Abstract
The RRW Program started as a compromise, and it will likely end as one too.
Sometimes, U.S. Nuclear weapons policy is not made–it happens. The Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) Program is a case in point. Although RRW is often described as the brainchild of Ohio Republican Cong. David Hobson–the former chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development–it is better understood as an outcome of competing, and sometimes evolving, agendas.
The program's roots can be traced to the post-Cold War anxieties of the nuclear weapons complex. When the U.S. government effectively suspended the development of new nuclear weapons in 1992, the nuclear laboratories and production sites worried about their futures. The Energy Department convinced Congress to endorse the Stockpile Stewardship Program, which aimed to develop the means to monitor and maintain the existing stockpile indefinitely without testing while preserving the resources needed to design and manufacture nuclear weapons.
This new mission did not please everyone within the complex, however. Some questioned the feasibility of placing weapons-production skills in suspended animation. Others, including four former and current Los Alamos National Laboratory scientists, raised concerns about the reliability of the most prevalent warhead in the U.S. stockpile, the W76 submarine-launched ballistic missile warhead. Energy, along with most nuclear experts, staunchly defended the Los Alamos-designed W76, but rumors about possible design flaws persisted.
When the RRW Program was introduced, with Hobson's support, in the conference report to the fiscal 2005 Consolidated Appropriations Act, the rumors concerning the W76 were not the conferees' foremost concern. Hob-son, a fiscal conservative, had come to view the Bush administration's flagship nuclear program, the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator (RNEP)–intended to destroy hardened targets such as underground bunkers–as an unnecessarily costly and provocative adventure. But the nuclear weapons laboratories had powerful allies on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. The search for a compromise that would satisfy Hobson without slashing the labs' overall budget led to RRW.
In promoting the new program, Hobson argued that improving the reliability of the stockpile would allow the government to save money and to highlight the nation's commitment to nonproliferation by scaling down the nuclear complex and the vast reserve stockpile. All this, Hobson hoped, could be done without new nuclear tests, thanks to the resources created by the Stockpile Stewardship Program.
At first, Hobson's greatest concern was that the Bush administration would use the vaguely described program to continue pursuing RNEP. To forestall this, the conference report to the fiscal 2006 Energy and Water Appropriations Act warned, “Any weapon design work done under the RRW Program must stay within the military requirements of the existing deployed stockpile.” At the encouragement of the House Armed Services Committee, the RRW Program turned its attention to replacing the W76.
Even as Hobson's fears that RRW would morph into RNEP gradually faded, a new challenge emerged to his goal of downsizing the nuclear complex. When a task force of the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board outlined in July 2005 a modernization plan for the weapons complex (the so-called Complex 2030), Energy rejected its most dramatic recommendation: consolidating all major quantities of weapon-grade fissile material into a single facility. Energy countered with an offer that included consolidating plutonium and highly enriched uranium to separate facilities, but Hobson was not satisfied. In a November 2006 letter to Energy Secretary Samuel Bod-man, Hobson dismissed the process that led to Energy's preferred plan as “obviously prejudicial” and reminded Bodman that “RRW is a deal with Congress [that] requires a serious effort by the Department to …downsize the weapons complex. Absent that, there is no deal.”
Hobson's growing concern that the nuclear weapons complex is running off with the carrot (the new work provided by RRW) while avoiding the stick (painful cuts in the size of the complex) has highlighted a significant loss of congressional enthusiasm for RRW in the last year. The House Appropriations Committee report accompanying the fiscal 2007 Energy and Water Appropriations Bill (which was never completed and was replaced by a continuing resolution) emphasized, “The Committee supports the RRW, but only if it is part of a larger package of more comprehensive weapons complex reforms.” The new Democratic chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development, Indiana Cong. Peter Visclosky, shares his predecessor's frustration, complaining at a March 2007 hearing about the “giddiness” that RRW has inspired within Energy.
That same month, the Nuclear “Weapons Council–a joint organization of officials from Defense and Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration announced that it selected Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's RRW design. It is an unusually conservative design based on a previous design that was tested but never deployed. While this reliance on a previously tested design partially allays fears that RRW will lead to nuclear testing, it calls into question the program's pedagogical value as an opportunity to exercise and pass on the complex's design skills.
All of these factors, together with concern about international perceptions of the program and the recent revelation that the plutonium pits in the U.S. nuclear stockpile could be used for at least 85-100 years, have produced a growing wave of doubt about RRW in the pragmatic wing of the nuclear-policy community. On March 29, 2007, former Democratic Sen. Sam Nunn of Georgia told the energy and water appropriations subcommittee that if the matter were up to him, he “would not fund additional work on the RRW at this time.”
On May 2, 2007, these diverse concerns led the House Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee, chaired by California Cong. Ellen Tauscher, to vote to redirect $20 million from the president's $88 million request for RRW toward a bipartisan commission to reevaluate the U.S. nuclear posture. In late May, the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development endorsed this approach and went one step further–it eliminated all RRW funding until a future nuclear weapons strategy is established. As of press time, it is unclear what the final version of the bill will look like.
From the beginning, the RRW Program was shaped not by a single vision but by the competing demands of an anxious nuclear complex with powerful allies, an administration determined to build a robust weapons infrastructure, and an outspoken Republican congressman keen to rein in costs. Recently, this cast has expanded to include the new Democratic congressional leadership and a military establishment that is demanding increasing input. Eventually, it will also include a new administration whose views and priorities are impossible to foresee. As the country's nuclear weapons policy continues to “happen,” it is likely that RRW will continue to be endorsed, condemned, reevaluated, studied, expanded, restricted, conditioned, and otherwise transformed.
Stockpile Stewardship
In the absence of nuclear testing, the Defense and Energy departments ensure the fitness of the nuclear arsenal through a multipronged scientific effort.
Supplementary Material
Pit Lifetime
Supplementary Material
Recommendations for the Nuclear Weapons Complex of the Future