Opening: There is No National Security With Trump in Power

            There is no national security (inter alia) so long as we leave Donald Trump et al in power. I think all analysis and discussion needs to start with that acknowledgment because we can’t act as though the current moment is normal or inconsequential. Things are not normal and Trump et al Regime is daily violating law, constitution, policy, and common human decency. In addition, Trump demonstrates distorted thinking marked by one or more of the following: motivated thinking, hallucination, lying, or detachment from reality. For instance, and related to today’s post, Trump fired the Secretary of the Navy in part because SecNavy was unable to magically do the impossible to design and build the ludicrous “Trump Battleship” by the end of Trump’s term. I regret to say that it seems this palace infighting and glib ignoring of situation (aka context or reality) seems to extend into Regime nuclear weapon planning as this post is about.

As we will discuss below, the Regime also makes decisions and “policies” in a hasty, disruptive, ignorant, and highly-motivated thinking/unhinged from consensus reality way.

     With that said, budget and planning documents clearly indicate that the Regime is seeking “American nuclear dominance” through the buildout of USA nuclear weapons pit production; the development of new warheads and capabilities (including a new earth piercing nuclear weapon for “bunker busting”); and with Trump and some other Regime members seemingly wanting to resume nuclear explosive testing at substantial yield. Indeed, as I will suggest below, Regime plans (if enacted as suggested in Beck 2026 and DOE 2026) would seem to increase the need or desirability for nuclear explosive testing to maintain the required high levels of calculated nuclear weapons reliability. Or USA could accept more risk/uncertainty about warhead reliability which would probably not be popular with a significant number of people in military and nuclear weapons complex.

Our Sources for Today

My major (government) sources for this post are the FY 2027 Department of Energy Budget Justification; the draft environmental impact statement on pit production; and a BONKERS February 11 memo by David E. Beck, the deputy admin of the National Nuclear Security Administration and released by the Los Alamos Study Group. It’s framework is tellingly titled “Responsive Today, Dominant Tomorrow: Enhancing American Nuclear Dominance.”  The memo—technically a draft—is maximalist, unrealistic, and hazardous in its “plans.” For example, outcomes supposedly “achievable by the end of calendar year 2028” (coversheet) include (partial list of things that almost certainly aren’t going to happen): begin sustained production of 60 (war reserve) plutonium pits per year at Los Alamos; increasing the “mission-critical workforce” to “at least 10% above Program of Record demand (lolololol); “[r]educ[ing] indirect costs at each site by at least 20% using AI enablement…regulatory reform…; and, perhaps my ‘favorite’:

“Develop, implement, and operationally apply advanced modeling, simulation, and generative and agentic Al capabilities to reduce end-to-end nuclear weapon design timelines by at least 30%, while maintaining the required safety, security, and certification rigor” (4).

“AI” shows up disturbingly frequently as a deus ex machina: to help decrease warhead design time by 30% (4); as available “AI tools” to be made available through classified connectivity across sites (5); helping reduce indirect costs by 20% (LOL); and with digital twins to “improve planning, throughput, and risk management” (5).  

This glib unreality—decontextualized demands made irrespective of situation and fact–pervades Beck’s memo as it does so much of Regime planning and declarations. NNSA/DOE are notorious for missing construction and programmatic deadlines and have a multi-decade and continuing history of doing so (GAO-26-107777). Demanding NNSA simply speed up ignores very real facility, labor, and planning constraints of the fragile USA nuclear weapons complex. Similarly, NNSA has struggled to recruit and retain personnel and the Regime has added its own difficulties to recruitment and retention of federal and contractor personnel (shutdowns, shit-talk, arbitrary firings, etc). And simply throwing more money at these problems won’t help much in the short term or even (depending on what) medium term.

More Plutonium Pits Now!

Excepting one warhead (W76-2 which is a boosted plutonium primary), all USA nuclear weapons are staged thermonuclear designs: there is a boosted fission primary stage of plutonium that, when detonated, provides the x-ray energy used to compress thermonuclear fuel (lithium deuteride) in the secondary stage. In 1989 the Rocky Flats plant closed and, since then, the USA has lacked a large-scale pit production capability. In the mid-2010s Congress demanded that the Department of Energy/National Nuclear Security Administration be able to produce at least 80 pits per year (ppy) by 2027 (which it isn’t even close to being able to do). DOE/NNSA decided that they would establish a capacity for AT LEAST (this language is important) 30ppy at Los Alamos and also for 50ppy at Savannah River (SC) by repurposing the partially built Mixed Oxide Fuel facility building.

Pit production programs always included the potential for expansion beyond (e.g.) the nominally intended 30ppy Los Alamos buildable with single shift operations. And in April the regime released a draft indicating “consideration” of a plan for at least 80ppy at Los Alamos and at least 105ppy at Savannah River (185ppy total). This is more than double the 80ppy goal required by Congress and presented by the DOE/NNSA as the intended number. The Beck memo has Los Alamos able to make 100ppy but beginning sustained production of “at least” 60ppy by the end of 2028 (3).

