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US nuclear forces, 2015
  1. Hans M. Kristensen
  2. Robert S. Norris
Abstract
As of early 2015, the authors estimate that the US Defense Department maintains about 4,760 nuclear warheads. Of this number, they estimate that approximately 2,080 warheads are deployed while 2,680 warheads are in storage. In addition to the warheads in the Defense Department stockpile, approximately 2,340 retired but still intact warheads are in storage under the custody of the Energy Department and awaiting dismantlement, for a total US inventory of roughly 7,100 warheads. Since New START entered into force in February 2011, the United States has reported cutting a total of 158 strategic warheads and 88 launchers. It has plans to make some further reductions by 2018. Over the next decade, it also plans to spend as much as $350 billion on modernizing and maintaining its nuclear forces.

At the beginning of 2015, the US Defense Department maintained a stockpile of an estimated 4,760 nuclear warheads for delivery by more than 800 ballistic missiles and aircraft. The stockpile did not shrink significantly over the last year, but has shrunk by roughly 350 warheads compared with September 2009 when the United States announced that the nuclear arsenal contained 5,113 warheads.1

Most of the warheads in the stockpile are not deployed but stored for potential upload onto missiles and aircraft. We estimate that approximately 2,080 warheads are deployed, of which roughly 1,900 strategic warheads are deployed on ballistic missiles and at bomber bases in the United States. Another 180 warheads are deployed in Europe. The remaining 2,680 warheads—more than 56 percent of the total—are in storage as a so-called hedge against technical or geopolitical surprises.

In addition to the warheads in the Defense Department stockpile, approximately 2,340 retired but still intact warheads are in storage under the custody of the Energy Department and awaiting dismantlement, for a total US inventory of roughly 7,100 warheads. (see Table 1).

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Implementing New START

Under the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), the United States and Russia report the size of their nuclear arsenals every six months. As of September 1, 2014, the United States reported that its nuclear arsenal contained 1,642 strategic warheads attributed to 794 deployed missiles and bombers—an increase of 57 warheads and 16 launchers compared with the previous count in March 2014. The increase is an anomaly, however, reflecting fluctuations in the number of launchers being overhauled at any given time rather than an actual increase of strategic forces. Since the treaty entered into force in February 2011, the United States has reported cutting a total of 158 strategic warheads and 88 launchers.

Except for a couple of bombers, the United States has yet to begin reducing deployed nuclear forces under New START. So far, implementation efforts have involved eliminating so-called phantom launchers, that is, missile silos and bombers that are not actually deployed or assigned a nuclear mission but nonetheless count as non-deployed launchers. To meet the treaty limit on non-deployed launchers by 2018, the US Air Force plans to eliminate 104 empty intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) silos. This includes 50 silos at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana, which until 2008 housed the 50 Minuteman III missiles of the 564th Missile Squadron; 50 silos at Francis E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming, which until 2005 were used for Peacekeeper (MX) ICBMs of the 400th Missile Squadron; and one Peacekeeper and three Minuteman III test-launch silos at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Destruction of the Malmstrom silos began in February 2014 and was expected to be complete in early 2015. Destruction of the 50 missiles at Warren will follow in 2015 and 2016, and destruction of the four test-launch silos at Vandenberg is planned for 2017.

To meet the treaty limit on operational launchers by 2018, the Air Force will eventually remove 50 Minuteman missiles from their silos, although the plan is, at least for now, to retain the missiles in storage and keep the 50 silos “warm” for potential reloading if necessary.

After eliminating nuclear equipment from all B-1B and B-52G bombers (neither of which were actually assigned nuclear weapons), the Air Force has started removing nuclear capability from a small number of B-52H bombers. The plan is to denuclearize approximately half of its current inventory of 89 accountable B-52H bombers to reduce the total bomber force to no more than 60 nuclear-capable aircraft by 2018.

In 2015 and 2016, the Navy will reduce the number of missile tubes from 24 to 20 on every nuclear missile submarine. The objective is to reduce the number of deployed submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) to no more than 240 by 2018.

Nuclear weapons planning
Since the White House issued Presidential Policy Directive 24 in June 2014, containing the updated Nuclear Weapons Employment Strategy, the Pentagon and armed services have begun updating the Nuclear Weapons Employment Policy (NUWEP) and the Nuclear Supplement to the Joint Strategic Capabilities Plan (JSCP-N). These documents identify the objectives and the resources available to US Strategic Command (STRATCOM) and regional combatant commanders for updating America’s strategic war plan and various regional war plans.

To practice execution of these plans, the armed forces conducted several nuclear strike exercises during 2014. STRATCOM’s annual Global Lightning exercise, held in May, involved heavy bombers, ICBMs, ballistic missile submarines, and space and cyber capabilities. The various commands and military services practiced executing nuclear and conventional strike scenarios and command-and-control procedures. STRATCOM commander Adm. Cecil Haney said that the exercise, which included participation from some allies, demonstrated the military’s “preparedness and ability to use strategic capabilities to deter, dissuade and defeat current and future threats to the U.S. and our allies” (US Strategic Command Public Affairs, 2014a).

Global Lightning coincided with Air Force Global Strike Command’s annual Constant Vigilance nuclear deterrence and long-range strike exercise, which deployed B-2 and B-52H bombers. In the words of one US Air Force pilot, “these exercises are crucial to our nation’s nuclear posture and to show the world that we have the capability to strike anywhere in the world at a moment’s notice.” The exercise was conducted shortly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but the military said the timing had been long-planned and was unrelated to real-world events (Pfiester, 2014).

Large-scale nuclear exercises followed in the fall, including Valiant Shield 14, which took place in September and stretched from Goose Bay in Canada to Guam. As part of the exercise, B-2s and B-52s deployed to Andersen Air Force Base on Guam; B-52s deployed to Goose Bay in Canada; a Minuteman III ICBM was test-launched from the US West Coast into the Pacific; and a B-52 test-launched an air-launched cruise missile in Utah.

Valiant Shield 14 was followed by Global Thunder 15 in October, a nuclear readiness exercise that included the rapid launch of B-2s from Whiteman Air Force Base and B-52s from Minot and Barksdale Air Force Bases. The STRATCOM-led exercise also involved coordination with the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and Canada’s Joint Operations Command. According to STRATCOM:the scenario integrated, in just eight days, nearly every conceivable strategic threat to our nation and called upon all the USSTRATCOM capabilities that would be provided to geographic combatant commanders in a real-world crisis: space, cyber, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, global strike, and ballistic missile defense capabilities, among them. (US Strategic Command Public Affairs, 2014b)In addition to these large-scale national-level exercises, smaller exercises included rapid-launch maneuvers and long-range deployments of heavy bombers in April and June. In response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and increased air operations in Europe and elsewhere, two B-2s and three B-52Hs deployed to Britain’s Royal Air Force Fairford base and practiced long-range strike scenarios in Central Europe and North Africa (Wilson, 2014).

Nuclear modernization
Over the next decade, the US government plans to spend as much as $350 billion on modernizing and maintaining its nuclear forces (US Congressional Budget Office, 2013). This will include designing a new class of nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs), a new long-range bomber with nuclear capability, and a new air-launched cruise missile (ALCM). Plans also include studying options for the next-generation land-based ICBM; deploying a new nuclear-capable tactical fighter aircraft; completing full-scale production of one nuclear warhead and beginning modernization work on two others, including the first-ever guided nuclear bomb; modernizing nuclear command-and-control facilities; and building new nuclear weapon production and simulation facilities.

The nuclear warheads intended for the modernized arsenal are scheduled to undergo extensive life-extension and modernization programs over the next several decades. Full-scale production of approximately 1,600 W76-1 warheads for the Trident II (D5) SLBM is well under way, scheduled for completion in 2019 at a total cost of approximately $3.7 billion (US Energy Department, 2014). The production of the B61-12, a guided standoff nuclear gravity bomb, is scheduled to be completed by 2025 at a cost of about $10 billion.2 The production of the W80-4, a modified version of the W80-1 warhead intended for a new ALCM known as the Long-Range Standoff (LRSO), will cost another $7 billion to $8 billion through 2033. The cost of developing the new cruise missile to carry the W80-1 warhead will increase the cost of the LRSO even further, in one estimate by perhaps as much as $20 billion (Wolfsthal et al., 2014).

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has also presented a plan for a new family of so-called “interoperable” (previously called “common or adaptable”) warheads that can be used on both ICBMs and SLBMs.3 But Congress and sectors of the military have challenged the plan because of uncertainty about the technical requirements and risks that could affect reliability. The first of these new warheads would be the Interoperable Warhead 1—built with components from the W78, W88, and possibly W87 warheads—which could cost $10 billion to $15 billion. In contrast, simpler life-extension of existing designs could provide reliable warheads at a fraction of the cost.

The significant redesign of the interoperable warheads would challenge the pledge made in the 2010 Nuclear Posture Review, which said that the United States “will not develop new nuclear warheads” but will consider the “full range” of life-extension program options, including “refurbishment of existing warheads, reuse of nuclear components from different warheads, and replacement of nuclear components” (US Defense Department, 2010b: xiv). This pledge was intended to prevent resumption of nuclear explosive testing and adhere to the 1996 Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. The Nuclear Posture Review also stated that any life-extension programs “will use only nuclear components based on previously tested designs, and will not support … new military capabilities” (US Defense Department, 2010b: xiv). Of course, compliance depends on how “new” military capabilities are defined, since the addition of new or improved features outside the nuclear explosive package may increase a weapon’s military capabilities. It is anticipated that the United States will generally seek to increase the accuracy of its nuclear weapons in order to lower the yield of modified warheads with improved performance margins.

The United States is also planning upgrades and replacements for its land-based ballistic missiles, nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines, and strategic bombers, as discussed below.

Land-based ballistic missiles
The US Air Force operates a force of 450 silo-based Minuteman III ICBMs, split evenly across three wings: the 90th Missile Wing at Warren Air Force Base; the 91st Missile Wing at Minot Air Force Base; and the 341st Missile Wing at Malmstrom Air Force Base. Each wing has three squadrons, each with 50 missiles controlled by five launch-control centers. Under New START, the US Air Force plans to reduce the ICBM force to 400 missiles, probably by retiring one of three missile squadrons at one of the three bases, leaving two bases with 150 missiles each and one with 100 missiles.

Each Minuteman missile carries either the 335-kiloton (kt) W78 warhead or the 300-kt W87 warhead. Downloading of the ICBM force was completed on June 16, 2014, when the last remaining Minuteman III at Malmstrom Air Force Base with multiple warheads was downloaded to single warhead configuration (US Air Force Global Strike Command Public Affairs, 2014a). The downloading program started during the George W. Bush administration and although the US military refers to it as “de-MIRVing,” a reference that suggests the missiles have lost their ability to carry multiple warheads, Minuteman IIIs configured for the Mk12A reentry vehicle will retain hundreds of W78 warheads in storage for “re-MIRVing” if called for.4

The United States plans to reduce the ICBM force to 400 deployed missiles under New START to meet the treaty’s limit of no more than 700 deployed nuclear missiles and heavy bombers by 2018. Rather than eliminating one squadron of 50 missiles from one of the three ICBM bases, however, the Air Force plans to spread the reduction across all three bases. Moreover, the 50 empty silos will not be destroyed but retained for potential reloading of missiles. The “cut” ICBMs will not be destroyed but kept in storage: The New START Implementation Report lists the same inventory of Minuteman IIIs in 2014 as will exist in 2018, of 454 deployed and non-deployed missiles (US Defense Department, 2014).

A multibillion-dollar, decade-long modernization program to extend the service life of the Minuteman III to 2030 is scheduled for completion in 2015. Although the United States is officially not deploying a new ICBM, the upgraded Minuteman IIIs “are basically new missiles except for the shell” (Pampe, 2012), according to Air Force personnel.

Part of the upgrade involves refurbishing the arming, fuzing, and firing component on the Mk12A and Mk21 (SERV) reentry vehicles. The publicly stated purpose of this refurbishment is to extend the vehicles’ service life, but the effort may also involve modifying the fuzes to improve the targeting capability of the warheads. This reportedly involves improving the “burst height compensation” to take advantage of improvements to the Minuteman III guidance system (Postol, 2014). This will enhance the accuracy and target-kill capability of the warheads against hardened nuclear forces, and potentially also allow for lowering the warheads’ explosive yield. The fuzes were upgraded from 2010 to 2012 (Kleiman, 2011). The US Navy’s W76-1 life-extension program includes a similar upgrade.

