The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) seeks nearly a fourfold funding increase for development of the W87-, silo-based intercontinental ballistic-missile warhead in fiscal 2021, plus more than $1 billion to help build the plutonium cores for that warhead, according to new budget details released Monday.
The budget proposal from the semiautonomous Department of Energy nuclear weapons agency calls for over $540 million for the W87.-1 program in the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1, up from just over $110 million appropriated by Congress for 2020.
It is by far the biggest increase, either proportionally or by raw dollars, that the NNSA wants for any of its weapons life-extension programs and major alterations for 2021. The W87-1 is intended to tip the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD), the Air Force’s next-generation intercontinental ballistic missile, starting around 2030.
For the W80-4 program, which like W87-1 is led by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, the NNSA seeks roughly $1 billion, up a little more than 10% from the 2020 appropriation of nearly $900 million. W80-4 is the planned tip of the Long-Range Standoff Weapon nuclear cruise missile, which is slated to go into service only a little sooner than GBSD.
The Air Force plans to buy 1,000 or so new cruise missiles, and more than 600 GBSD missiles.
Source: DOE Chief Financial Officer.
Meanwhile, according to site-by-site spending tables released on Monday, the agency is requesting $1.4 billion in 2021 for what it calls Savannah River Plutonium Modernization.
The NNSA has tapped the Savannah River and Los Alamos national laboratories to produce 80 W87-1 style plutonium pits annually by 2030. The agency intends for production at Los Alamos to come online in 2024, casting 10 pits a year, and to hit 30 pits a year by 2026. The NNSA wants Savannah River to produce 50 pits annually starting in 2030, though the agency admits this will be a difficult milestone to hit.
For the planned Savannah River pit plant itself, the Savannah River Plutonium Processing Facility, the NNSA seeks a little more than $240 million in 2021. The plant, to be built by reconfiguring the partially completed Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility, is scheduled to reach the CD-1 milestone around June. At that point, the NNSA will finalize its design for turning the former plutonium recycling plant into a pit factory. Construction and acquisition of pit-casting hardware would notionally start after that.
