The stockpile is aging, and the infrastructure required to maintain and refresh those old weapons is aging even worse. NNSA has six ongoing weapon modernization programs right now, it's true, but half of these are Life Extension Programs or system refreshes. We are heavily resource limited...

March 22, 2026 - 00:04 UTC

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the big problem is many of the *people* working on it are old
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SO F***ING OLD, RAYMUNDO YOU ARE LIKE 70 WHY ARE YOU STILL HERE
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...just keeping the existing weapons safe and reliable. (Which is a top of the list need - nobody will or should accept US nuclear weapons that are not safe.)

This glacial pace costs us a LOT of money. Facility renewal means you can go faster, saving a lot of money and programmatic aches and pains.
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This comparison is 100% on the money, by the way, as a measure of how we got here. It's not the only reason. NNSA made a lot of screw-ups. (20 years for the CMRR building, anyone?)

But the disarmament & arms control community absolutely ran this playbook and now goes "who, me?" when you mention it.
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Yes, everything is aging and we should continue refreshing to keep it all safe and maintain deterrence capability, but does the cost of something like trying to stand up plutonium pit production at SRS make sense? Or is that $ better spent elsewhere in the program?
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It has to happen.
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