Reliable Replacement Warhead

Many of the weapons designed required high upkeep costs, justified primarily by their Cold War context and the specific and technically sophisticated applications they were created for.

With the end of the Cold War, however, nuclear testing has ceased in the United States, and new warhead development has been significantly reduced.

Prior nuclear weapons produced by the U.S. had historically become extremely compact, low weight, highly integrated, and low-margin designs which used exotic materials.

A number of older US designs used high explosive types which degraded over time, some of which became dangerously unstable in short lifetimes (PBX 9404 and LX-09).

Though many at the labs still insist on scientific uncertainty on the question, a study commissioned by the National Nuclear Security Administration to the independent JASON group concluded in November 2006 that "most plutonium pits have a credible lifetime of at least 100 years".

They see the ability to adapt to changing military needs rather than maintain additional forces for unexpected contingencies as a key program driver.

It was described by Thomas P. D'Agostino, acting head of the National Nuclear Security Administration, as having been based on a design which was test fired in the 1980s, but never entered service.

The W89 was also reportedly designed using recycled pits from the earlier W68 nuclear weapon program, recoated in vanadium to provide the temperature resistance.

In an April 15, 2006, article by Walter Pincus in the Washington Post,[23] Linton F. Brooks, administrator of the US National Nuclear Safety Administration, the US nuclear weapon design agency within the United States Department of Energy, announced that two competing designs for the Reliable Replacement Warhead were being finalized by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Los Alamos National Laboratory, and that a selection of one of those designs would be made by November 2006, to allow the RRW development program to be included in the Fiscal 2008 US government budget.

Section 3124 reaffirms the commitment of the U.S. to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and encourages the mutual reduction in armament of the U.S. and Russia through negotiation.

President Obama's 2009 Department of Energy budget calls for development work on the Reliable Replacement Warhead project to cease.

[28][29] They note that the Secretaries of Defense and Energy have certified that the existing nuclear weapons stockpile is safe and reliable in each of the last nine years.