In the wake of a report that criticizes the Bush administration’s failure to articulate a broad nuclear weapons policy, both Democratic and Republican members of a House Armed Services subcommittee have voted to cut millions of dollars from the proposed fiscal year 2008 budget for the Reliable Replacement Warhead.
The cut of $45 million from the administration’s $119 million RRW request is intended to tell the Department of Energy (DOE) and the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) to “walk before they run with the modernization of the nuclear weapons stockpile and the weapons complex,” said Representative Ellen Tauscher (D-CA), chair of the strategic forces subcommittee. The cut in funding, if it stands through the full congressional appropriations process, will limit the RRW work to “cost and design” studies (see Physics Today, February 2007, page 24).
If advocates of faster RRW development hoped to get support from the Republicans...