The Air Force is studying options for the next-generation ICBM, known as the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent, which is scheduled to replace the Minuteman III beginning in 2030. An analysis-of-alternatives study completed in July 2014 decided on a “hybrid” design concept, partly based on today’s Minuteman III, its silos, and its command-and-control system, but incorporating modified features such as new rocket motors, a new guidance system, and upgraded arming, fuzing, and firing units. Apparently, the new system would be more accurate than that of the current Minuteman III. A wild-card option is whether to allow the missiles to be pulled out of their silos and dispersed on trucks or rail (Grossman, 2014), a potential feature that could significantly increase the cost. According to the head of Air Force Global Strike Command, Brig. Gen. Fred Stoss, the new missile is not a completely new follow-on missile but a systematic approach to recapitalizing the existing Minuteman III missile over the long term (Schanz, 2014).

Only one Minuteman III flight-test was conducted in 2014, down from three in 2013. The missile was plucked from a random silo at Minot Air Force Base and launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base on September 23. In addition to the live Minuteman III test-launch from Vandenberg, several Simulated Electronic Launch-Minuteman (SELM) exercises were conducted at the ICBM bases themselves. Each SELM may include several launch facilities. Warren Air Force Base conducted a SELM over several days in April 2014 that included six silos and two launch control centers, which simulated receiving launch orders and launching missiles in “a variety of new scenarios” against “certain modern threats.” According to the Air Force (Valle, 2014), SELM tests are conducted every six months on a rotating basis for the three ICBM bases, which means each missile wing is tested every 18 months.

Nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines
All of the US Navy’s 14 Ohio-class nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs), eight based in the Pacific and six in the Atlantic, carry Trident II (D5) SLBMs. Normally, 12 of these submarines are considered operational, with the 13th and 14th boat in overhaul at any given time. According to unclassified New START aggregate data, however, not all the remaining 12 submarines are routinely equipped with full missile loadings. As of March 1, 2014, for example, only 240 missiles were counted as deployed, 48 fewer than the capacity of 12 boats, so at most 10 of these submarines carried all their missiles at the time of the count (US State Department, 2014b). Starting in 2015, the number of missile tubes on each Ohio-class SSBN will be reduced by four, from 24 to 20. The reduction is intended to reduce the number of SLBMs that can be deployed at any given time to no more than 240, in order to meet the limit on deployed strategic delivery vehicles set by New START for 2018.

The warhead loading of the deployed SLBMs is not specified in the New START aggregate data. In practice, the missiles probably carry three to six warheads, depending on the requirements of their particular strike package assigned under war plans. Loading with fewer warheads increases the missiles’ range and flexibility. As of March 2014, for example, the 240 deployed SLBMs carried an estimated 1,047 warheads, or an average of four to five warheads per missile.

Three versions of two basic warhead types are deployed on the SLBMs: the 100 kt W76-0, the 100 kt W76-1, and the 455 kt W88. The W76-1 is a refurbished version of the W76-0, with the same yield but with dual strong link detonation control added. The Mk4A reentry body that carries the W76-1 is equipped with a new arming, fuzing, and firing unit with improved targeting capabilities compared with the old Mk4/W76 system. Full-scale production of an estimated 1,600 W76-1s is under way at the Pantex Plant in Texas. The halfway point was reached in October 2014 and production is scheduled to be completed in 2019. The Mk4A/W76-1 combination is also being supplied to the United Kingdom for use on its SSBNs (Kristensen, 2011a).

In 2014, the US SSBN fleet celebrated its 4,000th deterrent patrol since it first deployed to sea with nuclear missiles in 1960. The annual number of deterrent patrols that the US SSBN fleet conducts each year has declined by more than 56 percent in 15 years, from 64 patrols in 1999 to fewer than 30 in 2014. More than 60 percent of the patrols take place in the Pacific Ocean, reflecting nuclear war planning against China, North Korea, and Russia.5

Design of the next-generation SSBN is well under way to replace the Ohio class. The new submarine, known as SSBNX, will be 2,000 tonnes larger than the Ohio class submarine but equipped with 16 missile tubes rather than 24.6 Twelve SSBNXs are planned, a reduction of two boats compared with the current fleet of 14, at an estimated cost of $92 billion, or $7.7 billion per submarine (US Congressional Budget Office, 2014). Procurement of the first boat is scheduled for 2021 with deployment on deterrent patrol starting in 2031. During the first decade of its service life, the new SSBNX will be armed with a life-extended version of the current Trident II (D5) SLBM (the D5LE), which has a new guidance system designed to “provide flexibility to support new missions” and make the missile “more accurate,” according to the US Navy and Draper Laboratory (Draper Laboratory, 2006: 8; Naval Surface Warfare Center, 2008: 14). Starting in 2017, the D5LE will also be back-fitted onto existing Ohio-class submarines for the remainder of their service life (up to 2042), and will also be deployed on British submarines. Two Trident II (D5) SLBMs were test-launched in the Atlantic in June 2014 from the submarine West Virginia (SSBN-736) following completion of its reactor refueling overhaul.

Strategic bombers
The US Air Force currently operates a fleet of 20 B-2 and 93 B-52H bombers. Of those, 18 B-2s and 76 B-52Hs are nuclear-capable. (New START counts 20 B-2s and 89 B-52Hs.) Approximately 60 bombers (16 B-2s and 44 B-52Hs) are thought to be assigned nuclear missions under US nuclear war plans.7 They are organized into eight bomb squadrons in five bomb wings at three bases: Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota, Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana, and Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri.

Until 2012, only active US Air Force personnel were involved in nuclear bomber missions. But in 2013, two additional wings and squadrons were added using US Air Reserve and US Air National Guard personnel. This includes the 307th Bomb Wing and its 343rd Squadron of B-52Hs (integrated with the 2nd Bomb Wing at Barksdale Air Force Base). The 307th Bomb Wing passed its initial nuclear surety inspection in March 2013, becoming the first Air Reserve unit certified to deliver nuclear weapons. The other new wing, the 313th Bomb Wing and its 110th Squadron with B-2 bombers (integrated with the 509th Bomb Wing at Whiteman Air Force Base), passed its nuclear surety inspection in August 2013, becoming the first Air National Guard unit certified to deliver nuclear weapons.8

Each B-2 can carry up to 16 nuclear bombs (B61-7, B61-11, and B83-1 gravity bombs), and each B-52H can carry up to 20 air-launched cruise missiles. An estimated 1,000 nuclear weapons, including 528 air-launched cruise missiles, are assigned to the bombers. Although only 200 to 300 weapons are deployed at the bomber bases under normal circumstances, the remaining 700 to 800 weapons are in central storage at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico.

The US Air Force is planning a new bomber, known as the long-range strike bomber (the LRS-B, or simply the next-generation bomber), to begin replacing existing bombers beginning in the mid-2020s. Procurement of 80 to 100 aircraft is envisioned, some of which are planned to be nuclear-capable, at a cost of at least $80 billion. The US Air Force reportedly issued a request for proposals in July 2014 and plans to award the first public contract in the spring of 2015. But significant budget increases from $258.7 million in 2013 to $3.5 billion in 2019, as well as a relatively short development and production schedule calling for completion in 2025, indicate that significant long-range strike bomber development may already have been completed using funds from classified budgets (Gertler, 2014).

The long-range strike bomber will be equipped to deliver the new B61-12 guided standoff bomb (which will eventually replace all other gravity bombs) and the long-range standoff cruise missile, or LRSO (which will replace the air-launched cruise missile around 2025). In 2014, the US government’s Nuclear Weapons Council selected the W80-1 warhead to arm the long-range standoff. Under the plan, the W80-1 would undergo a life-extension program to extend its service life through the middle of this century. The life-extended warhead would be known as the W80-4 and partly include components and technologies developed for the B61-12 program.9 The number of long-range standoff cruise missiles planned has not been announced, but it is thought to involve around 500 missiles.

During 2014, nuclear-capable heavy B-2 and B-52H bombers continued rotational deployments to Andersen Air Force Base in Guam, an extended deterrence mission that began in 2004. Since 2011, nuclear-capable B-52H bombers have also started to deploy to Darwin Air Base in Australia as part of their Pacific rotational deployments. The first visit occurred in August 2012, following the signing in 2011 of an agreement to increase the US military presence in Northern Australia, but in 2014 the number of B-52H visits increased to at least three: one in January, one in May (that included two bombers), and one in December. The bombers normally are accompanied by KC-135 tankers. “Most importantly, these bomber rotations provide Pacific air forces and US Pacific Command commanders a global strike and extended deterrence capability against any potential adversary,” said Maj. Gen. Scott Vander Hamm, 8th Air Force and Task Force 204 commander (US Air Force Global Strike Command, 2014b).

Nonstrategic nuclear weapons
The United States has one type of nonstrategic weapon in its stockpile—the B61 gravity bomb. The weapon exists in three modifications, the B61-3, B61-4, and B61-10. Approximately 500 tactical B61 bombs of all versions remain in the stockpile. A little over 180 of these (versions -3 and -4) are deployed at six bases in five European countries: Aviano (Italy), Büchel (Germany), Ghedi (Italy), Incirlik (Turkey), Kleine Brogel (Belgium), and Volkel (Netherlands). The Belgian, Dutch, and possibly Turkish air forces (with F-16 combat aircraft), and German and Italian air forces (with PA-200 Tornado aircraft), are assigned nuclear strike missions with US nuclear weapons, but the weapons are kept under the control of US Air Force personnel until their use is authorized by the American president and approved by NATO in a war. (A small number of the remaining nonstrategic weapons stored in the United States are for potential use by US fighter-bombers in support of allies outside Europe, including in the Middle East and Northeast Asia.)

NATO is replacing its fleet of 12 weapons maintenance trucks with 10 new Secure Transportable Maintenance System (STMS) trailers (Kristensen, 2014a), which are used to service the B61 nuclear bombs at the six air bases in Europe. During service, the weapons are brought up from their underground storage vaults inside the protective aircraft shelters and hoisted into the trailers and disassembled for replacement of limited-life components or other maintenance.

NATO has approved a modernization of the nuclear posture in Europe through deployment at the beginning of the next decade of the B61-12 guided, standoff nuclear gravity bomb.10 The B61-12 will use the nuclear explosive package of the B61-4, which has a maximum yield of approximately 50 kt, but will be equipped with a guided tail kit to increase its accuracy and standoff capability. The B61-12 will be a more flexible weapon that is able to hold at risk hardened targets that could not be destroyed with the B61-3 or -4, and it will enable strike planners to select lower yields for existing targets to reduce collateral damage. Moreover, several of the NATO allies that currently have a nuclear strike mission plan to upgrade their fighter-bombers to the stealthy US-built F-35A (Joint Strike Fighter). Until the new aircraft is ready, the B61-12 will be back-fitted onto existing F-15E, F-16, and Tornado aircraft (Kristensen, 2014c). Combined, the guided B61-12 and stealthy F-35A represent a significant enhancement of the US nonstrategic nuclear posture in Europe.11

NATO’s annual nuclear strike exercise Steadfast Noon was held at Ghedi Air Base in Italy in October 2014 and included aircraft from Belgium, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Turkey, and the United States. Unlike aircraft from the other participants, the Polish F-16s are not nuclear-capable but provide non-nuclear support for the nuclear strike package under the so-called SNOWCAT (Support of Nuclear Operations With Conventional Air Tactics) program, a NATO plan designed to enable non-nuclear countries to provide non-nuclear support to the nuclear mission. In addition to these operations in western and southern NATO, nuclear-capable F-16s from US fighter wings are conducting periodic deployments to the Baltic States, Poland, and Romania.12
 
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US nuclear forces, 2015
  1. Hans M. Kristensen
  2. Robert S. Norris
Abstract
As of early 2015, the authors estimate that the US Defense Department maintains about 4,760 nuclear warheads. Of this number, they estimate that approximately 2,080 warheads are deployed while 2,680 warheads are in storage. In addition to the warheads in the Defense Department stockpile, approximately 2,340 retired but still intact warheads are in storage under the custody of the Energy Department and awaiting dismantlement, for a total US inventory of roughly 7,100 warheads. Since New START entered into force in February 2011, the United States has reported cutting a total of 158 strategic warheads and 88 launchers. It has plans to make some further reductions by 2018. Over the next decade, it also plans to spend as much as $350 billion on modernizing and maintaining its nuclear forces.

