ARLINGTON, VA – The W80-5, a new variant of the W80 warhead family, is on a “more aggressive schedule” to go on the nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missile (SLCM-N), weapons directors said on the final day of Exchange Monitor’s Nuclear Deterrence Summit.
Rita Gonzales, Deputy Laboratories Director for Nuclear Deterrence at Sandia National Laboratories, and Bradley Wallin, Deputy Director of Strategic Deterrence at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, both spoke on a panel about the new warhead the Department of Energy’s semi-autonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) is developing.
“This one just came up and we’ve been working on it for less than a year at this point, but really looking at accelerating that program as well and looking at some creative ways where we might be able to deliver that capability to the Department of War earlier than anticipated as well,” Gonzales said.
Congress had ordered that SLCM-N be developed by the Navy and use a W80-4 variant, but in a 2024 congressional testimony, Jill Hruby, then-administrator of NNSA, said the agency needed $70 million in funding for the sea-launched W80-4. However, Hruby also testified that year that the agency would look into alternatives to the W80-4 that might “be simpler to do without disrupting our current production flow.”
“As part of the congressionally mandated SLCM-N program, NNSA went through a selection process to determine what the best warhead would be for it,” Wallin told the Monitor after the panel. “And so it’s within the W80 family.”
NNSA is currently refurbishing the W80-4 warhead through its life extension program to tip the Air Force’s planned long range standoff (LRSO) cruise missile once completed. Boeing’s B-52H will be the first aircraft to carry LRSO, which eventually will fly aboard the B-21 Raider bomber that Northrop Grumman is building. The fiscal 2025 Stockpile Stewardship Management Plan (SSMP) said the first production unit of the W80-4 would be complete by the end of fiscal 2027; the W80-5 was not on the fiscal 2025 SSMP.
Gonzales said NNSA is focused on “getting the W80-4 system out the door.”