NNSA Administrator Jill Hruby Remarks at the Hudson Institute

Good morning, everyone. I want to thank Rebeccah and the Hudson Institute for providing the opportunity to give a status report on NNSA’s programs. I hope to provide a clear picture of the nuclear enterprise today and to share anticipated challenges. I think you’ll feel hopeful as you listen.

As Administrator, I have been candid that this is the most difficult time NNSA has faced since the Manhattan Project. Several realities create today’s environment including shifting geopolitical conditions; the age of the U.S. nuclear stockpile and the age of the infrastructure in the nuclear security enterprise; the rapid pace of technological advance, especially artificial intelligence; and the breakdown of many nuclear norms and guardrails.

Nevertheless, I want to be equally candid that significant progress is being made and there is strong momentum in the enterprise. With this momentum, my hope is that the incoming team can further shape the long-term future of the stockpile and the enterprise and have many successes to celebrate.

I will begin my remarks today with a quick review of the geopolitical environment through the lens of nuclear security and deterrence. The international situation has been so fluid that every time I give a talk like this, circumstances have evolved.

It makes sense to start with Russia since it is the only adversary that has at least as many nuclear weapons as we do. Over the last several years, Russia has repeatedly engaged in norms-violating behavior that undermines strategic stability. As we approach the third anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, we can reflect on how that conflict has involved both novel and traditional nuclear threats. In the early months of the invasion, Russia ransacked Chernobyl and then occupied the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant. Warfighting in nuclear zones has raised concerns about the potential catastrophic consequences and introduced new considerations in 21st Century warfare. Additionally, Russia has frequently resorted to more traditional deterrence by nuclear-saber rattling. It has stationed tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus; “de-ratified” its accession to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty; revised its nuclear doctrine to lower the threshold for nuclear use; and seems to be exploring space-based nuclear weapons as a new leg of its nuclear forces. It has also received significant military support from Iran and North Korea. While this support is focused on conventional assets, we cannot rule out the possibility of nuclear weapon technology sharing now or in the future.

At the same time, China poses a unique, long-term challenge to the United States. It has expanded the size of its nuclear arsenal and demonstrated sophisticated new delivery vehicles. For the first time in our history, we must prepare for a world with two nuclear peers. China is different because we are facing a nuclear adversary that is also an economic peer and an important global trade and technology influencer. As a result, we have placed new emphasis on the use of export control regulations for critical dual-use technologies. We are also more aware of supply chain dependencies. China’s nuclear policies are intentionally opaque, and their willingness to engage in dialog has been limited. However, it appears they are moving from a no first use policy to a launch on warning strategy given silo construction and the development of advanced warning systems.

Additionally, the U.S. recently issued sanctions on Pakistan for their development of intercontinental missiles, and North Korean missile testing and Iran’s uranium enrichment continues.  

Collectively, these conditions present a fundamentally different nuclear landscape than the past 80 years. A tripolar or multipolar nuclear order is more complex than a bipolar one, and new relevant deterrence theory is less developed and has not been practiced. Given the on-going conflicts, the potential for violating the nuclear taboo is now conceivable and new nuclear threat vectors have emerged. These realities also raise the likelihood for proliferation.

However, all is not gloom and doom. Our strategic partnership with the UK is very strong as is their commitment to their nuclear deterrent. And we have advanced our thinking together about critical supply chain resilience. NATO is strong. The new B61-12 gravity bombs are fully forward deployed, and we have increased NATO’s visibility to our nuclear capabilities through visits to our enterprise and other regular engagements. We continue to work with Japan and South Korea, including in new trilateral science and technology efforts. New alliances, notably AUKUS, have been formed that help us respond to the shifting global dynamics. And nuclear material removal and replacement efforts and nuclear security cooperation continue all over the world. In other words, we are not just observing change, we are advancing change of our own.

Nonetheless, overall, it is a less predictable and more dangerous time, and our thinking, our policies, and our actions need to adjust in a manner that improves nuclear deterrence.