At the beginning of 2015, the US Defense Department maintained a stockpile of an estimated 4,760 nuclear warheads for delivery by more than 800 ballistic missiles and aircraft. The stockpile did not shrink significantly over the last year, but has shrunk by roughly 350 warheads compared with September 2009 when the United States announced that the nuclear arsenal contained 5,113 warheads.1

Most of the warheads in the stockpile are not deployed but stored for potential upload onto missiles and aircraft. We estimate that approximately 2,080 warheads are deployed, of which roughly 1,900 strategic warheads are deployed on ballistic missiles and at bomber bases in the United States. Another 180 warheads are deployed in Europe. The remaining 2,680 warheads—more than 56 percent of the total—are in storage as a so-called hedge against technical or geopolitical surprises.

In addition to the warheads in the Defense Department stockpile, approximately 2,340 retired but still intact warheads are in storage under the custody of the Energy Department and awaiting dismantlement, for a total US inventory of roughly 7,100 warheads. (see Table 1).

View attachment 210534

Implementing New START

Under the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), the United States and Russia report the size of their nuclear arsenals every six months. As of September 1, 2014, the United States reported that its nuclear arsenal contained 1,642 strategic warheads attributed to 794 deployed missiles and bombers—an increase of 57 warheads and 16 launchers compared with the previous count in March 2014. The increase is an anomaly, however, reflecting fluctuations in the number of launchers being overhauled at any given time rather than an actual increase of strategic forces. Since the treaty entered into force in February 2011, the United States has reported cutting a total of 158 strategic warheads and 88 launchers.

Except for a couple of bombers, the United States has yet to begin reducing deployed nuclear forces under New START. So far, implementation efforts have involved eliminating so-called phantom launchers, that is, missile silos and bombers that are not actually deployed or assigned a nuclear mission but nonetheless count as non-deployed launchers. To meet the treaty limit on non-deployed launchers by 2018, the US Air Force plans to eliminate 104 empty intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) silos. This includes 50 silos at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana, which until 2008 housed the 50 Minuteman III missiles of the 564th Missile Squadron; 50 silos at Francis E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming, which until 2005 were used for Peacekeeper (MX) ICBMs of the 400th Missile Squadron; and one Peacekeeper and three Minuteman III test-launch silos at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Destruction of the Malmstrom silos began in February 2014 and was expected to be complete in early 2015. Destruction of the 50 missiles at Warren will follow in 2015 and 2016, and destruction of the four test-launch silos at Vandenberg is planned for 2017.

To meet the treaty limit on operational launchers by 2018, the Air Force will eventually remove 50 Minuteman missiles from their silos, although the plan is, at least for now, to retain the missiles in storage and keep the 50 silos “warm” for potential reloading if necessary.

After eliminating nuclear equipment from all B-1B and B-52G bombers (neither of which were actually assigned nuclear weapons), the Air Force has started removing nuclear capability from a small number of B-52H bombers. The plan is to denuclearize approximately half of its current inventory of 89 accountable B-52H bombers to reduce the total bomber force to no more than 60 nuclear-capable aircraft by 2018.

In 2015 and 2016, the Navy will reduce the number of missile tubes from 24 to 20 on every nuclear missile submarine. The objective is to reduce the number of deployed submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) to no more than 240 by 2018.

Nuclear weapons planning

Since the White House issued Presidential Policy Directive 24 in June 2014, containing the updated Nuclear Weapons Employment Strategy, the Pentagon and armed services have begun updating the Nuclear Weapons Employment Policy (NUWEP) and the Nuclear Supplement to the Joint Strategic Capabilities Plan (JSCP-N). These documents identify the objectives and the resources available to US Strategic Command (STRATCOM) and regional combatant commanders for updating America’s strategic war plan and various regional war plans.

To practice execution of these plans, the armed forces conducted several nuclear strike exercises during 2014. STRATCOM’s annual Global Lightning exercise, held in May, involved heavy bombers, ICBMs, ballistic missile submarines, and space and cyber capabilities. The various commands and military services practiced executing nuclear and conventional strike scenarios and command-and-control procedures. STRATCOM commander Adm. Cecil Haney said that the exercise, which included participation from some allies, demonstrated the military’s “preparedness and ability to use strategic capabilities to deter, dissuade and defeat current and future threats to the U.S. and our allies” (US Strategic Command Public Affairs, 2014a).

Global Lightning coincided with Air Force Global Strike Command’s annual Constant Vigilance nuclear deterrence and long-range strike exercise, which deployed B-2 and B-52H bombers. In the words of one US Air Force pilot, “these exercises are crucial to our nation’s nuclear posture and to show the world that we have the capability to strike anywhere in the world at a moment’s notice.” The exercise was conducted shortly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but the military said the timing had been long-planned and was unrelated to real-world events (Pfiester, 2014).

Large-scale nuclear exercises followed in the fall, including Valiant Shield 14, which took place in September and stretched from Goose Bay in Canada to Guam. As part of the exercise, B-2s and B-52s deployed to Andersen Air Force Base on Guam; B-52s deployed to Goose Bay in Canada; a Minuteman III ICBM was test-launched from the US West Coast into the Pacific; and a B-52 test-launched an air-launched cruise missile in Utah.

Valiant Shield 14 was followed by Global Thunder 15 in October, a nuclear readiness exercise that included the rapid launch of B-2s from Whiteman Air Force Base and B-52s from Minot and Barksdale Air Force Bases. The STRATCOM-led exercise also involved coordination with the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and Canada’s Joint Operations Command. According to STRATCOM:the scenario integrated, in just eight days, nearly every conceivable strategic threat to our nation and called upon all the USSTRATCOM capabilities that would be provided to geographic combatant commanders in a real-world crisis: space, cyber, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, global strike, and ballistic missile defense capabilities, among them. (US Strategic Command Public Affairs, 2014b)In addition to these large-scale national-level exercises, smaller exercises included rapid-launch maneuvers and long-range deployments of heavy bombers in April and June. In response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and increased air operations in Europe and elsewhere, two B-2s and three B-52Hs deployed to Britain’s Royal Air Force Fairford base and practiced long-range strike scenarios in Central Europe and North Africa (Wilson, 2014).

Nuclear modernization

Over the next decade, the US government plans to spend as much as $350 billion on modernizing and maintaining its nuclear forces (US Congressional Budget Office, 2013). This will include designing a new class of nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs), a new long-range bomber with nuclear capability, and a new air-launched cruise missile (ALCM). Plans also include studying options for the next-generation land-based ICBM; deploying a new nuclear-capable tactical fighter aircraft; completing full-scale production of one nuclear warhead and beginning modernization work on two others, including the first-ever guided nuclear bomb; modernizing nuclear command-and-control facilities; and building new nuclear weapon production and simulation facilities.

The nuclear warheads intended for the modernized arsenal are scheduled to undergo extensive life-extension and modernization programs over the next several decades. Full-scale production of approximately 1,600 W76-1 warheads for the Trident II (D5) SLBM is well under way, scheduled for completion in 2019 at a total cost of approximately $3.7 billion (US Energy Department, 2014). The production of the B61-12, a guided standoff nuclear gravity bomb, is scheduled to be completed by 2025 at a cost of about $10 billion.2 The production of the W80-4, a modified version of the W80-1 warhead intended for a new ALCM known as the Long-Range Standoff (LRSO), will cost another $7 billion to $8 billion through 2033. The cost of developing the new cruise missile to carry the W80-1 warhead will increase the cost of the LRSO even further, in one estimate by perhaps as much as $20 billion (Wolfsthal et al., 2014).

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has also presented a plan for a new family of so-called “interoperable” (previously called “common or adaptable”) warheads that can be used on both ICBMs and SLBMs.3 But Congress and sectors of the military have challenged the plan because of uncertainty about the technical requirements and risks that could affect reliability. The first of these new warheads would be the Interoperable Warhead 1—built with components from the W78, W88, and possibly W87 warheads—which could cost $10 billion to $15 billion. In contrast, simpler life-extension of existing designs could provide reliable warheads at a fraction of the cost.

The significant redesign of the interoperable warheads would challenge the pledge made in the 2010 Nuclear Posture Review, which said that the United States “will not develop new nuclear warheads” but will consider the “full range” of life-extension program options, including “refurbishment of existing warheads, reuse of nuclear components from different warheads, and replacement of nuclear components” (US Defense Department, 2010b: xiv). This pledge was intended to prevent resumption of nuclear explosive testing and adhere to the 1996 Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. The Nuclear Posture Review also stated that any life-extension programs “will use only nuclear components based on previously tested designs, and will not support … new military capabilities” (US Defense Department, 2010b: xiv). Of course, compliance depends on how “new” military capabilities are defined, since the addition of new or improved features outside the nuclear explosive package may increase a weapon’s military capabilities. It is anticipated that the United States will generally seek to increase the accuracy of its nuclear weapons in order to lower the yield of modified warheads with improved performance margins.

The United States is also planning upgrades and replacements for its land-based ballistic missiles, nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines, and strategic bombers, as discussed below.

Land-based ballistic missiles

The US Air Force operates a force of 450 silo-based Minuteman III ICBMs, split evenly across three wings: the 90th Missile Wing at Warren Air Force Base; the 91st Missile Wing at Minot Air Force Base; and the 341st Missile Wing at Malmstrom Air Force Base. Each wing has three squadrons, each with 50 missiles controlled by five launch-control centers. Under New START, the US Air Force plans to reduce the ICBM force to 400 missiles, probably by retiring one of three missile squadrons at one of the three bases, leaving two bases with 150 missiles each and one with 100 missiles.

Each Minuteman missile carries either the 335-kiloton (kt) W78 warhead or the 300-kt W87 warhead. Downloading of the ICBM force was completed on June 16, 2014, when the last remaining Minuteman III at Malmstrom Air Force Base with multiple warheads was downloaded to single warhead configuration (US Air Force Global Strike Command Public Affairs, 2014a). The downloading program started during the George W. Bush administration and although the US military refers to it as “de-MIRVing,” a reference that suggests the missiles have lost their ability to carry multiple warheads, Minuteman IIIs configured for the Mk12A reentry vehicle will retain hundreds of W78 warheads in storage for “re-MIRVing” if called for.4

The United States plans to reduce the ICBM force to 400 deployed missiles under New START to meet the treaty’s limit of no more than 700 deployed nuclear missiles and heavy bombers by 2018. Rather than eliminating one squadron of 50 missiles from one of the three ICBM bases, however, the Air Force plans to spread the reduction across all three bases. Moreover, the 50 empty silos will not be destroyed but retained for potential reloading of missiles. The “cut” ICBMs will not be destroyed but kept in storage: The New START Implementation Report lists the same inventory of Minuteman IIIs in 2014 as will exist in 2018, of 454 deployed and non-deployed missiles (US Defense Department, 2014).

A multibillion-dollar, decade-long modernization program to extend the service life of the Minuteman III to 2030 is scheduled for completion in 2015. Although the United States is officially not deploying a new ICBM, the upgraded Minuteman IIIs “are basically new missiles except for the shell” (Pampe, 2012), according to Air Force personnel.

Part of the upgrade involves refurbishing the arming, fuzing, and firing component on the Mk12A and Mk21 (SERV) reentry vehicles. The publicly stated purpose of this refurbishment is to extend the vehicles’ service life, but the effort may also involve modifying the fuzes to improve the targeting capability of the warheads. This reportedly involves improving the “burst height compensation” to take advantage of improvements to the Minuteman III guidance system (Postol, 2014). This will enhance the accuracy and target-kill capability of the warheads against hardened nuclear forces, and potentially also allow for lowering the warheads’ explosive yield. The fuzes were upgraded from 2010 to 2012 (Kleiman, 2011). The US Navy’s W76-1 life-extension program includes a similar upgrade.

The Air Force is studying options for the next-generation ICBM, known as the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent, which is scheduled to replace the Minuteman III beginning in 2030. An analysis-of-alternatives study completed in July 2014 decided on a “hybrid” design concept, partly based on today’s Minuteman III, its silos, and its command-and-control system, but incorporating modified features such as new rocket motors, a new guidance system, and upgraded arming, fuzing, and firing units. Apparently, the new system would be more accurate than that of the current Minuteman III. A wild-card option is whether to allow the missiles to be pulled out of their silos and dispersed on trucks or rail (Grossman, 2014), a potential feature that could significantly increase the cost. According to the head of Air Force Global Strike Command, Brig. Gen. Fred Stoss, the new missile is not a completely new follow-on missile but a systematic approach to recapitalizing the existing Minuteman III missile over the long term (Schanz, 2014).

