The House of Representatives approved a defense spending bill this week that would phase out development of a nuclear warhead usable on both Navy and Air Force missiles, while the Senate Appropriations Committee approved a companion bill that could delay deployment of a planned low-yield nuclear warhead.
The House approved its version of the 2019 National Defense Appropriations Act on Thursday by an overwhelmingly bipartisan vote of 359-49. All but two of the 49 “no” votes were Democrats. Nineteen lawmakers abstained.
If signed into law, the House’s defense spending bill would provide only half the funding the Pentagon requested for fiscal 2019 for its share of work on the first of three dual-use, interoperable warheads: $24 million, compared with a $48-million ask. The funding is nested in the Navy’s Research, Development, Test and Evaluation budget under the Strategic Sub & Weapons System Support line.
The Pentagon wants the money for late-stage design studies on the interoperable warhead, according to the Navy’s spending proposal for the budget year beginning Oct. 1. The House Appropriations Committee called the request unjustified, in a report appended to the bill.
The 2019 defense spending bill the Senate committee passed Thursday did not mention the interoperable warhead by name. However, the report appended to that measure said the upper chamber would provide $10 milion more than the roughly $158 million the Navy requested in 2019 for the entire Strategic Sub & Weapons System Support.
The Senate had not scheduled a floor vote for the Defense appropriations bill at deadline Friday for Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor.
This first interoperable warhead, or IW-1, would be capable of flying on future Air Force and Navy ballistic missiles. The Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) would be responsible for actually building the warhead, but the Pentagon would provide the specifications for the weapon and help flight test it on missiles procured by the Navy and Air Force.
The House committee’s 2019 defense spending proposal follows a trend the chamber established earlier this month when it approved a 2019 Department of Energy budget bill and a 2019 National Defense Authorization Act that directed the NNSA to stop studying the IW-1 and look into a life-extension program for the existing W78 warheads that tip the Air Force’s current fleet of Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles. That was despite the Trump administration’s request to continue funding IW-1.
The Senate’s 2019 Department of Energy budget and 2019 National Defense Authorization Act propose continuing the IW-1.
Meanwhile, the defense spending bill the Senate Appropriations Committee approved Thursday would forbid the Navy from using 2019 appropriations to deploy the new low-yield, submarine-launched, ballistic-missile warhead known as the W76-2 until after the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy produce — and Congress reviews — a report about the need for the warhead, and the logistics of deploying it.
The report language explains an amendment from Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), which the committee added by voice vote to the bill Thursday during markup. The amendment “does not obstruct the procurement funds” for the warhead, Merkley told the committee.
The Donald Trump administration, in the Nuclear Posture Review published in February, directed the NNSA to build what became the W76-2 to check similarly powerful Russian weapons. The administration says Russia could use a low-yield nuclear warhead to win a conflict it starts, but cannot end, with conventional weapons.
Critics of the proposed W76-2 say the existing U.S. nuclear arsenal is enough to deter Russia, and that adding a low-yield warhead to the arsenal could tempt the U.S. military to use it in combat and risk escalation to full-scale, civilization-ending nuclear-war.
The NNSA would build the low-yield W76-2, but the Navy would ultimately carry it into the field aboard Ohio-class submarines armed with Trident II D5 ballistic missiles: the same missiles that presently carry the full-yield W76.
The NNSA plans to create the W76-2 by dialing down the yield of an unspecified number of existing W76 warheads. Congressional appropriations and authorizers in both the House and Senate have already approved bills that would give the agency $65 million to start the low-yield warhead work in the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1.
The warhead will cost the NNSA another $60 million in 2020, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), a strong opponent of the weapon, said in a hearing of the Senate Appropriations energy and water development subcommittee in April.
Other Defense Department nuclear programs fared well in the House and Senate budget proposals this week.
Each chamber approved more money in 2019 for the Long-Range Standoff Weapon — the delivery vehicle for the W80-4 — than the roughly $615 million the White House requested. The House approved dramatically more money than requested: around $670 million, while the Senate OK’d a more modest increase to about $625 million.
On the seaborne leg of the triad, the House’s bill would knock about $20 million off the Pentagon’s roughly $515-million request for the Columbia-class submarines that will replace the current nuclear-missile-toting Ohio boats. The Senate, on the other hand, would provide around $540 million for the Ohio Replacement Program.
Both chambers met the administration’s 2019 request of just over $170 million to continue modernizing the fuses used to detonate the nuclear payloads of the Air Force’s intercontinental ballistic missiles. Much of that work would be done at NNSA facilities.
