An F-35A traveling at supersonic speeds successfully dropped a mock B61-12 nuclear gravity bomb from an internal compartment over the Tonopah Test Range in Nevada, the National Nuclear Security Administration said Monday.
The test took place in August in an F-35A Lightning II, according to a press release from the semi autonomous Department of Energy agency.
Block 4 upgrades to Lockheed Martin’s F-35A will eventually allow the Joint Strike Fighter to internally carry a pair of B61-12 nuclear gravity bombs provided by the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), and which will use guided tail kits developed by Boeing to give the weapon what the Air Force has called “modest standoff capability.”
It will take nearly until the end of the Block 4 program, which last year slipped two years into 2026, to certify F35-A as a dual capable aircraft: one that can carry conventional and nuclear munitions.
B61-12 will homogenize four existing versions of the bomb, which is the oldest deployed weapon in the U.S. arsenal. The NNSA plans to build some 480 B61-12 bombs, the nongovernmental Federation of American Scientists in Washington estimates.
Including Air Force and NNSA work, the B61-12 will cost between roughly $11.5 billion and $13 billion over about 20 years, according to documents from DOE and the Department of Defense. The NNSA’s share of the bomb’s cost is about $8 billion, the agency estimates.
NNSA has said it will produce its first war-usable B61-12, the first production unit, in November 2021. The first production unit milestone slipped more than a year after the NNSA acknowledged in 2019 that electrical capacitors needed by several bomb components had to be replaced.
