The National Nuclear Security Administration seeks $70 million for a sea-launched cruise missile warhead for fiscal year 2025 as part of the agency’s list of unfunded priorities, a lawmaker said Wednesday.
Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm acknowledged at the start of a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee that the weapon was among the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) unfunded priorities for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1, but Sen. Debra Fischer (R-N.D.) quantified the funding the NNSA seeks.
The NNSA did not include the sea-launched warhead in its 2025 budget request, released in March, because the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act, which required the agency to work on the warhead, was signed in late December, too late for the agency to reformulate its budget request to include the warhead, Granholm said testified Tuesday.
So, Granholm said, the weapon landed on NNSA’s unfunded priorities list, a usually private document agencies share with Congress between the publication of their budget requests and the writing of a budget bill.
Meanwhile, NNSA Administrator Jill Hruby said during Wednesday’s hearing, where she was the only other witness, the tip of the sea-launched cruise missile warhead might not be a variant of the W80-4 air-launched cruise missile warhead.
“[W]e’re also looking at other options that might, might, we don’t know yet, be simpler to do without disrupting our current production flow,” Hruby said.
That would be a major deviation compared with prior public statements from the NNSA, and with the requirements Congress has set.