We have been adeptly adjusting our plans due to the global dynamics and bi-partisan reviews such as the Strategic Posture Commission Report. The Program of Record and the annually revised Requirements Planning Document used for long range warhead forecasting are informed by intelligence assessments, STRATCOM planning, and nuclear security enterprise capacity and capability. With our eyes wide open, we have a laid out a path to sustain credible nuclear deterrence through the current modernization transition and through future activities. But it will require increased investment. There is a need for new development and production infrastructure, and new and refurbished assessment tools are needed because the now realistic plans call for weapon lifetimes to be extended much longer than imagined.  

Let me expand on both needs, starting with assessment tools and then development and production infrastructure.
Today, NNSA maintains a number of tools to support the assessment and certification of the nuclear stockpile, ranging from environmental testing to highly diagnosed nuclear physics simulators. The most significant enhancement in our assessment tools is the Enhanced Capabilities for Subcritical Experiments program, or ECSE, underway at the Nevada National Security Site. ECSE will provide exquisite diagnostics of plutonium during subcritical testing. This capability will help us determine how long plutonium pits can stay in the stockpile, and it will also help us assess the performance of newly manufactured pits. But to be honest, there are aging concerns other than pits that we need to carefully and continuously assess that require sustaining an array of tools that have not been well-maintained as we prioritized production infrastructure investments. For this reason, our most recent budget requests include increases in assessment and certification capabilities at the NNSA labs. Over the longer term, we must also get better at predicting aging and its impact, in the same way we improved our ability to design systems using new computational and experimental tools.  

Now let’s discuss the NNSA development and production infrastructure needs; some of these have become somewhat infamous. By way of background, at the end of the Cold War, the nuclear security enterprise envisioned and took concrete steps to consolidate the enterprise so it would be less expensive to operate. We closed three full-scale production plants and idled elements of others, and rebuilt parts of our complex for the capacity to have one refurbishment program in production and one development program underway at any point in time. This made sense because there was relative global stability and significant arms control agreements with Russia provided predictability. However, that downsized enterprise is insufficient to meet our demands today or in the foreseeable future – where we expect that three systems may be in production and another three or more systems may be in development at the same time.

For the sake of this discussion, I will group the development and production infrastructure challenges into three categories: reestablishment, recapitalization, and technological advancement. I will first discuss re-establishment.

The closure and consolidation of facilities at the end of the Cold War led to the loss of key production capabilities that need to be reestablished, most notably those for plutonium pits. We also know now that we will need to restart a domestic uranium enrichment program for defense purposes. Our nearest-term priority is to produce low enriched uranium to fuel tritium producing nuclear reactors. Further down the line, we will need to produce highly enriched uranium for our naval nuclear propulsion program. There are other important capabilities that we are bringing back on-line that are not at the same scale or complexity level, such as radiation case manufacturing. We must improve our manufacturing approaches as we re-establish the capability – a lot of advancements have been made in the past 50 years. Also, it has become increasingly clear that we need the capability to make insensitive high explosives within our enterprise since there are limited suppliers who do not maintain the process if we are not actively procuring.

The overall capacity of the nuclear security enterprise must increase to handle the planned program of record. The critical investment for increased capacity is expansion of non-nuclear component manufacturing at the Kansas City National Security Campus. We have a near-term approach to expand into newly purchased space, and a longer-term approach for phased construction of a new facility in partnership with a commercial developer.

In addition to re-establishment, we also need to recapitalize. Many of our facilities are old, contaminated, or in disrepair. Most of the processes in these facilities are outdated and inefficient, and do not necessarily provide the worker safety desired. In many cases, both the facility and the processes date back to the Manhattan Project. For example, while we retain the ability to process both uranium and lithium at the Y-12 Complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, the buildings housing those capabilities date to the 1940s. Similarly, while our existing tritium production capabilities supplied 100% of NNSA’s need this year, we need to modernize and expand our ability to produce tritium in line with increased production rate. The same goes for high explosives handling at the Pantex Plant in Texas and at the labs.  

