The Trump administration announced in February that it was initiating a program to develop the first new nuclear warhead since the late 1980s. That action reversed the Obama administration’s policy to neither develop new nuclear weapons nor enhance the military capabilities of existing weapons systems. But the W93, as the warhead is called, won’t be entirely new: Its nuclear explosive package will be borrowed from an existing weapons system.
The W93 was unveiled as a line in the Department of Energy’s fiscal year 2021 budget request for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). DOE is asking for a stunning increase of 25%, or $3.1 billion, for the agency’s nuclear weapons programs, to a level of $15.6 billion. The $53 million included for the W93 will support conceptual studies of potential warhead architectures and system requirements, the first stage of a seven-step process that has been followed in the past for...
