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May 14, 2008
If U.S. Rep. Zach Wamp rises to a senior leadership position on the House Appropriations energy and water subcommittee, as he's expected to do in the next session of Congress, the Reliable Replacement Warhead could have a new champion.
The controversial RRW, if approved, would be used to update aspects of existing nuclear weapons while reportedly maintaining the same "military characteristics." Proponents say the new warhead wouldn't change the explosive capabilities of the U.S. nuclear arsenal but would make the weapons easier and safer to maintain in the future.
In a brief interview last week at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Wamp said in the past he has cooperated with the subcommittee's chairmen, initially Rep. David Hobson, R-Ohio, and then Rep. Peter Visclosky, D-Ind., and sometimes that meant going against his instincts and preferences on RRW and other issues.
"They have a different view of our weapons complex than I do representing Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and so I've had to be very much a team player at the committee to make sure our priorities were responded to," Wamp said. "But I actually believe in the Reliable Replacement Warhead and that we've got to have the full arsenal. So, if I do move up on energy and water, I think on the weapon systems there may be some changes promoted by me on making sure we have the full deterrent."
Early last year, after the first design for the RRW was selected, Visclosky was quoted as saying (a quote since reprised in a new report by the Union of Concerned Scientists), "This announcement puts the cart before the horse. Although a lot of time and energy went into determining the winning design for a new nuclear warhead, there appears to have been little thought given to the question of why the United States needs to build new nuclear warheads at this time."
Wamp noted, "I am not for, you know, expanding the arsenal, but I'm for keeping the arsenal up to date, state of the art - keeping all the tools in our belt that we may need given the geopolitical instability of the world … . We're not out of the nuclear woods by any measurement, just because asymmetrical warfare with terrorism has changed the way that we fight and the Army has changed and the Marines are changing and everything else. The nuclear weapons complex is still an effective deterrent. We've got to maintain it, and we've got to keep it up with the changes that we see in the development of nuclear weapons."
The first warhead in the arsenal due to be replaced by the RRW is reportedly the W76, which is deployed aboard Trident missiles. Officials at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant have acknowledged having technical problems in refurbishing the W76 warheads as part of the nuclear stockpile's life-extension program.
Wamp said he had not received a recent briefing on the W76, but he said the state of the nuclear arsenal is very topical.
"That may be one of the things we address as we switch into this new administration at the first of next year for the (2010) budget … . Again, for the time that I've been on energy and water and the position I was in, you've had Hobson and Visclosky, and they've kept the lid on any new weapon systems, new programs. They're really into global nonproliferation, and I think we definitely should support that. But this has been an effective deterrent for a long time. We've got to maintain that capability, and so that may be what we see in the next year."
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