WASHINGTON, D.C. — Congress might not block the Navy from deploying a low-yield nuclear warhead this year after all, House Armed Services Committee Chairman Adam Smith (D-Wash.), an influential opponent of the weapon, said here Thursday.
“That’s going to be very, very difficult, very difficult, because of the strong opposition from both the White House and the Senate,” Smith said during a nuclear policy breakfast hosted by the Ploughshares Fund.
The Donald Trump administration in 2018 proposed the low-yield W76-2, which the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) started building this year. Throughout that time, Smith has said the weapon would destabilize international relations and increase the odds of a nuclear war.
The Trump administration and others say the U.S. must have a low-yield nuclear weapon that could rapidly strike Russia to deter the Kremlin from employing a low-yield nuke of its own to end a conflict it could not win with conventional weapons. Smith said the current arsenal deters such an attack, and that the W76-2 would only lower the threshold for nuclear-weapon use.
The version of the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that Smith shepherded through the House this summer prohibits the Navy from putting the low-yield weapon aboard Ohio-class submarines.
The GOP-controlled Senate, on the other hand, produced a 2020 NDAA that would fully fund W76-2 deployment, and every other item on the Trump administration’s nuclear wish list for the Departments of Defense and Energy.
The W76-2 is a modified version of the freshly refurbished W76-1 that flies aboard Trident II-D5 missiles. Because the NNSA has already built an unspecified number of these warheads, and because the House’s NDAA would not have required the civilian agency to destroy any already built, Smith’s W76-2 prohibition would in theory have lasted only until the first NDAA written by a Congress that wanted the weapon deployed.
Now, after a bitter and starkly partisan debate about the weapon in the House this summer, Smith is running cold water over the idea that the Senate and White House might brook any delay at all for W76-2. Asked to make odds that his low-yield prohibition would survive current negotiations on the final 2020 NDAA between the House and Senate, Smith said the chances were about as good as his hometown Seattle Mariners winning the World Series.
With the advancement of the Washington Nationals to the World Series this year, the Mariners are the only Major League Baseball team never that has played in baseball’s annual championship.
The NNSA has said it would produce a “small number” of W76-2 warheads. The agency received $65 million to build the weapon in 2019 and sought $10 million more for 2020.
The House NDAA, the first of Smith’s HASC chairmanship, includes several proposals designed to align U.S. nuclear weapons and nuclear-armed forces with his preferred policy: that nuclear weapons are solely for deterring nuclear attacks by nuclear-armed adversaries. To that end, the House 2020 NDAA would slow development of the next-generation intercontinental ballistic missiles known as the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent — in part by authorizing less funding than requested for construction of planned NNSA facilities that would process plutonium for the warheads — and prohibit any nuclear first-strike by the U.S.
The Senate bill would do none of those things.
Meanwhile, Congress should still be able to unify and pass some kind of a 2020 NDAA before Sept. 30, 2020, Smith told breakfast-goers here. That is the end of the current fiscal year. However, negotiations have bogged down over partisan disagreement about whether to authorize Trump to divert funds from Pentagon programs to pay for the president’s proposed southern border wall.
The alternative, which Smith is not keen on, would be passing a so-called “skinny” NDAA that would include, among other things, noncontroversial language to extend certain Pentagon legal authorities. These include the ability to spend appropriated funding, to transfer funds between programs, and to continue military operations, according to details released this week by Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
“I still believe that we’re going to get the bill [NDAA] done, that we’re not going to go with this smaller bill,” Smith said Thursday. “[J]ust yesterday, I really started talking with the White House about the issues that we’re still divided on, and I am confident that we can resolve this. It’s not going to be as quick as would like, because there are a lot of controversial issues, and the government’s divided.”