Only one Minuteman III flight-test was conducted in 2014, down from three in 2013. The missile was plucked from a random silo at Minot Air Force Base and launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base on September 23. In addition to the live Minuteman III test-launch from Vandenberg, several Simulated Electronic Launch-Minuteman (SELM) exercises were conducted at the ICBM bases themselves. Each SELM may include several launch facilities. Warren Air Force Base conducted a SELM over several days in April 2014 that included six silos and two launch control centers, which simulated receiving launch orders and launching missiles in “a variety of new scenarios” against “certain modern threats.” According to the Air Force (Valle, 2014), SELM tests are conducted every six months on a rotating basis for the three ICBM bases, which means each missile wing is tested every 18 months.

Nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines

All of the US Navy’s 14 Ohio-class nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs), eight based in the Pacific and six in the Atlantic, carry Trident II (D5) SLBMs. Normally, 12 of these submarines are considered operational, with the 13th and 14th boat in overhaul at any given time. According to unclassified New START aggregate data, however, not all the remaining 12 submarines are routinely equipped with full missile loadings. As of March 1, 2014, for example, only 240 missiles were counted as deployed, 48 fewer than the capacity of 12 boats, so at most 10 of these submarines carried all their missiles at the time of the count (US State Department, 2014b). Starting in 2015, the number of missile tubes on each Ohio-class SSBN will be reduced by four, from 24 to 20. The reduction is intended to reduce the number of SLBMs that can be deployed at any given time to no more than 240, in order to meet the limit on deployed strategic delivery vehicles set by New START for 2018.

The warhead loading of the deployed SLBMs is not specified in the New START aggregate data. In practice, the missiles probably carry three to six warheads, depending on the requirements of their particular strike package assigned under war plans. Loading with fewer warheads increases the missiles’ range and flexibility. As of March 2014, for example, the 240 deployed SLBMs carried an estimated 1,047 warheads, or an average of four to five warheads per missile.

Three versions of two basic warhead types are deployed on the SLBMs: the 100 kt W76-0, the 100 kt W76-1, and the 455 kt W88. The W76-1 is a refurbished version of the W76-0, with the same yield but with dual strong link detonation control added. The Mk4A reentry body that carries the W76-1 is equipped with a new arming, fuzing, and firing unit with improved targeting capabilities compared with the old Mk4/W76 system. Full-scale production of an estimated 1,600 W76-1s is under way at the Pantex Plant in Texas. The halfway point was reached in October 2014 and production is scheduled to be completed in 2019. The Mk4A/W76-1 combination is also being supplied to the United Kingdom for use on its SSBNs (Kristensen, 2011a).

In 2014, the US SSBN fleet celebrated its 4,000th deterrent patrol since it first deployed to sea with nuclear missiles in 1960. The annual number of deterrent patrols that the US SSBN fleet conducts each year has declined by more than 56 percent in 15 years, from 64 patrols in 1999 to fewer than 30 in 2014. More than 60 percent of the patrols take place in the Pacific Ocean, reflecting nuclear war planning against China, North Korea, and Russia.5

Design of the next-generation SSBN is well under way to replace the Ohio class. The new submarine, known as SSBNX, will be 2,000 tonnes larger than the Ohio class submarine but equipped with 16 missile tubes rather than 24.6 Twelve SSBNXs are planned, a reduction of two boats compared with the current fleet of 14, at an estimated cost of $92 billion, or $7.7 billion per submarine (US Congressional Budget Office, 2014). Procurement of the first boat is scheduled for 2021 with deployment on deterrent patrol starting in 2031. During the first decade of its service life, the new SSBNX will be armed with a life-extended version of the current Trident II (D5) SLBM (the D5LE), which has a new guidance system designed to “provide flexibility to support new missions” and make the missile “more accurate,” according to the US Navy and Draper Laboratory (Draper Laboratory, 2006: 8; Naval Surface Warfare Center, 2008: 14). Starting in 2017, the D5LE will also be back-fitted onto existing Ohio-class submarines for the remainder of their service life (up to 2042), and will also be deployed on British submarines. Two Trident II (D5) SLBMs were test-launched in the Atlantic in June 2014 from the submarine West Virginia (SSBN-736) following completion of its reactor refueling overhaul.

Strategic bombers

The US Air Force currently operates a fleet of 20 B-2 and 93 B-52H bombers. Of those, 18 B-2s and 76 B-52Hs are nuclear-capable. (New START counts 20 B-2s and 89 B-52Hs.) Approximately 60 bombers (16 B-2s and 44 B-52Hs) are thought to be assigned nuclear missions under US nuclear war plans.7 They are organized into eight bomb squadrons in five bomb wings at three bases: Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota, Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana, and Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri.

Until 2012, only active US Air Force personnel were involved in nuclear bomber missions. But in 2013, two additional wings and squadrons were added using US Air Reserve and US Air National Guard personnel. This includes the 307th Bomb Wing and its 343rd Squadron of B-52Hs (integrated with the 2nd Bomb Wing at Barksdale Air Force Base). The 307th Bomb Wing passed its initial nuclear surety inspection in March 2013, becoming the first Air Reserve unit certified to deliver nuclear weapons. The other new wing, the 313th Bomb Wing and its 110th Squadron with B-2 bombers (integrated with the 509th Bomb Wing at Whiteman Air Force Base), passed its nuclear surety inspection in August 2013, becoming the first Air National Guard unit certified to deliver nuclear weapons.8

Each B-2 can carry up to 16 nuclear bombs (B61-7, B61-11, and B83-1 gravity bombs), and each B-52H can carry up to 20 air-launched cruise missiles. An estimated 1,000 nuclear weapons, including 528 air-launched cruise missiles, are assigned to the bombers. Although only 200 to 300 weapons are deployed at the bomber bases under normal circumstances, the remaining 700 to 800 weapons are in central storage at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico.

The US Air Force is planning a new bomber, known as the long-range strike bomber (the LRS-B, or simply the next-generation bomber), to begin replacing existing bombers beginning in the mid-2020s. Procurement of 80 to 100 aircraft is envisioned, some of which are planned to be nuclear-capable, at a cost of at least $80 billion. The US Air Force reportedly issued a request for proposals in July 2014 and plans to award the first public contract in the spring of 2015. But significant budget increases from $258.7 million in 2013 to $3.5 billion in 2019, as well as a relatively short development and production schedule calling for completion in 2025, indicate that significant long-range strike bomber development may already have been completed using funds from classified budgets (Gertler, 2014).

The long-range strike bomber will be equipped to deliver the new B61-12 guided standoff bomb (which will eventually replace all other gravity bombs) and the long-range standoff cruise missile, or LRSO (which will replace the air-launched cruise missile around 2025). In 2014, the US government’s Nuclear Weapons Council selected the W80-1 warhead to arm the long-range standoff. Under the plan, the W80-1 would undergo a life-extension program to extend its service life through the middle of this century. The life-extended warhead would be known as the W80-4 and partly include components and technologies developed for the B61-12 program.9 The number of long-range standoff cruise missiles planned has not been announced, but it is thought to involve around 500 missiles.

During 2014, nuclear-capable heavy B-2 and B-52H bombers continued rotational deployments to Andersen Air Force Base in Guam, an extended deterrence mission that began in 2004. Since 2011, nuclear-capable B-52H bombers have also started to deploy to Darwin Air Base in Australia as part of their Pacific rotational deployments. The first visit occurred in August 2012, following the signing in 2011 of an agreement to increase the US military presence in Northern Australia, but in 2014 the number of B-52H visits increased to at least three: one in January, one in May (that included two bombers), and one in December. The bombers normally are accompanied by KC-135 tankers. “Most importantly, these bomber rotations provide Pacific air forces and US Pacific Command commanders a global strike and extended deterrence capability against any potential adversary,” said Maj. Gen. Scott Vander Hamm, 8th Air Force and Task Force 204 commander (US Air Force Global Strike Command, 2014b).

Nonstrategic nuclear weapons

The United States has one type of nonstrategic weapon in its stockpile—the B61 gravity bomb. The weapon exists in three modifications, the B61-3, B61-4, and B61-10. Approximately 500 tactical B61 bombs of all versions remain in the stockpile. A little over 180 of these (versions -3 and -4) are deployed at six bases in five European countries: Aviano (Italy), Büchel (Germany), Ghedi (Italy), Incirlik (Turkey), Kleine Brogel (Belgium), and Volkel (Netherlands). The Belgian, Dutch, and possibly Turkish air forces (with F-16 combat aircraft), and German and Italian air forces (with PA-200 Tornado aircraft), are assigned nuclear strike missions with US nuclear weapons, but the weapons are kept under the control of US Air Force personnel until their use is authorized by the American president and approved by NATO in a war. (A small number of the remaining nonstrategic weapons stored in the United States are for potential use by US fighter-bombers in support of allies outside Europe, including in the Middle East and Northeast Asia.)

NATO is replacing its fleet of 12 weapons maintenance trucks with 10 new Secure Transportable Maintenance System (STMS) trailers (Kristensen, 2014a), which are used to service the B61 nuclear bombs at the six air bases in Europe. During service, the weapons are brought up from their underground storage vaults inside the protective aircraft shelters and hoisted into the trailers and disassembled for replacement of limited-life components or other maintenance.

NATO has approved a modernization of the nuclear posture in Europe through deployment at the beginning of the next decade of the B61-12 guided, standoff nuclear gravity bomb.10 The B61-12 will use the nuclear explosive package of the B61-4, which has a maximum yield of approximately 50 kt, but will be equipped with a guided tail kit to increase its accuracy and standoff capability. The B61-12 will be a more flexible weapon that is able to hold at risk hardened targets that could not be destroyed with the B61-3 or -4, and it will enable strike planners to select lower yields for existing targets to reduce collateral damage. Moreover, several of the NATO allies that currently have a nuclear strike mission plan to upgrade their fighter-bombers to the stealthy US-built F-35A (Joint Strike Fighter). Until the new aircraft is ready, the B61-12 will be back-fitted onto existing F-15E, F-16, and Tornado aircraft (Kristensen, 2014c). Combined, the guided B61-12 and stealthy F-35A represent a significant enhancement of the US nonstrategic nuclear posture in Europe.11

NATO’s annual nuclear strike exercise Steadfast Noon was held at Ghedi Air Base in Italy in October 2014 and included aircraft from Belgium, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Turkey, and the United States. Unlike aircraft from the other participants, the Polish F-16s are not nuclear-capable but provide non-nuclear support for the nuclear strike package under the so-called SNOWCAT (Support of Nuclear Operations With Conventional Air Tactics) program, a NATO plan designed to enable non-nuclear countries to provide non-nuclear support to the nuclear mission. In addition to these operations in western and southern NATO, nuclear-capable F-16s from US fighter wings are conducting periodic deployments to the Baltic States, Poland, and Romania.12

They seem old, but in actuality, these are very well maintained and tested munitions. Missiles are randomly tested on a regular basis, the Trident D5 and Minuteman III are as reliable as an AK-47. ALCM is a disappointment though, at least in my opinion, but the cost of the ACM was just too high. Still, newer nuclear cruise missiles will be coming online in the 2020s:yahoo:

ALCM retained:angry:

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ACM put into reserve:tsk:

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W80-1 Warhead Selected For New Nuclear Cruise Missile

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The U.S. Nuclear Weapons Council has selected the W80-1 thermonuclear warhead for the Air Force’s new nuclear cruise missile (Long-Range Standoff, LRSO) scheduled for deployment in 2027.

The W80-1 warhead is currently used on the Air Launched Cruise Missile (ALCM), but will be modified during a life-extension program and de-deployed with a new name: W80-4.

Under current plans, the ALCM will be retired in the mid-2020s and replaced with the more advanced LRSO, possibly starting in 2027.

The enormous cost of the program – $10-20 billion by some estimates – is robbing defense planners of resources needed for more important non-nuclear capabilities.

Even though the United States has thousands of nuclear warheads on ballistic missiles and is building a new penetrating bomber to deliver nuclear bombs, STRATCOM and Air Force leaders are arguing that a new nuclear cruise missile is needed as well.

But their description of the LRSO mission sounds a lot like old-fashioned nuclear warfighting that will add new military capabilities to the arsenal in conflict with the administration’s promise not to do so and reduce the role of nuclear weapons.

What Kind of Warhead?

The selection of the W80-1 warhead for the LRSO completes a multi-year process that also considered using the B61 and W84 warheads.

