At a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing prior to the Congressional recess, Sen. Deb Fischer (R-NE) questioned James J. McConnell, Acting Principal Deputy Administrator, about the first B61-13 nuclear gravity bomb.
00:00The committee will now start our first round of questioning, five-minute round, please.
00:05Mr. McConnell, as I mentioned in my opening statement, I commend NNSA's workforce for their dedication and speed in delivering the first production unit of the B61-13.
00:19In this setting, are there any lessons learned from the production of the B61-13 that can be applied to other production lines?
00:30Thank you, Senator. Most definitely there are.
00:34The clear collaboration and alignment between the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy and NNSA from the beginning and the initiation of the B61-13 concept allowed us to move promptly into a design and approval process,
00:55which allowed for maximum use of the production capabilities that had been established for the B61-12 and allow us to very efficiently and effectively transition from the last production unit of the B61-12
01:12into the first production unit of the B61-13 using very similar production and equipment components.
01:20So that ability to maximize efficiency and minimize the transition time and to add another capability to the President and the warfighters to address,
01:33as you had said in your opening remarks, harder and larger targets with the B61-13 allowed us to fill a need in our deterrence and address that very quickly.
01:45Do you see any other opportunities where we can increase and accelerate the weapons production?
01:55So NNSA has for quite a while had a program to enhance stockpile responsiveness, which is an across-the-board effort to identify opportunities to improve the efficiency
02:12of everything from design, through design for manufacturing, through production, production certification, and great production through this effort that's been underway for, as I said, years now.
02:26At the same time, we're looking to do more accelerated capabilities and create an office that would allow us to be even more focused on identifying new and novel ways
02:37to bring options to the President and the warfighters to address ongoing and new needs.
02:47Last October, you released your Enterprise Blueprint and that outlined the plans for recapitalizing major infrastructure projects over the next 25 years.
03:00And that includes how it will replace facilities that date back to the Manhattan Project.
03:07I appreciate the level of thought that went into those plans, including the careful sequencing
03:12to ensure that new facilities come online as they're needed so it can support the production of our nuclear weapons.
03:21Can you provide us with an update about the ongoing capital assets projects?
03:27Thank you, Senator, and thank you for your continued attention and awareness to our Enterprise Blueprint and the opportunity that it represents.
03:36I find it very exciting, the opportunity it presents. I hope it's followed.
03:41Very much so. We have laid out, as you indicated, a very thoughtful and careful and not extreme list of key facilities that are necessary
03:56over the next 25 years to produce an agile and responsive and resilient nuclear security enterprise that is fit for the challenges that we will face.
04:08It is time-phased to make sure that we bring the facilities on in order that they're needed to produce the actual products that we deliver to the Department of Defense.
04:18So there is a logic and a sequencing to it. Nonetheless, it is a fairly large group of things to be done.
04:24Thankfully, the President's budget is strongly supportive of nuclear modernization and we are off to a very good start to execute the facilities that are in the first, earliest phase of that time-sequenced enterprise blueprint.
04:40In your opening comments, in passing, I felt it was in passing, you mentioned Savannah River. Can you provide us with an update on Savannah River and the plutonium processing facility there?
04:56A couple different things. My colleague discussed that we have transitioned the site itself from an Office of Environmental Management focused site to NNSA as the landlord for the entire site in recognition of our long and continuing and growing need for operations at Savannah River, not the least of which is the Savannah River plutonium production facility.
05:22That facility is well underway under design. We look forward to achieving the 90% design threshold, a key threshold for us for having significant understanding of the expectations, requirements, and design details of the facility in calendar year 2026.
05:41There are other things going on in parallel. We need the facility. We also need the talented people to man the facility.
05:48For example, our welding certification facility is up and running and so now we are putting students through in order to be able to have talented and capable skilled craft in the numbers we need with the certifications we need to execute the mission as soon as the facility itself is ready.
06:07Are you comfortable with the schedule you're on?
06:12We need to do everything fast. Time is our most significant figure of merit. It is a very complicated, large, and difficult facility to construct. We are on a good timeframe. We are making progress to meet our expected milestones.
06:32But major one-of-a-kind high-hazard nuclear facilities like these are always difficult to manage and I would always like to have more margin.
