April 12th, 2013
On Wednesday, the Obama administration released its FY2014 federal budget request, more than two months after the normal deadline. The reasons for the delay – uncertainty due to the Budget Control Act, the sequester, and the complications around them – are well known, but even in that light some of the information released was thin in the extreme. Read More
November 5th, 2012
As has been widely reported, the DOD estimates that the B61 Life Extension Program will cost $10 billion, more than twice the estimate the NNSA had a little over a year ago. What has not been noted is that the DOD expects that the first updated warhead, what is called the “first production unit,” will not appear until at least 2022, three years AFTER the NNSA has stated it absolutely must be deployed. Read More
September 25th, 2012
The Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement-Nuclear Facility (CMRR-NF) is not quite dead, but it is headed that way. The Union of Concerned Scientists already made its case for that outcome. We supported the administration’s proposed five year delay for the new nuclear weapons-related plutonium facility at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Read More
September 18th, 2012
Bob Peurifoy, former Vice President of Sandia national lab, was telling me about the “three eras” of the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile. I thought I would explore the concept. As Bob knows, we are still stuck in the second era, but it isn’t for lack of trying. Read More
August 20th, 2012
In 2010, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Secretary of Energy Steven Chu signed an unprecedented agreement under which the DOD agreed to transfer large sums of money to DOE over the following five years to ensure the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) could complete several major projects that the Pentagon supported, but that NNSA could not otherwise afford. Read More
June 25th, 2012
UCS recently obtained a copy of the March 2012 “Quarterly Pit Production Report” produced by the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). What follows is a little history and some of the interesting tidbits that can be teased out of the report. Read More
February 16th, 2012
The Pentagon is working on finalizing nuclear weapons policy options for the president, who is preparing to make decisions that will set the size, structure and roles of the U.S. nuclear stockpile and set positions for future potential negotiations with Russia on force reductions below New START. Read More
January 6th, 2012
Long-Range Bombers at the Ukrainka Air Base in Russia’s Far East
51 10N 128 27E
The Obama administration is updating the guidance that will lead to the creation of a new U.S. nuclear war plan and determine the size and structure of U.S. Read More
September 15th, 2011
Note: This is the third of four posts by Nickolas Roth, Hans Kristensen, and Stephen Young analyzing the FY 2012 Stockpile Stewardship and Management Plan, each jointly produced by the Federation of American Scientists and Union of Concerned Scientists. See other posts: 1, 2, 4
Since the 1950s, the performance of U.S. Read More
August 15th, 2011
How will the administration’s nuclear weapons budget fare under the recent budget agreement? The bottom line seems to be that it will face around a 10% cut below the administration’s request.
Where those cuts will fall, however, is an open question. Read More
© 2013