The W80-4 selected for the LRSO will be the fifth modification name for the W80 warhead (see table below): The first was the W80-0 for the Navy’s Tomahawk Land-Attack Cruise Missile (TLAM/N), which was retired in 2011; the second is the W80-1, which is still used the ALCM; the third was the W80-2, which was a planned LEP of the W80-0 but canceled in 2006; the fourth was the W80-3, a planned LEP of the W80-1 but canceled in 2006.

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The B61 warhead has been used as the basis for a wide variety of warhead designs. It currently exists in five gravity bomb versions (B61-4, B61-4, B61-7, B61-10, B61-11) and was also used as the basis for the W85 warhead on the Pershing II ground-launched ballistic missile. After the Pershing II was eliminated by the INF Treaty, the W85 was converted into the B61-10. But the B61 was not selected for the LRSO partly because of concern about the risk of common-component failure from basing too many warheads on the same basic design.

The W84 was developed for the ground-launched cruise missile (BGM-109G), another weapon eliminated by the INF Treaty. As a more modern warhead, it includes a Fire Resistant Pit (which the W80-1 does not have) and a more advanced Permissive Action Link (PAL) use-control system. The W84 was retired from the stockpile in 2008 but was brought back as a LRSO candidate but was not selected, partly because not enough W84s were built to meet the requirement for the planned LRSO inventory.

Cost Estimates

In the past two year, NNSA has provided two very different cost estimates for the W80-4. The FY2014 Stockpile Stewardship and Management Plan (SSMP) published in June 2013 projected a total cost of approximately $11.6 billion through 2030. The FY2015 SSMP, in contrast, contained a significantly lower estimate: approximately $6.8 billion through 2033 (see graph below).

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The huge difference in the cost estimates (nearly 50%) is not explained in detail in the FY2015 SSMP, which only states that the FY2014 numbers were updated with a smaller “escalation factor” and “improvements in the cost models.” Curiously, the update only reduces the cost for the years that were particularly high (2019-2027), the years with warhead development and production engineering. The two-third reduction in the cost estimate may make it easier for NNSA to secure Congressional funding, but it also raises significant uncertainty about what the cost will actually be.

Assuming a planned production of approximately 500 LRSOs (there are currently 528 ALCMs in the stockpile and the New START Treaty does not count or limit cruise missiles), the cost estimates indicate a complex W80-4 LEP on par with the B61-12 LEP. NNSA told me the plan is to use many of the non-nuclear components and technologies on the W80-4 that were developed for the B61-12.

In addition to the cost of the W80-4 warhead itself, the cost estimate for completing the LRSO has not been announced but $227 million are programmed through 2019. Unofficial estimates put the total cost for the LRSO and W80-4 at $10-20 billion. In addition to these weapons costs, integration on the B-2A and next-generation long-range bomber (LRS-B) will add hundreds of millions more.

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What’s The Mission?

Why does the Air Force need a new nuclear cruise missile?

During a recent meeting with Pentagon officials, I asked why the LRSO was needed, given that the military also has gravity bombs on its bombers. “Because of what you see on that map,” a senior defense official said pointing to a large world map on the wall. The implication was that many targets would be risky to get to with a bomber. When reminded that the military also has land- and sea-based ballistic missiles that can reach all of those targets, another official explained: “Yes but they’re all brute weapons with high-yield warheads. We need the targeting flexibility and lower-yield options that the LRSO provides.”

The assumption for the argument is that if the Air Force didn’t have a nuclear cruise missile, an adversary could gamble that the United States would not risk an expensive stealth bomber to deliver a nuclear bomb and would not want to use ballistic missiles because that would be escalating too much. That’s quite an assumption but for the nuclear warfighter the cruise missile is seen as this great in-between weapon that increases targeting flexibility in a variety of regional strike scenarios.

That conversation could have taken place back in the 1980s because the answers sounded more like warfighting talk than deterrence. The two roles can be hard to differentiate and the Air Force’s budget request seems to include a bit of both: the LRSO “will be capable of penetrating and surviving advanced Integrated Air Defense Systems (IADS) from significant stand off range to prosecute strategic targets in support of the Air Force’s global attack capability and strategic deterrence core function.”

The deterrence function is provided by the existence of the weapon, but the global attack capability is what’s needed when deterrence fails. At that point, the mission is about target destruction: holding at risk what the adversary values most. Getting to the target is harder with a cruise missile than a ballistic missile, but it is easier with a cruise missile than a gravity bomb because the latter requires the bomber to fly very close to the target. That exposes the platform to all sorts of air defense capabilities. That’s why the Pentagon plans to spend a lot of money on equipping its next-generation long-range bomber (LRS-B) with low-observable technology.

The LRSO is therefore needed, STRATCOM commander Admiral Cecil Haney explained in June, to “effectively conduct global strike operations in the anti-access, access-denial environments.” When asked why they needed a standoff missile when they were building a stealth bomber, Haney acknowledge that “if you had all the stealth you could possibly have in a platform, then gravity bombs would solve it all.” But the stealth of the bomber will diminish over time because of countermeasures invented by adversaries, he warned. So “having standoff and stealth is very important” given how long the long-range bomber will operate into the future.

Still, one could say that for any weapon and it doesn’t really explain what the nuclear mission is. But around the same time Admiral Haney made his statement, Air Force Global Strike Command commander General Wilson added a bit more texture: “There may be air defenses that are just too hard, it’s so redundant, that penetrating bombers become a challenge. But with standoff, I can make holes and gaps to allow a penetrating bomber to get in, and then it becomes a matter of balance.”

In this mission, the LRSO would not be used to keep the stealth bomber out of harms way per ce but as a nuclear sledgehammer to “kick down the door” so the bomber – potentially with B61-12 nuclear bombs in its bomb bay – could slip through the air defenses and get to its targets inside the country. Rather than deterrence, this is a real warfighting scenario that is a central element of STRATCOM’s Global Strike mission for the first few days of a conflict and includes a mix of weapons such as the B-2, F-22, and standoff weapons.

But why the sledgehammer mission would require a nuclear cruise missile is still not clear, as conventional cruise missiles have become significantly more capable against air defense and hard targets. In fact, most of the Global Strike scenarios would involve conventional weapons, not nuclear LRSOs. The Air Force has a $4 billion program underway to develop the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM) and an extended-range version (JASSM-ER) for deliver by B-1B, B-2A, B-52H bombers and F-15E, F-16, and F-35 fighters. A total of 4,900 missiles are planned, including 2,846 JASSM-ERs.

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Since the next-generation long-range bomber would also be the launch platform for those conventional weapons, it will be exposed to the same risks with or without a nuclear LRSO.

Most recently, according to the Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor, Gen. Wilson added another twist to the justification:

“If I take a bomber, and I put standoff cruise missiles on it, in essence, it becomes very much like a sub. It’s got close to the same magazine capacity of a sub. So once I generate a bomber with standoff cruise missiles, it becomes a significant deterrent for any adversary. We often forget that. It possesses the same firepower, in essence, as a sub that we can position whenever and wherever we want, and it becomes a very strong deterrent. So I’m a strong proponent of being able to modernize our standoff missile capability.”

Although the claim that a bomber has “close to the same capacity of a sub” is vastly exaggerated (it is up to 20 warheads on 20 cruise missiles on a B-52H bomber versus 192 warheads on 24 sea-launched ballistic missiles on an Ohio-class submarine), the example helps illustrates the enormous overcapacity and redundancy in the current arsenal.

What Kind of Missile?

Although we have yet to see what kind of capabilities the LRSO will have, the Air Force description is that LRSO “will be capable of penetrating and surviving advanced Integrated Air Defense Systems (IADS) from significant stand off range to prosecute strategic targets in support of the Air Force’s global attack capability and strategic deterrence core function.”

There is every reason to expect that STRATCOM and the Air Force will want the weapon to have better military capabilities than the current Air Launched Cruise Missile (ALCM), perhaps with features similar to the Advanced Cruise Missile (ACM). After all, so the thinking goes, air defenses have improved significantly since the ALCM was deployed in 1982 and the LRSO will have to operate well into the middle of the century when air defense systems can be expected to be even better than today.

With a 3,000-km range similar to the ACM, the LRSO would theoretically be able to reach targets in much of Russia and most of China from launch-positions 1,000 kilometers from their coasts. Most of Russia and China’s nuclear forces are located in these areas.

In thinking about which capabilities would be needed for the LRSO, it is useful to recall the last time the warfighters argued that an improved cruise missile was needed. The ALCM was also “designed to evade air and ground-based defenses in order to strike targets at any location within any enemy’s territory,” but that was not good enough. So the Advanced Cruise Missile (ACM) was developed and deployed in 1992 to provide “significant improvements” over the ALCM in “range, accuracy, and survivability.” The rest of the mission was similar – “evade air and ground-based defenses in order to strike heavily defended, hardened targets at any location within any enemy’s territory” – but the requirement to hold at risk “heavily defended, hardened targets” was unique.

Yet when comparing the ALCM and ACM mission requirements and capabilities with the operational experience, GAO in 1993 found that “air defense threats had been overestimated” and that “tests did not demonstrate low ALCM survivability.” The ACM’s range was found to be “only slightly better than the older ALCM’s demonstrated capability,” and GAO concluded that “the improvement in accuracy offered by the ACM appears to have little real operational significance.”

ACM.jpg


Nonetheless, the ACM was produced in 1992-1993 at a cost of more than $10 billion. Strategic Air Command initially wanted 1461 missiles, but the high cost and the end of the Cold War caused Pentagon to cut the program to only 430 missiles. A sub-sonic cruise missile with a range of 3,000 kilometers (1,865 miles) and hard-target kill capability with the W80-1 warhead, the ACM was designed for external carriage on the B-52H bomber, with up to 12 missiles under the wings. The B-2 was also capable of carrying the ACM but as a penetrating stealth bomber there was never a need to assign it the stealthy standoff missile as well.

The ACM was supposed to undergo a life extension program to extend it to 2030, but after only 15 years of service the missile was retired early in 2007. An Enhanced Cruise Missile (ECM) was planned by the Bush administration, but it never materialized. It is likely, but still not clear, that LRSO will make use of some of the technologies from the ACM and ECM programs.

Conclusions and Recommendations

The W80-1 warhead has been selected to arm the new Long-Range Standoff (LRSO) missile, a $10-20 billion weapon system the Air Force plans to deploy in the late-2020s but can poorly afford.

Even though the United States has thousands of nuclear warheads on land- and sea-based ballistic missiles that can reach the same targets intended for the LRSO, the military argues that a new nuclear standoff weapon is needed to spare a new penetrating bomber from enemy air-defense threats.

Yet the same bomber will be also equipped with conventional weapons – some standoff, some not – that will expose it to the same kinds of threats anyway. So the claim that the LRSO is needed to spare the next-generation bomber from air-defense threats sounds a bit like a straw man argument.

The mission for the LRSO is vague at best and to the extent the Air Force has described one it sounds like a warfighting mission from the Cold War with nuclear cruise missiles shooting holes in enemy air defense systems. Given the conventional weapon systems that have been developed over the past two decades, it is highly questionable whether such a mission requires a nuclear cruise missile.

The warfighters and the strategists might want a nuclear cruise missile as a flexible weapon for regional scenarios. But good to have is not the same as essential. And the regional scenarios they use to justify it are vague and largely unknown – certainly untested – in the public debate.

In the nuclear force structure planned for the future, the United States will have roughly 1,500 warheads deployed on land- and sea-based ballistic missiles. Nearly three-quarters of those warheads will be onboard submarines that can move to positions off adversaries anywhere in the world and launch missiles that can put warheads on target in as little as 15 minutes.

It really stretches the imagination why such a capability, backed up by nuclear bombs on bombers and the enormous conventional capability the U.S. military possesses, would be insufficient to deter or dissuade any potential adversary that can be deterred or dissuaded.

As the number of warheads deployed on land- and sea-based ballistic missiles continues to drop in the future, long-range, highly accurate, stealthy, standoff cruise missiles will increasingly complicate the situation. These weapons are not counted under the New START treaty and if a follow-on treaty does not succeed in limiting them, which seems unlikely in the current political climate, a new round of nuclear cruise missile deployments could become real spoilers. There are currently more ALCMs than ICBMs in the U.S. arsenal and with each bomber capable of loading up to 20 missiles the rapid upload capacity is considerable.

Under the 1,500 deployed strategic warhead posture of the New START treaty, the unaccounted cruise missiles could very quickly increase the force by one-third to 2,000 warheads. Under a posture of 1,000 deployed strategic warheads, which the Obama administration has proposed for the future, the effect would be even more dramatic: the air-launched cruise missiles could quickly increase the number of deployed warheads by 50 percent. Not good for crisis stability!

