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National Security

The B61 bomb: A case study in costs and needs

By Dana Priest,September 16, 2012

View Photo Gallery - : An aging arsenal: Federal officials and many outside analysts are…

ALBUQUERQUE — On the outskirts of New Mexico’s largest city, a team of engineers at Sandia National Laboratories is engaged in a long-running treasure hunt to make sure the oldest weapon in America’s nuclear arsenal, the B61 bomb, remains safe for deployment.

They cannibalize spare B61s for parts, such as the vacuum tubes needed to keep the radars working on active bombs. If they don’t have spares, they track down outdated machines to manufacture the components themselves, as they did when they bought a machine to produce integrated circuits.

But after the manufacturer of the circuits went bankrupt and its machines were no longer available, the Sandia engineers had to become even more innovative.

“We bought three or four on eBay,” Gilbert Herrera, who manages Sandia’s microsystems research and facilities, said as he stood on the work floor recently. “For $100,000 apiece.”

The B61 was once heralded as a cornerstone of the country’s air-delivered nuclear force. Developed as a major deterrent against Soviet aggression in Europe, it is a slender gray cylinder that weighs 700 pounds and is 11 feet long and 13 inches in diameter. It can be delivered by a variety of aircraft, including NATO planes, anywhere in the world.

Now, nearly five decades after the first version rolled out of Los Alamos National Laboratory 100 miles north of here, age threatens to make the workhorse of the arsenal unreliable. So the B61 is poised to undergo a major renovation to extend its life span, a project that could cost as much as $10 billion, according to the Pentagon, or about $25 million for each of the 400 or so left in the arsenal.

The current estimate is more than double some early projections, so high that the Federation of American Scientists, a respected Washington disarmament think tank, dubbed it the “gold-plated nuclear bomb project.”

The Obama administration and Congress have pushed the program forward despite the enormous cost of refurbishing such complex weapons and over the strenuous objections of some nuclear strategists, who say the threat the B61 was designed to counter disappeared with the Cold War. Advocates, including the Obama administration, argue that the bomb is still essential to U.S. national security. In their view, the B61s deployed in Europe are the most concrete example of shared responsibility among the NATO countries, providing the indispensable psychological glue that binds the often-fractious alliance.

The B61s represent less than 10 percent of the 5,113 bombs and missiles that make up the U.S. nuclear arsenal. In the coming decade, updating vast elements of the nation’s nuclear weapons complex — from weapons to delivery systems to the labs and plants that make and test them — is expected to cost at least $352 billion, according to the Stimson Center, another nonpartisan Washington think tank.

Eighty percent of the stockpile’s bombs and missiles are scheduled for major renovations similar to those for the B61. The National Nuclear Security Administration, which oversees the complex, predicts that the work will take 25 years of intense effort by the country’s leading physicists, material scientists, engineers and computer programmers. The NNSA has not put a cost on the total weapons overhaul, but it is certain to top $20 billion, according to preliminary government figures.

The B61 provides a case study in the expense and innovations driving the ambitious effort to maintain the nation’s nuclear defenses at a time of fiscal constraints and a shift away from reliance on nuclear deterrence.

The most versatile in the stockpile

Sandia National Laboratories is the engineering center of the U.S. nuclear weapons complex, a sprawling collection of labs and warehouses at Kirtland Air Force Base on the eastern edge of Albuquerque. Sandia’s primary mission is ensuring the safety, security and reliability of the nuclear arsenal.

Inside one of those warehouses, on a gray-painted floor, sits a full-scale replica of the B61. The model is where young engineers and nuclear maintenance technicians learn to care for the aging weapon. A preflight control panel displays the commands that technicians are trained to carry out: “Delivery/Option/Delay” and “Strike Enable” to detonate the fearsome bomb.

The device looks simple, but its appearance is deceptive. Inside are 6,500 parts, making the bomb one of the most complex weapons in the arsenal. The firing mechanism alone has 400 components.

Built to withstand supersonic speeds, the B61 is the most versatile weapon in the stockpile. It can be carried long distances by a wide number of aircraft, from a B-2 stealth bomber flying from a base in Missouri to North Korea or China to an F-16 or Tornado jet fighter flying to Russia from a NATO base in Europe.