Proportionally or by raw dollars, the W80-4 life-extension program would get the biggest increase of any active Department of Energy nuclear warhead refurbishment in fiscal 2020, if the Trump administration’s budget request became law.
The program led by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California already received an enormous budget increase in 2019 to pace the warhead’s refurbishment with development of the Long-Range Standoff (LRSO) cruise missile that will carry it, and DOE wants an even bigger one this year: an increase of more than 35 percent, or nearly $245 million, to about $900 million.
The Energy Department’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) previously forecast it would seek about $714 million for the W80-4 life extension in the budget year beginning Oct. 1.
The NNSA has not yet explained why its 2019 estimate was so far off the mark. In the detailed 2020 budget request it released Monday, the semiautonomous DOE agency said it was upping its ask for the W80-4 in light of the Weapon Design and Cost Report the agency completed for the weapon in December.
The Pentagon is procuring LRSO to replace the 1980s-vintage, nuclear-tipped Air-Launched Cruise Missile. Boeing, under a contract announced this month, will kit out the B-52H bomber to carry LRSO. The Trump administration’s 2018 Nuclear Posture Reviews says the United States will for now maintain 46 nuclear-capable B-52H aircraft. The Air Force has said it plans to buy around 1,000 LRSO missiles, deploying them starting e in the late 2020s.
Meanwhile, the budget for the LRSO itself would rise about 7 percent, or almost $50 million, if the Defense Department’s 2020 budget request becomes law. Raytheon and Lockheed Martin are maturing competing designs for the missile under four-and-a-half-year contracts awarded in 2017 and worth about $900 million each.
