2009, S.Rept. 111-35 (Washington: GPO, 2009), p. 254.
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12/12/07—
The House agreed to the conference report on H.R. 1585, the defense authorization bill, 370-49.
12/06/07—
The conference report on H.R. 1585, the national defense authorization bill, was ordered to be
printed. It contains several provisions on RRW, as described above.
11/06/07—
Conferees on the Department of Defense appropriations bill filed their report, which included $15.0
million for the Navy for RRW.
09/28/07—
NNSA delivered to Congress a JASON report on RRW that was required by the House
Appropriations Committee’s report on FY2007 energy and water appropriations.
09/14/07—
The Senate Appropriations Committee reported H.R. 3222, the Department of Defense
Appropriations Bill.
07/17/07—
The House passed the FY2008 Energy and Water Development Appropriations Bill, 312-112, leaving
RRW provisions unchanged.
07/09/07—
The Senate Appropriations Committee reported S. 1751, the Energy and Water Development Bill.
06/06/07—
The House Appropriations Committee marked up the FY2008 Energy and Water Development
Appropriations Bill. The
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