A nuclear bomb worth more than its weight in gold?

Costing up to $10 billion over a dozen years, the refurbishment of what is planned to be the last class of US nuclear bombs is the lowest-cost option for extending its life for several decades, officials from the Departments of Defense and Energy insist. But some critics of the B-61 life extension program (LEP) question whether the program is necessary. At least one of the modifications planned for it—a new guided tail kit supplied by the US Air Force—would increase its military capabilities, not just ensure its reliability and safety.

Obama administration officials appearing before a 29 October House Armed Services Committee hearing said modifying the B-61, the oldest warhead in the nuclear stockpile, will produce bombs that are more accurate, yield smaller explosions, and contain smaller quantities of highly enriched uranium.

But some lawmakers, arms control advocates, and government watchdog groups contend that the B-61 LEP is overkill. The B-61 is the only US weapon deployed in Europe—an estimated 150 to 200 are located at bases in five NATO member nations—and critics have questioned what useful purpose it serves there. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), who chairs the appropriations subcommittee that funds DOE, has proposed a substantial reduction to the administration’s budget request for the program in fiscal year 2014. The nuclear disarmament group Ploughshares Fund has pointed out that the LEP will cost nearly twice as much per weapon as the bomb’s weight in pure gold.

At the 29 October hearing, Donald Cook, deputy administrator for defense programs at the National Nuclear Security Administration, said the NNSA and the Pentagon evaluated four options for the LEP, including one that would replace only the radar, power supply, and neutron generator. The chosen alternative, replacing all warhead components that have aging concerns, will save money in the long run, he said, since other options would require a second, more thorough LEP to be performed in subsequent years.

Sandia National Laboratories director Paul Hommert warned lawmakers during the hearing that without the LEP, the B-61 will reach a point where it will no longer be reliable “in the next decade.”

Stigmatized radar

Robert Peurifoy, a retired Sandia vice president who worked on the B-61, questions the need for the LEP; he says there has been little discussion of whether observations of the aging weapons components warrant their replacement. “I want to know what the surveillance findings are for each component. If they are dying, you’ve got to replace them. But I’m not willing to replace them just so NNSA and the labs can extract money from the taxpayer,” he says in an interview.

Peurifoy says the B-61’s ground proximity radar has been “stigmatized” by the NNSA and the weapons labs because it contains vacuum tubes. Indeed, Hommert held up a B-61 vacuum tube and a newly developed replacement solid-state radar during his October testimony. Peurifoy says he has seen no evidence that the tubes are failing or about to fail. “Until I do, I’d leave the radars alone,” he says.

The administration plans to retire the B-83, the last megaton-yield weapon in the stockpile, once a sufficient number of B-61s have been remodeled.

But Representative John Garamendi (D-CA) questioned why the B-83, a newer bomb that officials acknowledge won’t need a life extension for at least 10 years, shouldn’t replace the B-61. Though the exact figures are classified, the yields of the four variants of the B-61 are estimated by the Federation of American Scientists and other groups to range from a high of 360 kilotons to under a kiloton. The B-83’s yield varies from a high of 1.2 megatons to the low kilotons.

C. Robert Kehler, head of US Strategic Command, told Garamendi that the B-61 is the more versatile of the two warheads, capable of being carried by either the B-2 bomber or NATO fighter aircraft. The NATO B-61s, he said, are meant to “assure our allies about our extended deterrent,” and the versatility of the warhead provides the president with more nuclear fighting options to choose from. Kehler noted that a B-83 LEP will have to be performed at some point if the B-61 LEP doesn’t proceed. A B-83 LEP will be more expensive, Cook said.

Calling the B-83 “a relic of the Cold War,” Madelyn Creedon, assistant secretary of defense for global strategic affairs, said that “the idea of introducing a megaton weapon into Europe is almost inconceivable to me.”

Cost growth and delays

The NNSA’s cost estimate for the B-61 LEP is $8.1 billion. But the DOD, factoring in expected schedule slippages, has put the program’s cost at $10 billion. Cook said that this year’s budget sequestration already has added $244 million to the NNSA’s estimate and has delayed the production date of the first modified B-61s by six months, to March 2020. But Cook disputed reports that the cost had ballooned from an original $4 billion. He said that the lower number was merely a budget “placeholder” inserted several years before any development or engineering work had been performed. To date, $1.2 billion has been spent on the LEP.

Cook testified that the B-61 LEP and B-83 retirement will cut the current US stockpile of nuclear bombs in half. The total amount of nuclear materials contained in the remaining stockpile of bombs will be reduced by a factor of six.

But Peurifoy downplays the benefits of reducing the amount of highly enriched uranium contained in the bombs. “There are lower-yield versions of the B-61 in the stockpile right now. If you want lower yields, use them.” He dismisses the argument that less highly enriched uranium contained in the warheads reduces the danger if a B-61 were to fall into the wrong hands. “NNSA and the labs are quite good at obfuscation. They use rubber words [like] security,” he says. “Security means you maintain possession. You don’t lose a weapon. If you lose a weapon, you should not be too concerned about the distinctions about what it contains. You’d better get the goddamned weapon back.”