“An employee at Los Alamos National Laboratory prepares to cast plutonium” (NNSA, Pu Pit Production).

The Regime has already made changes to safety and production processes in efforts to hasten production and grow capacity. For pit production (LANL), “pits are to be qualified by being produced using qualified processes, equipment, and staff rather than each pit being independently evaluated and qualified” (3). I assume there will remain a sampling program and I wonder if this will have any effect on reliability calculations. This perhaps becomes more tenable a strategy if the USA is conducting nuclear explosive tests at a substantial yield since a “successful” test would ostensibly be an ultimate validation of process, personnel, and equipment.

Trying Times

[Note: you may wish to review my previous post about some of the difficulties facing a Trump Regime effort to resume explosive nuclear weapons testing: https://www.patreon.com/posts/no-nuclear-not-142440269)].

            I think it has become clear that Trump, and some members of the Regime, seek to resume nuclear explosive testing. Trump is using ostensible secret nuclear testing by Russia and China to push for testing USA weapons on “on an equal basis.” Then, Thomas G. Dinanno (an Undersecretary for Arms Control & International Security in Dept of State) clarified what “on an equal basis” would seem to mean. In bellicose comments to the Geneva Conference on Disarmament, DiNanno claimed that Russia and China were testing weapons at “[a]t yield that creates an intolerable disadvantage for the United States by not testing.” To the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on 2026 March 24 DiNanno claimed that concealed Chinese tests were in the hundreds of tonnes in yield and that the USA had not yet determined how to carry out Trump’s demand for testing.

            Beck’s memo also suggests uncertainty about how to carry out Trump’s demands for nuclear testing. Under the section “Advancing Deterrence Science” and listed as a “Required Outcome” for “Stockpile Confidence & Aging Science” is the single, cryptic sentence: “Execute the President’s directive with respect to testing of the U.S. nuclear deterrent” (4). I note, perhaps uselessly, that “directive” is not capitalized which may suggest it isn’t referring to an official Presidential decision issued through the National Security Council process, for example (not that it matters much given this Regime’s disdain for procedure, law, and constitution).

Similarly vague about testing is a table of outcomes attached to the memo (to which recipients were supposed to respond in approximately 4 weeks with detailed implementation plans). Under “activities/status” for “[e]xecute the President’s…” is “TBD.” This makes me nervous and it might suggest that USA nuclear explosive testing is not a foregone conclusion. This would be the case even if there were a clear indication of intent and plans to resume explosive testing in-part because the time-lag to carry it out means time for it to be canceled for whatever reason including the development or organized opposition.

WEAPONS! ALL THE WEAPONS!

           In terms of programs, the Beck memo carries forward and adds to the pre-existing program of record for nuclear weapons. Practically this means continuing the W80-4 for the Long Range Strike Option (air launched cruise missile); W87-1 warhead for the Sentinel ICBM; W93 warhead for SLBMs; and “[c]omplet[ing] production of the B61-13 gravity bomb ahead of the required schedule” (this might actually happen because it’s a relatively easy one). The Sentinel ICBM program, in particular, is massively delayed and over-budget which is appropriate because so is the W87-1 (not to same extent). In addition, the Regime plans to accelerate the Sea Launched Cruise Missile – Nuclear (SLCM-N) which is designated W80-5 and is a MOD of the W80-4; it is planned to be carried on submarines and the Trump class battleship.

At least as worrisome, or more so, is the call for rapid development and deployment of various vague BUT MUST BE “NEXT GENERATION” OR “NOVEL” capabilities including an earth piercing nuclear weapon for destroying underground targets (2). Beck’s memo reflects the Regime’s grossly blunt imaginary of the fungibility (utility) of (nuclear) violence and military force. MOAR AND DIFFERENT WEAPONS MEANS MOAR POWER!

Conclusion and Bottom Lines

            Much of what Beck demands will almost certainly not happen at all and much less so by the end of 2028. The USA nuclear weapons complex is fragile and has little room for expanded operations in part because of aging or missing facilities, limited availability of certain types of personnel, and a substantial lag-time for training certain types of new personnel. These objectives mostly unachievable by the end of 2028 even with loosening safety, process, and regulatory constraints (which is not a good thing to do but they’re doing it). And, if you have the right type of Ooopsie because you’re rushing things and have reduced procedural and safety concerns, then you can render one-of-a-kind facilities unusable for days, weeks, months, years.

           The importance of Beck’s memo is (at least) two-fold. First, it demonstrates the Regime’s desire for more and new nuclear weapons that can be waved around to bolster (gendered) USA performances of power and Trumpism: “at least two novel nuclear capabilities are demonstrated at a level sufficient to influence adversary decision-making” (by end of 2028) (2). Second, it demonstrates that the Regime applies to nuclear weapons—an issue of existential importance—the same slap-dash, deranged, and hazardous “planning” that has become a hallmark of the Regime. This will almost certainly lead to increased costs, delays, environmental harm, harm to people, and Oopsies of various intensities.