It may take almost a year longer than recently expected to fully certify the F-35A to internally carry one or two B61-12 nuclear gravity bombs, but the head of the service’s Nuclear Weapons Center said the nuclear end of things isn’t what’s pacing the process.
“The timing right now I think to get to full certification is probably a handful of years away with the number of things that we have to go through, but it’s not something that I’m considering to be on a critical path right now,” Air Force Maj. Gen. Anthony Genatempo, commander of the Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, N.M., said during a virtual forum hosted last week by the Air Force Association’s Doolittle Leadership Center.
“There’s a lot on F-35’s plate, right?” Genatempo said. “And we are a very important player for them in helping them manage everything that’s on their plate.”
According to its 2022 budget request, the Air Force now expects to have the F-35A certified to internally carry up to a pair of B61-12 gravity bombs, provided by the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), in fiscal year 2026: a year later than what the service projected last year in its 2021 budget request.
Nuclear certification tasks for F-35A, a part of the overall effort to arm the joint strike fighter with nuclear weapons, would wrap in fiscal year 2024, also about a year later than the service estimated last year, according to the two most recent budget documents.
F35-A nuclear certification “is a NATO and US priority which is a critical capability in our collective defense and credible deterrence, with certification needed by Jan 2024,” the Air Force wrote in its 2022 budget request. But, “due to extensive certification requirements, the [Dual Capable Aircraft] capability planning and design, testing and certification will continue throughout Block 4.”
Block 4 refers to a series of software and hardware upgrades needed, among other things, for the Dual Capable Aircraft program, the official name for the Air Force’s effort to mate B61-12 to F35-A.
The Air Force’s 2022 budget request for the Dual Capable Aircraft program, within the F-35 Squadrons program in the service’s Research Development Test & Evaluation Budget, is about $45 million, a little more than half of the $88.5 million Congress appropriated for 2021.
The NNSA is building the B61-12 gravity bomb, except for a guided tail kit that Boeing is making. NNSA expected to finish the first production unit of the B61-12, a proof-of-concept that has to pass muster before mass manufacturing begins, in November 2021. The agency delayed the first production unit after disclosing in 2019 that capacitors intended for multiple B61-12 components did not meet military requirements.
B61-12 will homogenize four existing versions of the oldest deployed U.S. nuclear weapon, including the B61-11 version with its modest earth-penetrating capability. 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.