On the technology front, the United States has long maintained an advantage in cutting-edge scientific achievement. We cannot afford to fall behind in the technologies that will define the 21st century, particularly artificial intelligence, digital engineering, and advanced and additive manufacturing. We need to be willing to accept new risks to realize the potential of these technologies, especially in our production complex. It is time to think of risk more holistically.

One final point I want to raise is that we are also being confronted by new security and environmental conditions that bring new threats to our labs, plants, and sites. In the past few years, we have faced major wildfire events near Los Alamos National Laboratory and Pantex, a hurricane at Savannah River that caused ingress and egress issues, and a rise in drone incursions. Operating a distributed enterprise where each location performs a unique function, we cannot afford a large-scale failure at any facility without it disrupting all our efforts. We need to focus on adaptability and resilience in the enterprise to meet the challenges ahead.

I will not sugarcoat it; these challenges are significant. As I said, we are facing high demand at a moment where our enterprise is not well positioned to meet it. However, due to the commitment of our workforce and with support from Congress, we have made meaningful, substantive progress in confronting these challenges. I believe the nuclear security enterprise has strong momentum, and that momentum will allow for further progress. I would like to take a few minutes to highlight some of our most significant accomplishments.

Starting with stockpile delivery, I want to be emphatic that we are delivering on time and at pace. During each of the last four years, we have demonstrated the ability to deliver modernized weapons to the Department of Defense on schedule. As we said, last year this was over 200 modernized weapons. This pace of production coupled with the sophistication of our stockpile provides an effective deterrent. Period. But we do need to invest to avoid failure, because we are pushing all the limits of our infrastructure.
For the current program of record, we are currently engaged in seven simultaneous life extensions, rebuilds, and new builds. Last month, the B61-12 life extension program reached its Last Production Unit, finishing its production run just three years after starting. The W88 Alt 370 program is still in full rate production. Last October, we announced the introduction of the B61-13 to expand options for the President by adding a capability for certain hard and large-area military targets. By taking advantage of existing B61 production lines, we were able to introduce this system quickly and anticipate a First Production Unit in Fiscal Year 2026. The W80-4 life extension program also reached a major milestone with the war reserve reacceptance of the plutonium pit and the First Production Unit for many components. It remains aligned with the Air Force schedule for the Long-Range Standoff Missile and we anticipate First Production Unit in Fiscal Year 2027.

The W87-1 will replace the W78 warhead, currently one of the oldest in the stockpile. It will also be the first weapon to receive new plutonium pits. We are working closely with the Department of Defense on a new methodology for flight test data given delays to the Sentinel ICBM system and expect to begin producing warheads in Fiscal Year 2031 or 2032. 
The W93, a new warhead program based on existing designs, remains on track for production starting in the mid-2030s. This system is being designed and produced in parallel to the UK replacement warhead.

Finally, the Sea-Launched Cruise Missile – Nuclear, or SLCM-N, was authorized in the Fiscal Year 2024 National Defense Authorization Act and funded in the Fiscal Year 2024 budget. SLCM-N will provide a low-yield, non-ballistic capability to the Navy. The NDAA requires an initial operating capability by the end of Fiscal Year 2034. NNSA has established a program office and is coordinating with the Department of Defense on the details of this new program. Because of the timeframe directed along with the other systems in development and production, NNSA and DoD are looking for options that satisfy the deterrence need and interface appropriately with Navy delivery systems, while putting the least amount of stress on our busy enterprise.

With these systems, we have a program of record that will last into the mid-2030s. It is designed to overhaul all three legs of the nuclear triad and add new deterrence capabilities that don’t currently exist. Still, there are outstanding challenges. Casting an eye towards the future, as global conditions evolve, and our adversaries diversify their nuclear capabilities, there are some deterrence gaps that will needs to be addressed. We are currently engaged in two studies for early exploration of hard and deeply buried target defeat and a non-ballistic reentry system.