As things stand at the moment, the only real argument for the new cruise missile seems to be that the Air Force currently has one, but it’s getting old, so it needs a new one. Add to that the fact that Russia is also developing a new cruise missile, and all clear thinking about whether the LRSO is needed seems to fly out the window. Rather than automatically developing and deploying a new nuclear cruise missile, the administration and Congress need to ask tough questions about the need for the LRSO and whether the money could be better spent elsewhere on non-nuclear capabilities that – unlike a nuclear cruise missile – are actually useful in supporting U.S. national and international security commitments.

http://fas.org/blogs/security/2014/10/w80-1_lrso/
 
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They seem old, but in actuality, these are very well maintained and tested munitions. Missiles are randomly tested an a regular basis, the Trident and Minuteman are as reliable as an AK-47. ALCM is a disappointment though, at least in my opinion, but the cost of the ACM was just too high. Still, newer nuclear cruise missiles will be coming online in the 2020s:yahoo:

ALCM retained:angry:

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ACM put into reserve:tsk:

View attachment 210554

W80-1 Warhead Selected For New Nuclear Cruise Missile

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The U.S. Nuclear Weapons Council has selected the W80-1 thermonuclear warhead for the Air Force’s new nuclear cruise missile (Long-Range Standoff, LRSO) scheduled for deployment in 2027.

The W80-1 warhead is currently used on the Air Launched Cruise Missile (ALCM), but will be modified during a life-extension program and de-deployed with a new name: W80-4.

Under current plans, the ALCM will be retired in the mid-2020s and replaced with the more advanced LRSO, possibly starting in 2027.

The enormous cost of the program – $10-20 billion by some estimates – is robbing defense planners of resources needed for more important non-nuclear capabilities.

Even though the United States has thousands of nuclear warheads on ballistic missiles and is building a new penetrating bomber to deliver nuclear bombs, STRATCOM and Air Force leaders are arguing that a new nuclear cruise missile is needed as well.

But their description of the LRSO mission sounds a lot like old-fashioned nuclear warfighting that will add new military capabilities to the arsenal in conflict with the administration’s promise not to do so and reduce the role of nuclear weapons.

What Kind of Warhead?

The selection of the W80-1 warhead for the LRSO completes a multi-year process that also considered using the B61 and W84 warheads.

The W80-4 selected for the LRSO will be the fifth modification name for the W80 warhead (see table below): The first was the W80-0 for the Navy’s Tomahawk Land-Attack Cruise Missile (TLAM/N), which was retired in 2011; the second is the W80-1, which is still used the ALCM; the third was the W80-2, which was a planned LEP of the W80-0 but canceled in 2006; the fourth was the W80-3, a planned LEP of the W80-1 but canceled in 2006.

View attachment 210548

The B61 warhead has been used as the basis for a wide variety of warhead designs. It currently exists in five gravity bomb versions (B61-4, B61-4, B61-7, B61-10, B61-11) and was also used as the basis for the W85 warhead on the Pershing II ground-launched ballistic missile. After the Pershing II was eliminated by the INF Treaty, the W85 was converted into the B61-10. But the B61 was not selected for the LRSO partly because of concern about the risk of common-component failure from basing too many warheads on the same basic design.

The W84 was developed for the ground-launched cruise missile (BGM-109G), another weapon eliminated by the INF Treaty. As a more modern warhead, it includes a Fire Resistant Pit (which the W80-1 does not have) and a more advanced Permissive Action Link (PAL) use-control system. The W84 was retired from the stockpile in 2008 but was brought back as a LRSO candidate but was not selected, partly because not enough W84s were built to meet the requirement for the planned LRSO inventory.

Cost Estimates

In the past two year, NNSA has provided two very different cost estimates for the W80-4. The FY2014 Stockpile Stewardship and Management Plan (SSMP) published in June 2013 projected a total cost of approximately $11.6 billion through 2030. The FY2015 SSMP, in contrast, contained a significantly lower estimate: approximately $6.8 billion through 2033 (see graph below).

View attachment 210549

The huge difference in the cost estimates (nearly 50%) is not explained in detail in the FY2015 SSMP, which only states that the FY2014 numbers were updated with a smaller “escalation factor” and “improvements in the cost models.” Curiously, the update only reduces the cost for the years that were particularly high (2019-2027), the years with warhead development and production engineering. The two-third reduction in the cost estimate may make it easier for NNSA to secure Congressional funding, but it also raises significant uncertainty about what the cost will actually be.

Assuming a planned production of approximately 500 LRSOs (there are currently 528 ALCMs in the stockpile and the New START Treaty does not count or limit cruise missiles), the cost estimates indicate a complex W80-4 LEP on par with the B61-12 LEP. NNSA told me the plan is to use many of the non-nuclear components and technologies on the W80-4 that were developed for the B61-12.

In addition to the cost of the W80-4 warhead itself, the cost estimate for completing the LRSO has not been announced but $227 million are programmed through 2019. Unofficial estimates put the total cost for the LRSO and W80-4 at $10-20 billion. In addition to these weapons costs, integration on the B-2A and next-generation long-range bomber (LRS-B) will add hundreds of millions more.

View attachment 210550

What’s The Mission?

Why does the Air Force need a new nuclear cruise missile?

During a recent meeting with Pentagon officials, I asked why the LRSO was needed, given that the military also has gravity bombs on its bombers. “Because of what you see on that map,” a senior defense official said pointing to a large world map on the wall. The implication was that many targets would be risky to get to with a bomber. When reminded that the military also has land- and sea-based ballistic missiles that can reach all of those targets, another official explained: “Yes but they’re all brute weapons with high-yield warheads. We need the targeting flexibility and lower-yield options that the LRSO provides.”

The assumption for the argument is that if the Air Force didn’t have a nuclear cruise missile, an adversary could gamble that the United States would not risk an expensive stealth bomber to deliver a nuclear bomb and would not want to use ballistic missiles because that would be escalating too much. That’s quite an assumption but for the nuclear warfighter the cruise missile is seen as this great in-between weapon that increases targeting flexibility in a variety of regional strike scenarios.

That conversation could have taken place back in the 1980s because the answers sounded more like warfighting talk than deterrence. The two roles can be hard to differentiate and the Air Force’s budget request seems to include a bit of both: the LRSO “will be capable of penetrating and surviving advanced Integrated Air Defense Systems (IADS) from significant stand off range to prosecute strategic targets in support of the Air Force’s global attack capability and strategic deterrence core function.”

The deterrence function is provided by the existence of the weapon, but the global attack capability is what’s needed when deterrence fails. At that point, the mission is about target destruction: holding at risk what the adversary values most. Getting to the target is harder with a cruise missile than a ballistic missile, but it is easier with a cruise missile than a gravity bomb because the latter requires the bomber to fly very close to the target. That exposes the platform to all sorts of air defense capabilities. That’s why the Pentagon plans to spend a lot of money on equipping its next-generation long-range bomber (LRS-B) with low-observable technology.

The LRSO is therefore needed, STRATCOM commander Admiral Cecil Haney explained in June, to “effectively conduct global strike operations in the anti-access, access-denial environments.” When asked why they needed a standoff missile when they were building a stealth bomber, Haney acknowledge that “if you had all the stealth you could possibly have in a platform, then gravity bombs would solve it all.” But the stealth of the bomber will diminish over time because of countermeasures invented by adversaries, he warned. So “having standoff and stealth is very important” given how long the long-range bomber will operate into the future.

Still, one could say that for any weapon and it doesn’t really explain what the nuclear mission is. But around the same time Admiral Haney made his statement, Air Force Global Strike Command commander General Wilson added a bit more texture: “There may be air defenses that are just too hard, it’s so redundant, that penetrating bombers become a challenge. But with standoff, I can make holes and gaps to allow a penetrating bomber to get in, and then it becomes a matter of balance.”

In this mission, the LRSO would not be used to keep the stealth bomber out of harms way per ce but as a nuclear sledgehammer to “kick down the door” so the bomber – potentially with B61-12 nuclear bombs in its bomb bay – could slip through the air defenses and get to its targets inside the country. Rather than deterrence, this is a real warfighting scenario that is a central element of STRATCOM’s Global Strike mission for the first few days of a conflict and includes a mix of weapons such as the B-2, F-22, and standoff weapons.

But why the sledgehammer mission would require a nuclear cruise missile is still not clear, as conventional cruise missiles have become significantly more capable against air defense and hard targets. In fact, most of the Global Strike scenarios would involve conventional weapons, not nuclear LRSOs. The Air Force has a $4 billion program underway to develop the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM) and an extended-range version (JASSM-ER) for deliver by B-1B, B-2A, B-52H bombers and F-15E, F-16, and F-35 fighters. A total of 4,900 missiles are planned, including 2,846 JASSM-ERs.

View attachment 210551

Since the next-generation long-range bomber would also be the launch platform for those conventional weapons, it will be exposed to the same risks with or without a nuclear LRSO.

Most recently, according to the Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor, Gen. Wilson added another twist to the justification:

“If I take a bomber, and I put standoff cruise missiles on it, in essence, it becomes very much like a sub. It’s got close to the same magazine capacity of a sub. So once I generate a bomber with standoff cruise missiles, it becomes a significant deterrent for any adversary. We often forget that. It possesses the same firepower, in essence, as a sub that we can position whenever and wherever we want, and it becomes a very strong deterrent. So I’m a strong proponent of being able to modernize our standoff missile capability.”

Although the claim that a bomber has “close to the same capacity of a sub” is vastly exaggerated (it is up to 20 warheads on 20 cruise missiles on a B-52H bomber versus 192 warheads on 24 sea-launched ballistic missiles on an Ohio-class submarine), the example helps illustrates the enormous overcapacity and redundancy in the current arsenal.

What Kind of Missile?

Although we have yet to see what kind of capabilities the LRSO will have, the Air Force description is that LRSO “will be capable of penetrating and surviving advanced Integrated Air Defense Systems (IADS) from significant stand off range to prosecute strategic targets in support of the Air Force’s global attack capability and strategic deterrence core function.”

There is every reason to expect that STRATCOM and the Air Force will want the weapon to have better military capabilities than the current Air Launched Cruise Missile (ALCM), perhaps with features similar to the Advanced Cruise Missile (ACM). After all, so the thinking goes, air defenses have improved significantly since the ALCM was deployed in 1982 and the LRSO will have to operate well into the middle of the century when air defense systems can be expected to be even better than today.

With a 3,000-km range similar to the ACM, the LRSO would theoretically be able to reach targets in much of Russia and most of China from launch-positions 1,000 kilometers from their coasts. Most of Russia and China’s nuclear forces are located in these areas.

In thinking about which capabilities would be needed for the LRSO, it is useful to recall the last time the warfighters argued that an improved cruise missile was needed. The ALCM was also “designed to evade air and ground-based defenses in order to strike targets at any location within any enemy’s territory,” but that was not good enough. So the Advanced Cruise Missile (ACM) was developed and deployed in 1992 to provide “significant improvements” over the ALCM in “range, accuracy, and survivability.” The rest of the mission was similar – “evade air and ground-based defenses in order to strike heavily defended, hardened targets at any location within any enemy’s territory” – but the requirement to hold at risk “heavily defended, hardened targets” was unique.

Yet when comparing the ALCM and ACM mission requirements and capabilities with the operational experience, GAO in 1993 found that “air defense threats had been overestimated” and that “tests did not demonstrate low ALCM survivability.” The ACM’s range was found to be “only slightly better than the older ALCM’s demonstrated capability,” and GAO concluded that “the improvement in accuracy offered by the ACM appears to have little real operational significance.”

View attachment 210552

Nonetheless, the ACM was produced in 1992-1993 at a cost of more than $10 billion. Strategic Air Command initially wanted 1461 missiles, but the high cost and the end of the Cold War caused Pentagon to cut the program to only 430 missiles. A sub-sonic cruise missile with a range of 3,000 kilometers (1,865 miles) and hard-target kill capability with the W80-1 warhead, the ACM was designed for external carriage on the B-52H bomber, with up to 12 missiles under the wings. The B-2 was also capable of carrying the ACM but as a penetrating stealth bomber there was never a need to assign it the stealthy standoff missile as well.

The ACM was supposed to undergo a life extension program to extend it to 2030, but after only 15 years of service the missile was retired early in 2007. An Enhanced Cruise Missile (ECM) was planned by the Bush administration, but it never materialized. It is likely, but still not clear, that LRSO will make use of some of the technologies from the ACM and ECM programs.

