The Senate Tuesday voted 52-to-44 to confirm James Danly, a former member of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, to be deputy secretary of energy.
The vote was along party lines with four senators, two Democrats and two Republicans, not voting. Danly, an attorney and U.S. Army veteran from Tennessee, was nominated to the position by President Donald Trump on Jan. 22. Last month, the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee supported his nomination 13-to-7.
Danly will hold the No. 2 position at DOE, second only to Secretary of Energy Chris Wright. President Trump’s three nuclear-related nominees are still awaiting Senate action, including National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) nominee Brandon Williams.
Russia has an estimated stockpile of around 4,309 nuclear warheads, with 1,718 warheads deployed, as of early 2025, according to a report by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists released Tuesday.
This estimate is more than the U.S.’s 2023 estimate of 3,748 warheads in the stockpile, with 1,770 deployed. However, the estimate for Russia is also a net decrease of 71 warheads from last year’s Russia estimate, which the Bulletin attributed to a change in the estimate of warheads assigned to non-strategic nuclear forces.
“Upgrades to intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and bombers face significant delays, and the “significant” increase of Russian non-strategic nuclear weapons that US Strategic Command (STRATCOM) predicted five years ago has yet to materialize,” the article said.
The Senate on Tuesday afternoon confirmed Troy Meink as Secretary of the U.S. Air Force on a 74 to 25 vote.
Democrats voting to approve Meink include Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee; Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), ranking member of the SASC airland panel; Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), ranking member of the SASC seapower panel; and Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), ranking member of SASC’s emerging threats and capabilities subcommittee. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) did not vote.
President Trump has yet to nominate an Air Force acquisition chief.
The Missile Defense Agency rescheduled its upcoming Golden Dome for America industry summit for June 11 in Huntsville, Ala.
An MDA notice from March originally announced the summit focused on next-generation missile defense in line with the White House Golden Dome initiative would occur on April 29 at Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville. The original notice said the summit aimed to “equip non-traditional and industry partners with the knowledge and understanding of MDA’s and Space Force’s role in Golden Dome for America, empowering them to take concrete actions that support and align with government requirements.”
The summit does not expect to plan one-on-one sessions or panels and the agency still says non-traditional contractors are “highly encouraged” to attend because MDA is “extremely interested” in different thinking to help shape future missile defense.
Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) said on Tuesday despite rumblings about the future U.S. Golden Dome missile shield being under construction, the program is still in its early stages and he will try to prevent the $25 billion for the program in the $113 billion DoD reconciliation bill from becoming a “slush fund.”
Golden Dome is “conceptual at the moment, frankly,” Reed, the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told a Defense Writers Group breakfast. “I suspect that the DoD money in the reconciliation, which is highly unusual, about $113 billion, I think there will be a category called ‘Golden Dome,’ but that’s just potentially a slush fund. They have to identify the technologies. They have to go ahead and design an integrated plan. In my view, from what I’ve heard, unclassified, it’s more of a warning system than a firing system, although it [Golden Dome] will develop firing units to complement it. But the key now is to identify hypersonics as soon as they launch so we can engage them, but that’s still a work in progress.”
A Jan. 27 executive order from President Trump directed the development of the U.S. missile defense shield, to include space-based interceptors–a project analysts have estimated could cost trillions of dollars. A group of five Democratic senators and 37 Democratic representatives on May 1 asked Acting DoD Inspector General Steven Stebbins to investigate the lawmakers’ conflict of interest concerns related to top Trump adviser, Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX, and SpaceX’s position as a front-runner for Golden Dome contracts.
Global Laser Enrichment has begun its uranium demonstration at its Test Loop facility in Wilmington, N.C., the company announced in a May 7 press release.
The company said its testing program for the SILEX enrichment process is expected to be a pivotal validation of large-scale performance. An independent engineering contractor will assess all of the company’s test activities and results of its enrichment tests. During the demonstration testing, Global Laser Enrichment (GLE) said it expects to generate hundreds of kilograms of enriched uranium.
Investors have funded over $550 million into GLE’s engineering and licensing investments, which are in Kentucky and North Carolina. According to the press release, the Test Loop facility is the only uranium enrichment facility in the world that is not government-owned or heavily backed by government funding.
In the wake of both President Donald Trump and Secretary of Energy Chris Wright traveling to Saudi Arabia recently, the administration has said it is “very excited” at the prospect of helping Saudi Arabia develop its commercial nuclear power industry.
Last May, the pacifist, anti-nuclear Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) wrote a letter to President Biden asking that any nuclear deal with the Saudis include a 123 Agreement, also known as the gold standard, which requires any country accepting exports of U.S. nuclear technology to commit to a peaceful nuclear program. Wright delivered remarks following a memorandum of understanding signing between Saudi Arabia and the U.S. in April.
Meanwhile, the media has also widely reported that Prince Mohammed has said that if Iran develops nuclear weapons, Saudi Arabia will develop nuclear weapons in turn.
Obituary
Dr. Richard “Dick” Garwin, one of the architects behind America’s first hydrogen bomb, died at age 97 Tuesday in his home in Scarsdale, N.Y.
Garwin built the first fusion bomb in the world when he was 23, before designing the actual hydrogen bomb in 1951-52 while he was a summer consultant at Los Alamos National Laboratory. The device, code-named Ivy Mike, was tested in the Marshall Islands.
Garwin eventually went on to advise Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. He designed Pentagon weapons during the Cold War, and later spoke against President Ronald Reagan’s proposals for the “Star Wars” space-based missile defense system, which President Donald Trump’s “Golden Dome” initiative resembles today.
