New U.S. Warhead Would Ensure End to Nuclear Testing, Former NNSA Administrator Says

By Jon Fox
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — U.S. plans to field a next-generation nuclear warhead would put the “final nail in the coffin of nuclear testing,” the former head of the National Nuclear Security Administration said yesterday (see GSN, June 8).

Speaking at the Carnegie International Nonproliferation Conference here, Linton Brooks said the nonproliferation community is completely mistaken about the implications of the Reliable Replacement Warhead program, while conceding that 80 to 90 percent of the audience would likely disagree with him.

“That isn’t an arms race issue,” he said.

The Bush administration’s first planned Reliable Replacement Warhead, a nuclear device intended to be easier to maintain and produce than those manufactured during the Cold War, would replace the W-76 warheads carried by submarine-launched ballistic missiles.

Administration officials have pledged that any new warhead could be placed into the U.S. stockpile without requiring explosive underground testing.  The United States has signed but not ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.

Critics have expressed concern that the United States would need to detonate a new, untested weapon before it is deployed.  They argued that the existing stockpile is safely maintained, and that developing a new warhead would send the wrong message to the international community regarding U.S. intentions for its nuclear arsenal.

Repeating a point that has been argued by the administration, Brooks said a U.S. return to nuclear testing would be only be needed to certify the viability of the current stockpile rather than to prove a new design.

“The only conceivable reason for the United States to consider resuming nuclear testing would be a serious problem on a warhead for which we had no substitute.  And the only warhead for which we have no substitute is the W-76,” he said.  With the Reliable Replacement Warhead, “you dramatically reduce the chance that there will be a nuclear weapons testing issue in this country, regardless of what happens with the CTBT.”

The Reliable Replacement Warhead deflates the technical argument that had been leveled against ratification of the test ban treaty, Brooks said, calling it a program with the greatest potential nonproliferation benefit in the coming decade.

Nonproliferation opponents of the program have it “exactly backwards,” said Brooks, who was forced out of his job following a series of security breakdowns at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (see GSN, Jan. 5).  “I think the nonproliferation community should be marching in the streets demanding that we go forward with the Reliable Replacement Warhead.”

The ability to produce more robust warheads more quickly would allow the United States to draw down its large stockpile of an estimated 10,000 deployed and reserve nuclear weapons, Brooks said.  A large number of weapons are kept in reserve to offset potential technical problems in the arsenal.

The new warhead, if produced, would also have increased safety and security measures built into its design and would be produced without some of the most toxic materials used in Cold War-era weapons, such as beryllium.

The replacement for the W-76 warhead is intended to be just the first iteration of the Reliable Replacement Warhead.  More broadly, the program is designed to replace a number of warhead designs fielded by the United States, officials have said.

The technical and political conditions that would allow elimination of the U.S. nuclear arsenal are in the distant future, Brooks said.  Until then there is a need to balance both continuing security and nonproliferation concerns.  “The Reliable Replacement Warhead will be a mechanism to shift that balance in favor of nonproliferation,” he said.

A House version of the fiscal 2008 energy and water appropriations bill has completely eliminated funding for the RRW program, for which the president had requested $88.8 million (see GSN, May 24).  The Senate has yet to release funding levels in its version of the funding bill.

As far as what will emerge at the end of the congressional budget process, “my guess is that it will be more than zero and less than the administration asked for,” Brooks said.

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