Conclusions and Recommendations

The W80-1 warhead has been selected to arm the new Long-Range Standoff (LRSO) missile, a $10-20 billion weapon system the Air Force plans to deploy in the late-2020s but can poorly afford.

Even though the United States has thousands of nuclear warheads on land- and sea-based ballistic missiles that can reach the same targets intended for the LRSO, the military argues that a new nuclear standoff weapon is needed to spare a new penetrating bomber from enemy air-defense threats.

Yet the same bomber will be also equipped with conventional weapons – some standoff, some not – that will expose it to the same kinds of threats anyway. So the claim that the LRSO is needed to spare the next-generation bomber from air-defense threats sounds a bit like a straw man argument.

The mission for the LRSO is vague at best and to the extent the Air Force has described one it sounds like a warfighting mission from the Cold War with nuclear cruise missiles shooting holes in enemy air defense systems. Given the conventional weapon systems that have been developed over the past two decades, it is highly questionable whether such a mission requires a nuclear cruise missile.

The warfighters and the strategists might want a nuclear cruise missile as a flexible weapon for regional scenarios. But good to have is not the same as essential. And the regional scenarios they use to justify it are vague and largely unknown – certainly untested – in the public debate.

In the nuclear force structure planned for the future, the United States will have roughly 1,500 warheads deployed on land- and sea-based ballistic missiles. Nearly three-quarters of those warheads will be onboard submarines that can move to positions off adversaries anywhere in the world and launch missiles that can put warheads on target in as little as 15 minutes.

It really stretches the imagination why such a capability, backed up by nuclear bombs on bombers and the enormous conventional capability the U.S. military possesses, would be insufficient to deter or dissuade any potential adversary that can be deterred or dissuaded.

As the number of warheads deployed on land- and sea-based ballistic missiles continues to drop in the future, long-range, highly accurate, stealthy, standoff cruise missiles will increasingly complicate the situation. These weapons are not counted under the New START treaty and if a follow-on treaty does not succeed in limiting them, which seems unlikely in the current political climate, a new round of nuclear cruise missile deployments could become real spoilers. There are currently more ALCMs than ICBMs in the U.S. arsenal and with each bomber capable of loading up to 20 missiles the rapid upload capacity is considerable.

Under the 1,500 deployed strategic warhead posture of the New START treaty, the unaccounted cruise missiles could very quickly increase the force by one-third to 2,000 warheads. Under a posture of 1,000 deployed strategic warheads, which the Obama administration has proposed for the future, the effect would be even more dramatic: the air-launched cruise missiles could quickly increase the number of deployed warheads by 50 percent. Not good for crisis stability!

As things stand at the moment, the only real argument for the new cruise missile seems to be that the Air Force currently has one, but it’s getting old, so it needs a new one. Add to that the fact that Russia is also developing a new cruise missile, and all clear thinking about whether the LRSO is needed seems to fly out the window. Rather than automatically developing and deploying a new nuclear cruise missile, the administration and Congress need to ask tough questions about the need for the LRSO and whether the money could be better spent elsewhere on non-nuclear capabilities that – unlike a nuclear cruise missile – are actually useful in supporting U.S. national and international security commitments.

http://fas.org/blogs/security/2014/10/w80-1_lrso/

Good article.:tup:

I'm not an engineer with Lockheed, Boeing, or any other company like that, but reading @SvenSvensonov 's post today about the EMP device on the CHAMP missile got me thinking. Put those things on LRSOs and have a bomber go to town on any future adversary in a conventional scenario. I mean goddamn the thing is projected to have a range over 3000 kilometers. Have a squadron of LRSB/B2A loaded to the brim with those things go on a world tour knocking out the communications/C&C/radars of entire regions, no civilian casualties.

I don't know. Maybe I'm just a misinformed and delusional teenage-armchair general, but that sound pretty solid.

On a different note, the W80-4 for LRSO needs to stay on the table in my opinion. The AGM-86 is getting kind of old, and we need to have a survivable nuclear cruise missile in addition to the B61 gravity bombs to keep the Air-deployed part of the Triad. I mean sure the B61 is nice, but like it said in the article there are certain limitations to them. You don't want to fly an F-35 into the middle of China or Russia to use a nuke.
 
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Flurry of Contracts Spark US Navy Shipbuilding
Flurry of Contracts Spark US Navy Shipbuilding

WASHINGTON — The past few days have been good for a number of the US Navy's shipbuilders. The service issued building contracts for two new destroyers, three littoral combat ships (LCS) and two new landing craft. Long-lead funding was issued for another LCS, and even the Coast Guard got in on the action, ordering another large National Security Cutter. A destroyer was launched, a new amphibious ship christened, and a high-speed catamaran vessel successfully completed sea trials.

Down at Ingalls Shipbuilding in Pascagoula, Mississippi, the DDG 51 Arleigh Burke-class destroyer John Finn (DDG 113) was launched on March 28. The ship is the first of the DDG 51 restarts, the result of a 2008 Navy decision to cap production of DDG 1000 Zumwalt-class destroyers at three ships and return to building Burkes. Two yards build DDG 51s – Ingalls, and the General Dynamics Bath Iron Works yard in Bath, Maine. Before 2008, the Navy's plan was to stop buying Burkes after the Michael Murphy (DDG 112), delivered in 2012. The John Finn will be christened May 2, and is expected to be delivered in 2016.

Ingalls also is building the Ralph Johnson (DDG 114), Paul Ignatius (DDG 117) and Delbert D. Black (DDG 119), and the current block buy includes DDGs 121, 123 and 125. Bath is at work on the Ralph Peralta (DDG 115), Thomas Hudner (DDG 116), Daniel Inouye (DDG 118) and the yet-to-be-named DDG 120. The DDG block buy for Bath also includes DDGs 122, 124 and 126.

On March 27, both destroyer-building shipyards received construction contracts for their next destroyers. Ingalls was awarded a $604.3 million contract modification to build the yet-to-be-named DDG 121, while Bath received a $610.4 million contract modification to build DDG 122. Both ships were funded in the 2015 defense appropriations act.

Construction of the remainder of the block buy ships are to be funded in 2016 and 2017 under the Navy's existing two-destroyers-per-year acquisition construct.

On March 31, the Navy awarded contract modifications to its two LCS builders. Lockheed Martin received $362 million to fund construction of one Freedom-class ship, LCS 21, while Austal USA was awarded $691 million for two Independence-class ships, LCSs 22 and 24. Lockheed also received $79 million for advanced procurement of LCS 23. The full-funding ships were provided for in the 2015 budget, while full funding for LCS 23 is part of the 2016 request.

Lockheed builds the Freedom class at Fincantieri Marinette Marine in Marinette, Wisconsin, while Austal USA's shipyard for the Independence class is in Mobile, Alabama. To date, all odd-numbered ships are Freedom LCS 1-class vessels, all even-numbered ships belong to the Independence LCS 2 class.

The Navy has announced no plans to deviate from evenly distributing construction of the ships between the two yards. As detailed in the latest 30-year shipbuilding plan, sent to Congress April 2, the service plans to request three LCSs per year through 2025. The latest LCS contracts were initially covered by 10-ship block buys awarded to each shipyard in 2010, covering LCSs 5 through 24. A new acquisition strategy for LCSs 25 through 32 is expected to be announced May 1, and the Navy plans to shift to LCS frigate construction no later than LCS 33. A total of 52 LCSs and LCS frigates are planned.

The Navy noted that LCS costs remain significantly under the congressional cost cap of $480 million per ship, expressed in 2009 dollars, or $538 million in then-year, or current, values. The latest construction awards reflect an average price of $432 million in then-year dollars.

Both LCS shipyards are in full-rate production on their LCS variants. At Marinette, the Milwaukee (LCS 5) is about 97 percent complete, according to the Navy, and the Detroit (LCS 7) is about 80 percent complete. Both are scheduled to be delivered this year. Of next year's ships, the Little Rock (LCS 9) is about 68 percent complete while the Sioux City is at 53 percent.

At Austal USA, the Jackson (LCS 6) also is at 97 percent completion, while the Montgomery (LCS 8) is at 89 percent. Both are to be delivered in 2015. For delivery in 2016, the Gabrielle Giffords (LCS 10) is at 82 percent completion, while the Omaha (LCS 12) is at 60 percent.

Austal USA also is about half-way through production of ten Joint High Speed Vessels (JHSVs). The Trenton (JHSV 5) completed acceptance trials March 13 and will shortly be delivered to the Navy's Military Sealift Command. The next ship, the Brunswick (JHSV 6), is to be floated off in mid-May. Construction contracts for all ten ships, through the Burlington (JHSV 10), have already been awarded.

At Ingalls, the new San Antonio LPD 17-class amphibious ship John P. Murtha (LPD 26) was ceremonially christened on March 21, having been launched on Oct. 30. The ship is scheduled to be delivered in 2016.

At the other end of the amphibious ship scale, Textron of New Orleans, Louisiana, received an $84 million contract modification on March 31 to build two new Landing Craft Air Cushion vehicles, LCACs 102 and 103. The craft are part of the Ship to Shore Connector (SSC) program, developed to replace the existing fleet of LCACs. LCAC 101, first craft of the SSC program, was ordered last August from Textron.

Ingalls Shipbuilding got another boost March 31 with a $500 million fixed-price incentive contract to build the eighth and last National Security Cutter (NSC) for the US Coast Guard. The Midgett (WMSL 757) is scheduled to be delivered in 2019. The fifth NSC, James (WMSL 754), is scheduled to be delivered this year, with the Munro (WMSL 755) and Kimball (WMSL 756) following in successive years. The cutters are the most advanced ships ever built for the Coast Guard.

Details of some of the Navy contracts have been clouded by a shift in policy on how those contracts are announced. Destroyers, LCSs and JHSVs are often awarded under block buy, multi-ship contracts that can cover several years, while funding for each ship is provided under specific annual appropriations acts. Previously, the Navy included announcements of those individual contract modifications in the Pentagon's daily contract announcements.

Now, however, a decision has been made to refrain from announcing contract modifications for shipbuilding, even as contract mods remain a routine part of the daily announcements for a variety of other programs, including ship overhauls.

"The contracts were already awarded," explained Chris Johnson, a spokesman for the Naval Sea Systems Command. The latest awards, he said, "were just obligating funding against those original contracts."

The service is under no obligation to break out individual awards as announcements, he said.

"Legally that's the way to do it. Legally you are not required to announce contracts twice," Johnson said. "We had been doing it particularly because of the interest in the LCS contracts. But this year we saw that interest waning so we decided not to do it. And in those cases, the companies put out their own press releases."

While the Navy continues to respond to individual media requests for information, there are no announcements that might cover all program awards to multiple contractors. The shipbuilders themselves happily provide information on contracts awarded to them, but not to anyone else. The situation means that in some cases, local media outlets might give the impression their regional company is getting all the business, while it may be more extensive than that.

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Tough Choices For DoD On Long Range Strike Bomber

Tough Choices For DoD On Long Range Strike Bomber « Breaking Defense - Defense industry news, analysis and commentary

northrop_grumman_NGB_bomber-thumb-560x373-162571.jpg


WASHINGTON: When the Pentagon picks the winner of the Long Range Strike Bomber(LRSB) contest in the next few months, it faces an interesting choice. It could give Lockheed Martin — which is doing the design work for the Boeing-Lockheed team — almost all of the country’s advanced stealth design work. Or it could maintain the status quo, in which the entire stealth bomber fleet is made by Northrop Grumman.

It’s a really important competition, arguably more important for the industrial base and the American people than the incredibly painful and problem-plagued tanker program.

UPDATE BEGINS: Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh offered very little of substance about the industrial base issue when I asked him about it this morning at an Air Force Association breakfast, beyond agreeing that industrial base issues have “to be at the top of the peak” and that “there’s a lot of focus on that area.” Welsh was honest enough to ask: “Was that fuzzy enough for you?” It was hard to tell whether he was being very careful because of the ongoing competition or because much of an honest answer would quickly drift into the classified realm. ENDS

“There hasn’t been a new combat aircraft development contract in over a decade, and another decade will almost certainly pass before we see the next one,” noted Richard Aboulafia, a top aerospace analyst at the Teal Group, in an article for Forbes earlier this week. “In other words, there are three primes involved in the LRS-B competition, and only two will likely survive to compete for future combat aircraft programs. Thanks to F-35, Lockheed Martin doesn’t need to worry about staying in the combat aircraft business. But for the other two companies, a loss means they will likely exit the industry. The loser won’t be around to compete for the next generation of fighter designs, which should enter service around 2030.”


