Laura McGill, director of Sandia National Laboratories, announced Thursday she was “absolutely confident” in the nation’s nuclear stockpile and had completed the lab’s annual certification of the stockpile.
The stockpile assessment letter, which is addressed to Secretary of Energy Chris Wright and will then go to Congress and the President, was finalized Sept. 22, the Sandia press release said. The commander of the U.S. Strategic Command and the directors from Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories will also submit their own annual assessment letters for different responsibility areas. Sandia specifically focuses on weapons systems and modernization program updates.
“A lot of work goes into this,” McGill said in the release. “We also have three independent teams that conduct their own assessments, bringing different perspectives and raising questions to make sure we have not missed something. I’m grateful to the team of engineers and scientists for their critical thinking, rigor and level of detail that goes into this process.”
Northrop Grumman last Thursday said that Ken Crews, the company’s chief financial officer, is leaving the company, and will be succeeded by John Greene, who most recently was the top finance officer for Discover Financial Services until it was acquired by Capital One in May.
Greene will become CFO on Jan. 7, 2026, and Crews will remain with the company until Feb. 20, 2026 to help with the transition. Crews has been with Northrop Grumman for 22 years and became CFO in October 2024 after Dave Keffer departed. Crews previously led finance activities at the company’s Space Systems segment.
Northrop Grumman reaffirmed its financial guidance for 2025 and outlook for 2026.
Britain’s BAE Systems, RTX’s Raytheon Australia, General Dynamics Mission Systems and France’s Thales on Wednesday signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) pitching the establishment of a unified submarine combat systems collaborative team for the future United Kingdom and Australian nuclear-powered attack submarine, SSN-AUKUS.
Signed during the Indo Pacific International Maritime Expo, running Nov. 4 to 6 in Sydney, Australia, the companies’ MoU specifically propose to lead design efforts and lay the foundation for manufacturing and integration of combat systems for SSN-AUKUS with the governments of the U.K. and Australia.
Under the AUKUS agreement, while Australia builds up its nuclear-powered submarine maintenance, fielding, and construction capabilities, it plans to buy three to five U.S.-built Virginia-class submarines in the 2030s. Thereafter, the U.K. plans to start producing the next generation attack submarine, SSN-AUKUS in the late 2030s and Australia plans to start building the same design domestically in the 2040s.
Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine), a member of the House Armed Services Committee, announced on Nov. 5 he will not seek reelection in 2026.
“I don’t fear losing. What has become apparent to me is that I now dread the prospect of winning. Simply put, what I could accomplish in this increasingly unproductive Congress pales in comparison to what I could do in that time as a husband, a father and a son,” Golden wrote in an op-ed for Bangor Daily News. Golden, 43, has represented Maine’s 2nd district since 2019.
As a moderate and former co-chair of the Blue Dog Coalition, Golden has broken with his party on several major defense-related votes. He was one of five Democrats on the Armed Services Committee to support the panel’s defense markup for the reconciliation bill, voted with Republicans to pass the House’s $831.5 billion fiscal year 2026 defense appropriations bill and was the sole House Democrat to vote in favor of the Nov. 21 continuing resolution ahead of the government shutdown.
An Australian government official this week gave updated numbers on personnel and confirmed timelines for next steps in AUKUS workforce and maintenance projects.
“We are on track to being ready to commence Submarine Rotational Force-West [SRF-W] in Western Australia in 2027,” Tim Hodgson, Deputy Director-General of the Australian Submarine Agency, said on Nov. 5 during the 2025 Indo-Pacific Sea Power Conference. “We are on track to become sovereign ready and receive our first sovereign SSNs, the Virginia-class submarine, in the early 2030s. We are on track to commence building our SSN-AUKUS submarines at Osborne Shipyard in South Australia by the end of the decade. And we’re on track to deliver the infrastructure, industry and workforce needed to support and sustain this capability. A capability that will strengthen our national security and regional stability for decades to come.”
One of the next major steps in the tripartite AUKUS agreement is the establishment of SRF-W, which will host up to one United Kingdom and four U.S. nuclear-powered attack submarines (SSNs), which will have Australia perform regular maintenance on SSNs as it builds its capabilities towards ultimately fielding and building its own SSNs.
Michael Payne, the nominee to be director of DoD’s office of Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation, told senators in advance policy questions before his hearing that “for too long, our military has been asked to defend our nation with systems that are outdated, over-budget, and delayed.”
Payne also said under President Trump and [Defense] Secretary [Pete] Hegseth’s leadership, we have been given a clear vision and priorities,” and that “resource needs warrant a year-by-year re-evaluation and, in some cases, such as Golden Dome, larger infusions are necessary to modernize U.S. capabilities with speed and purpose.”
The Golden Dome was originally dubbed “Iron Dome for America,” after Israel’s Iron Dome defense system, in an executive order by Trump in January. The executive order stated the Dome is intended to defend against hypersonic, cruise and nuclear-armed ballistic missile threats and a “countervalue attack by nuclear adversaries.”