I will now change gears and focus on our infrastructure accomplishments. Our highest infrastructure priority is to reestablish a plutonium pit production capability that is scalable and resilient so that pits can be replaced on the W87-1, the W93, and future systems. We have an objective to produce at least 80 plutonium pits in time to meet warhead schedules. We have a clear and aggressive plan laid out to do so.

NNSA is committed to a two-site pit production strategy at Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Savannah River Site. When both sites are fully operational, we expect to have the capacity and resilience needed, with Los Alamos producing 30 pits per year and Savannah River producing at least 50 pits per year. Los Alamos reached a major milestone last year when its first war reserve plutonium pit for the W87-1 was “diamond-stamped” and therefore ready for deployment to the nuclear stockpile. We anticipate Los Alamos achieving the capability to produce the 30 pits per year by 2028, with increased manufacturing rate confidence as we install equipment through 2030. At Savannah River, we are focused on completing construction of the Savannah River Plutonium Processing Facility, SRPPF, in 2032. Demolition and removal work at SRPPF was completed in 2024, with over 2500 gross tons of material sent off-site for recycling. We have also completed the design scope in low-risk areas to accelerate the start of construction. The Machining Training Center was established there last year, a key facility for critical skills development. Once SRPPF construction is complete, we will need to introduce nuclear material, establish the manufacturing process for pits, and obtain rate production. Our aim is to achieve rate production by about 2035 for the latter half of the W93 production schedule. This is a very aggressive schedule, and we are taking many actions to enable its success.

Our other large-scale nuclear construction project is the Uranium Processing Facility, or UPF, at the Y-12 National Security Complex. UPF will replace the pair of Manhattan Project-era facilities that currently house our capability with a modern, safer, less-contaminated facility that incorporates modern manufacturing processes to improve efficiency and meet growing mission requirements. The current focus of this work is bulk electrical installation, with over 100 miles of electrical conduit and cable installed. Gloveboxes have been installed in the Main Process Building, the Process Support Facility has been energized, and over 97% of procurements have been delivered. Overall, the facility is almost 70% complete. Construction is slated for completion in 2027, with full operations by 2031. UPF start-up lessons will be used to inform SRPPF start-up.

Other critical infrastructure projects have also either started construction or reached major milestones recently. In late 2023, we broke ground on the Lithium Processing Facility at Y-12 and expect to start construction in 2026. Last August, we broke ground on the first phase of the Kansas City Non-Nuclear Expansion Transformation, or KC NExT, project. Over the coming years, KC NExT will be built in 15 phases that will ultimately add 675,000 square feet of office space and around 1.1 million square feet of manufacturing space and supporting buildings. Last year we also successfully reestablished our ability to manufacture radiation cases and are now focused on technology insertion that will increase efficiency and resilience.

Pivoting to our science infrastructure, we have advanced our computational modeling and highly specialized experimental capability to design, certify, and assess the stockpile without resuming explosive nuclear testing. The quality of the science done within NNSA sends a signal to the world about our capabilities, enhancing our deterrent.

Our ability to design new systems and verify the reliability of the nuclear stockpile without explosive testing rests on having powerful computers with sophisticated codes verified through exquisite experiments. The better our computers, the greater our ability to improve the design and verification tools. Late last year, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California inaugurated El Capitan, a new classified exascale supercomputer with the ability to perform 1.7 quintillion calculations per second, making it the fastest supercomputer in the world. We also installed the Venado supercomputer at Los Alamos, which adds cutting-edge support for national security and basic research. It will accelerate the integration of AI into NNSA’s modeling programs, bringing new levels of performance.
On a final note for infrastructure, simultaneously modernizing and delivering on the nuclear stockpile while re-establishing and recapitalizing our infrastructure is a complex and expensive endeavor. To clarify the infrastructure priorities to meet the planned program of record, last October NNSA released the Enterprise Blueprint. The Blueprint provides a holistic look at the infrastructure needed over the next 25 years to deliver the program of record and assess the stockpile. I want to be clear that the Blueprint is not a wish list. We must have the capabilities outlined to deliver on time for national security. If the investments aren’t made the program of record will be delayed. The Blueprint is intended to make the connections clear so that decision-makers will be informed. I believe the Enterprise Blueprint provides the next Administration a strong starting point for budget requests and resource allocation.