The argument for the Boeing-led team rests principally on the fact that Boeing often can produce large numbers of large aircraft on time and at a reasonable cost. But Boeing’s record on commercial aircraft is mixed — 777 vs. 787 — and it’s encountering difficulties with the KC-46, a commercial aircraft that’s being modified for military tanker use.

“When they get it right, when they do large volume aircraft, they do it better than anyone,” Aboulafia told me yesterday evening. “But you also have a company that stumbles pretty badly,” offering as an example the Wedgetail, and, to a lesser degree, the KC-46. Both are weapons based on commercial airframes, supposedly eliminating many of the usual problems that surface when a new military aircraft is designed and built.

Of course, if the Boeing-led team loses, the US would “lose important production capabilities” and the jobs that go with them. “On the other hand,” Aboulafia wrote earlier this week, “if Lockheed Martin and Boeing win, there would be just one combat aircraft design team left, Lockheed Martin. Northrop Grumman’s exit as a source of new combat aircraft designs would be just as painful.”

Frank Kendall, the Pentagon top’s buyer, said earlier this month that industrial base considerations would not play a major role in selecting the winner. The winner, he said, would be selected “on the merits. By the rules of the source selection.” Since Kendall has made a point of singling out design teams as jewels worth protecting, it seems a bit rich for him to make this claim, but he’s clearly sending a signal.

The Air Force’s commitment to a set price of $550 million (in then-year dollars) each for the 100 or so bombers — and another $20 billion or more for the research and development phase — would seem to increase the likelihood that would tilt the hand to Boeing since building the planes would be more about production than innovation.

And there’s the fact that Boeing and Lockheed will have enormous clout protecting the program on the Hill because of their size. But the companies will also be deeply conflicted when the budget showdowns start. Does Lockheed give up some F-35s to pay for the LRSBwhen the crunch comes in 2020? Does Boeing yield on the KC-46? Both scenarios are unlikely and would seem to argue for a single committed advocate for the plane: that would be Northrop Grumman.

On the issue of maintaining Northrop’s stealthy aircraft design team to ensure the country isn’t left only with Lockheed’s, Aboulafia didn’t dismiss it, but he did say “there are ways in the black world of keeping someone in the design world.” While Northrop wouldn’t build the bomber if it didn’t get the contract, the Pentagon could keep its highly skilled and intelligence workers going on programs that are so highly classified they don’t appear in the budget.

A pilot familiar with stealth bombers agreed, noting that: “there are fundamental design differences between fighter and bomber stealth aircraft. They each utilize stealth in very different ways. Maintaining expertise in both is something we need to consider for the long term. I think in today’s world that can happen independent of the number of companies.”

The pilot argues that times have changed in defense acquisition. In those good old days, “companies could easily design/build/test/discard prototypes in very short timeframes due to cost, ease of production, and materials requirements. Furthermore, the level of engineering involved was nothing like what we face today. I would argue the days of aircraft design competitions are all but over. To harken back to those days is unrealistic given the realities of the technology and materials in the modern world.”

On the other hand, the B-2 pilot is a bit worried for the longer term, saying “it would serve us well to have design and production capability survive in multiple companies. It’s hard to imagine a world like that given our current strength, but history has a way of humbling the greatest of powers!”

Aboulafia also thinks Northrop’s expertise gained from building and maintaining the B-2 matters. “I think one of Northrop’s strongest points is, hey, this defines what we do. And we’re it.”

In the end, Aboulafia doesn’t really have a gut feeling — or one based on facts — about who will win the bomber contract.

If Boeing wins, Lockheed will do the critical design work and will almost certainly not share that intellectual property with Boeing. The Boeing-Lockheed team has the aircraft production credentials and the power to send dozens of lobbyists and carloads of cash to Capitol Hill to ensure the program’s safety in the face of the coming budget crunch.

If Northrop wins, the nation has two design teams able to work on stealthy aircraft and it gets the incumbent. While space is a different realm in terms of engineering and industrial base, it shares elements of requiring the most advanced engineering talent. The last time Boeing won a huge contract in an area in which it didn’t have much experience, advanced intelligence satellites, the country suffered years of cost overruns, busted schedules and got, by all accounts, a largely failed program, known as the Future Imagery Architecture. Let’s all just hope the selection committee gets this one right.



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Navy to Conduct First Aerial Refueling of X-47B Carrier Drone
Navy to Conduct First Aerial Refueling of X-47B Carrier Drone | Defense Tech

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The Navy plans to perform an aerial refueling for the first time on its carrier-launched demonstrator drone aircraft, the X-47B, within the next few weeks, service officials said.

The refueling, to take place at Patuxent River Naval Air Station, Md., will have the X-47B link up with an Omega air refueling tanker, Navy officials told Military.com. Omega is a contractor that works with the Defense Department.

The X-47B made history when it flew from a carrier in May and November of 2013 and is now working on streamlining carrier deck operations and maneuvers with manned aircraft.

The Navy has launched and landed a carrier-based drone in rapid succession with an F/A-18 fighter jet as part of a series of joint manned and unmanned flight tests aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt in August of last year off the coast of Norfolk, Va., service officials said.

After an eight minute flight, the X-47B executed an arrested landing, folded its wings and taxied out of the landing area before moving out of the way for an F/A-18 to land, Navy officials said.

Navy engineers worked on some slight modifications to the X-47B aircraft in order to allow it to both land and integrate in rapid succession with fixed-wing fighter jets.

The refueling will happen as the UCLASS program faces stiff criticism from prominent members of Congress who continue to push for a stealthy, long-endurance, penetrating strike platform.

An ongoing Pentagon intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, or ISR, review is currently exploring the range of desired capabilities for the Navy’s Unmanned Carrier Launched Aircraft Surveillance and Strike system, or UCLASS.

The thrust of the examination focuses on how stealthy the new first-of-its kind carrier-launched drone needs to be, how much of a weapons payload it will be configured to carry and deliver and how far it will be engineered to fly with and without aerial refueling.

The Navy had planned to launch a competition among vendors to build the UCLASS through the release of what’s called a Request For Proposal, or RFP this past summer. However, concerns from lawmakers, analysts and some Pentagon leaders wound up resulting in a substantial delay for the competition in order to allow time for a formal review of needed requirements for the platform.

Deputy Defense Secretary Bob Work said the ongoing review is making progress but the Pentagon and Navy are still not ready to move forward yet with a formal proposal.

“We decided this year we were almost ready to launch the RFP, but we decided we need to take a pause because we want to consider the UCLASS as part of the joint family of unmanned surveillance strike systems and make sure that we’re going after the right capabilities,” Work said at a recent speech at the U.S. Naval Institute.

Work was likely referring to the manner in which every major platform or weapons system needs to be integrated with other services in order to operate properly in a joint combat environment, said Loren Thompson, vice president of the Lexington Institute, a Virginia-based think tank.

Aerial refueling technology is central to the debates about UCLASS because larger fuel tanks affect the size, shape and contours of the body of the aircraft and affect its stealth properties by changing the radar cross-section of the aircraft.

Some design proposals for UCLASS would make the drone less stealthy and less able to carry a larger weapons payload – yet be able to travel very long distances as an ISR platform. Other proposals focus more on stealth and weapons payload.

If UCLASS were designed for maximum stealth and weapons-carrying potential from its inception, engineers would most likely envision an aircraft with a comparatively smaller tank in order to lower the radar cross-section of the aircraft. A differently-configured fuel tank might result in the need for more aerial refueling as a way to extend the aircraft’s range and ensure long-endurance ISR, analysts have explained.

In 2013, the Navy awarded four contracts valued at $15 million for preliminary design review for the UCLASS to Boeing, General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman.

The ongoing uncertainty and disagreements about UCLASS requirements could mean that the platform might wind up getting cancelled if sequestration returns in 2016, Thompson added.

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Lockheed Martin shows off proposed Humvee replacement
Lockheed Martin shows off proposed Humvee replacement, donates $10,000 | AL.com

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Lockheed Martin gave away a big check and promoted its proposed replacement for the military Humvee at the same time this week in Huntsville.

The defense contractor company ran a Selfless Selfie campaign at the AUSA Symposium & Exposition at Von Braun Center. Lockheed Martin encouraged people to take a photo of its Joint Light Tactical Vehicle -- which is competing to replace the Humvee - and use the hashtag #JTLVandme.

For each photo with that hashtag, Lockheed Martin donated $10 to TAPS - Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors, which provides help in a variety of ways to families who lost loved ones on the battlefield.

On Thursday, Lockheed Martin presented TAPS a check for $10,000.

"Lockheed Martin has been a supporter of TAPS for 20 years," said Bonnie Carroll, president and founder of TAPS. "The support here in this incredible campaign is really exciting."

Lockheed Martin is expecting word this summer on if its vehicle will be chosen to replace the Humvee. Lockheed Martin is also competing with AM General (which makes the Humvee) and Oshkosh.

"We are in the final throes of an intense competition for the Humvee replacement and this vehicle represents our design for that competition," said Kathryn Hasse, program director for the JTLV. "What you are looking at is what we fondly refer to as our SUV variant. It's actually called the general purpose variant for the forces."
 
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For 50 Years Now, the U.S. Has Had a Nuclear Reactor Orbiting in Space

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Exactly half a century ago this week, a rocket shot off from the California coast. It carried the U.S.’s first and only (known) space nuclear reactor, SNAP-10A, which has been circling the Earth ever since and will continue to circle for another 3,000 years.

Back in the 1960s, NASA ran a Systems for Nuclear Auxiliary Power (SNAP) program to study nuclear power’s potential in space exploration. This program sent up the first radioisotope thermoelectric generators, a technology still used in space probes like Voyager and Curiosity today. Radioisotope thermoelectric generators aren’t nuclear reactors, though. They simply harness the heat from a decaying element, such as plutonium-238.

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SNAP 10-A was different. SNAP 1o-A was actually a functioning reactor with a controlled fission reaction inside. It contained enough uranium fuel to produce up to 600 watts of power for a year. Twelve hours after take off on April 3, 1965, it settled into orbit 500 kilometers above Earth and humans back on the ground remotely switched on the reactor.

At first, things went well. But 43 days into the mission, electrical systems on the satellite carrying it failed, and the reactor shut down. It’s still up there orbiting. Given its current trajectory, NASA expects it to stay in orbit for another 3,000 years.

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But it’s getting crowded up there. In November 1979, SNAP-10A suffered an “anomalous event,” and the parent satellite begins shedding pieces. “Six more anomalous events occur in the next 6 years, releasing nearly 50 trackable pieces. Release of radioactives is possible but not confirmed,” reads a NASA report. These events were not documented in more detail, but they may have included a collision.

Since SNAP-10A, NASA has toyed with nuclear reactors in space, most notably theSP-100 starting the 70s. But funding issues and safety concerns terminated the program. The U.S. has only SNAP-1oA, but Russia has sent dozens of satellites with nuclear reactors into space, the most notorious of which crashed and scattered radioactive debris all over Canada in 1978.

So that’s one reason why sending nuclear reactors into space is not such a great idea.
 
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An F-16 Fighting Falcon, from the 354th Fighter Wing, sits on the flightline on March 25, 2015, at Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska. The 354th FW mission is “To prepare aviation forces for combat, deploy Airmen in support of global operations and enable the staging of forces.”

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An EA-18G Growler from the Wizards of Electronic Attack Squadron (VAQ) 133 launches from aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis (CVN 74) during carrier qualifications. The John C. Stennis Carrier Strike Group is undergoing a tailored ship’s training availability and final evolution problem, assessing their ability to conduct combat missions, support functions and survive complex casualty control situations.

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Landing Craft Utility (LCU) 1631, assigned to Naval Beach Unit (NBU) 7, lowers its ramp inside the well deck of the amphibious transport dock ship USS Green Bay (LPD 20). Sailors and Marines from the Bonhomme Richard Amphibious Ready Group and the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit (31st MEU) are participating in the Korean Marine Exchange Program with the Republic of Korea marine corps and navy.

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A Soldier assigned to 82nd Combat Aviation Brigade, 82nd Airborne Division, re-arms an OH-58 Kiowa Warrior helicopter during aerial gunnery at Camp Lejeune, N.C. Training Area, March 21, 2015.
 
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All right a question;

I dont get to see RPG types in US military so whats the weapon is/was for its role?
 
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