The military spending bill approved by the full House of Representatives on Thursday would sustain the press to move away from an Obama-administration proposal to build nuclear warheads usable on Navy and Air Force missiles.
The House’s Department of Defense Appropriations Act, if signed into law, would provide only half the funding the Pentagon requested for fiscal 2019 for its share of work on the first of three interoperable warheads: $24 million, compared with a $48-million ask.
The Pentagon wants the money for late-stage design studies, according to the Navy’s spending proposal for the budget year beginning Oct. 1. The House Appropriations Committee called the request unjustified, in a report appended to the 2019 defense spending bill. A final vote on the bill is possible today.
This first interoperable warhead, or IW-1, would be capable of flying on future Air Force and Navy ballistic missiles. The Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) would be responsible for actually building the warhead, but the Defense Department would provide the specifications for the weapon and help flight test it on missiles procured by the Navy and Air Force.
The House committee’s 2019 defense spending proposal follows a trend the chamber established in May when it approved a 2019 Department of Energy budget bill and a 2019 National Defense Authorization Act that directed the NNSA to stop studying the IW-1 and look into a life-extension program for the existing W78 warheads that tip the Air Force’s current fleet of Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles. That was despite the Trump administration’s request to continue funding IW-1.
On the other hand, the Senate’s 2019 Department of Energy budget and 2019 National Defense Authorization Act would allow IW-1 to continue. The House was set to vote Thursday to send the National Defense Authorization Act to a bicameral conference, in which the two chambers of Congress will reconcile their differing versions of the bill.