To wrap up, I want to talk about the overarching challenges that will face the nuclear security enterprise in the next Administration. 
The first challenge is the need to be prepared for new and potentially asymmetric threats into the future. With the expanded program of record I described, we have defined programs through the mid-2030s. Now is the time to define the needs beyond the 2030s so that we can prepare the infrastructure for them. Recent Russian and Chinese developments suggest we need to do more thinking around hard and deep targets, space-based capabilities, non-ballistic missiles, and more.

This will be tricky. With the likelihood of confronting two near-peer nuclear powers, we cannot synonymize numbers of weapons with deterrence. We cannot build our way out of a trilateral security dilemma, and a nuclear arms race benefits no one. We clearly need to think of deterrence in a more integrated fashion – including conventional, cyber, and nuclear – and I’ve been impressed with the recent work at STRATCOM in this regard.  There is room for more holistic thinking regarding our science as a deterrent as I’ve already mentioned. And even though there is currently little diplomatic dialog, NNSA’s work in nonproliferation and arms control remains critical to deterrence. The advances we have made in seismic and space-based monitoring will help us with early detection of global proliferation activity, creating room for diplomacy. The work NNSA does with allies and organizations like the IAEA to eliminate excess fissile material and convert vulnerable research reactors and medical isotope producers reduces global nuclear terror threats. And as nuclear power expands in the U.S. and around the world, NNSA will be expected to reassess proliferation risks and come up with new approaches.

The second challenge is continuing to reinforce a culture of delivery and efficiency within NNSA. Early in my time as Administrator, we completed the Enhanced Mission Delivery Initiative, or EMDI. The EMDI recommendations were aimed at improving efficiency, recruiting and retaining the right workforce, and developing productive relationships in the enterprise. We have implemented many of the recommendations. Most recently, we developed a new System of Contracts Plan that aims to reform the timeline for contract competitions. We are working with our M&O parent companies to clarify the model so that the brilliance of Government-Owned, Contractor-Operated model is realized. We need it to be its best.

We also made important strides innovating manufacturing and construction that will need to move even further in the next Administration. The nuclear security enterprise should be the best infrastructure organization in the U.S. government. To achieve that in the timeframe required means embracing innovative processes and managing an increased level of risk. We need to incorporate new technologies and processes as they emerge, rather than waiting years for them to be fully proven. We must rebalance the cost-benefit of mistake-free with timely mission delivery.  

Finally, the next Administration must maintain carefully cultivated relationships with Congress, allies, and the interagency. NNSA needs to have clear and well-justified funding requests aligned with requirements, and strong partnerships with our allies. I especially want to give credit to the reforms within in the Nuclear Weapons Council. The NWC has become a more forward-looking entity, focused on future deterrence needs and strategic discussions. The interagency visits by General Cotton and others to our labs, plants, and sites has helped to establish a shared understanding.

I encourage the next Administration to maintain relationships with old allies while cultivating new ones. Our trilateral scientific collaboration with Japan and South Korea and NNSA’s role in the AUKUS partnership are important for the longer term. In short, strong partnerships will be a force multiplier.

It has been the honor to serve as the NNSA Administrator, and a pleasure to observe the progress.  I am fond of saying that my proudest accomplishment is getting our mojo back in NNSA.

And my fondest hope is that we have prepared the ground for the next administration to continue to deliver today and be better prepared for what lies ahead.  I look forward to keeping an eye on the progress. Thank you and I look forward to your questions.