US will build its first new nuclear warhead in 40 years with multi-billion dollar sub-launched W93 needed ‘to keep pace with future adversary threats’ amid growing tensions with rival superpowers Russia and China

The Pentagon is preparing to build its first new nuclear warhead in four decades as a means to “keep pace with future hostile threats” as tensions continue to rise around the world.

The W93 warhead, which will be designed to be launched from submarines, is part of a $19.3 billion budget requested by the National Nuclear Security Agency by 2025. Production is expected to begin in the mid-2030s.

The revelation came as part of prepared remarks from Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm and NNSA Administrator Jill Hruby in Senate testimony this week.

Feasibility studies on the W93 have been conducted since 2022 at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, the birthplace of the atomic bomb. All American nuclear warheads begin their lives there in a plutonium pit built by engineers in the 1980s.

The new warhead is based on existing designs and therefore does not need to be tested before being put into service. President George HW Bush signed an executive order banning underground nuclear testing in the 1990s.

An unarmed D5 missile is launched from the USS West Virginia

The program will be implemented in parallel with Britain’s Replacement Warhead program and continues our coordination through the US-UK Mutual Defense Agreement,” Granholm said.

The W93 will be carried on the Navy’s new Columbia-class submarines and on the existing Ohio-class. The new ships, twelve in total, will cost $109.8 billion.

Among the more advanced features of the warhead are insensitive explosives used for activation. It will also have a longer range than the current W76 and W88 warheads.

In addition to the W93, the Defense Department will spend nearly $3 billion to modernize other nuclear warheads currently in the military’s arsenal.

The US will spend more than $750 billion over the next decade replacing nearly every part of its nuclear defense, including new stealth bombers, submarines and ground-based intercontinental ballistic missiles, in the country’s most ambitious nuclear weapons effort since Manhattan Project.

It has been almost eighty years since a nuclear weapon was fired in war. But military leaders warn that such peace may not last.

They say the U.S. has entered an uneasy era of global threats, including China’s nuclear weapons buildup and Russia’s repeated threats to use a nuclear bomb in Ukraine. They say America’s aging weapons need to be replaced to ensure they work.

“What we want to do is preserve our way of life without fighting major wars,” Marvin Adams, the Department of Energy’s weapons program director, said in 2023.

US Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm pictured with Jill Hruby, head of the National Nuclear Security Administration, as the pair announced the development of the W93 this week

Feasibility studies on the W93 have been underway since 2022 at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, the birthplace of the atomic bomb.

“Nothing in our toolbox really works to deter aggressors unless we have that foundation of nuclear deterrence.”

Under a treaty, the U.S. retains 1,550 active nuclear warheads, and the administration plans to modernize all of them.

At the same time, engineers, scientists and military missile crews must ensure that the older weapons continue to run until the new ones are installed.

The new program has also drawn criticism from nonproliferation advocates and experts who say the current arsenal, while worn out, is sufficient to meet U.S. needs. Upgrading it will also be expensive, they say.

“They will have extreme difficulty meeting these deadlines,” Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, a nonpartisan group focused on nuclear and conventional arms control, said in 2023.

“And the costs are going up.”

He warned that the major upgrades could also have the unwanted effect of pushing Russia and China to improve and expand their arsenals.

In February, U.S. officials expressed concern that Russia was developing some kind of nuclear weapon that could disable U.S. satellites in space.

Analysts who track Russia’s space programs say the threat to space is likely not a nuclear warhead, but rather a powerful device that requires nuclear energy to carry out a series of attacks on satellites.

This could include signal jamming, weapons that can blind image sensors, or – a more serious possibility – electromagnetic pulses (EMPs) that can damage the electronics of all satellites within a given orbital area.

The Kremlin has rejected accusations that it is developing these types of weapons.