Senior officials of the Biden Administration have delivered three major speeches in the last two months on “adjustments” being made to U.S. nuclear weapons policy, all geared toward more nuclear fire-power. Previously reported were speeches by Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Arms Control, Disarmament, and Nonproliferation at the National Security Council Pranay Vaddi at the Arms Control Association conference on June 7 and by Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for Space Policy Dr. Vipin Narang at CSIS Project on Nuclear Issues on Aug. 1. Both of these speeches laid out the direction that the administration was taking in escalating nuclear confrontation with both Russia and China.
Jill Hruby, the head of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), put budget numbers and hardware to the policy indicated by Vaddi and Narang in her remarks to a July 30 breakfast event sponsored by the National Institute for Deterrence Studies, a pro-nuclear weapons think tank in Washington, D.C. She reported that NNSA’s FY25 budget request is for $25 billion, $21 billion of which is for nuclear weapons. The remainder is split evenly between naval nuclear reactors and non-proliferation activities.
She reported further that NNSA has five ongoing nuclear warhead programs underway: The W88 Alt 370 for the Navy’s Trident missile and B61-12 Life Extension Program are currently in full rate production; the W80-4 warhead is on track for the Air Force’s Long Range Standoff weapon (an air launched cruise missile) is on track to produce the first unit by September 2027; the W87-1 is scheduled to begin production in 2031 or 2032 but may be impacted by delays and cost overruns besetting the Sentinel ICBM program; the W93 is a new warhead whose production is to start in the mid-2030s. “Collectively, these programs represent our effort to sustain the nuclear triad,” Hruby said.
