The United States still cannot produce any new nuclear warheads five years after then-President Barack Obama approved a $1 trillion nuclear modernization program in 2016, Strategic Command chief Admiral Charles Richard told a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) on Tuesday
WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 20th April, 2021) The United States still cannot produce any new nuclear warheads five years after then-President Barack Obama approved a $1 trillion nuclear modernization program in 2016, Strategic Command chief Admiral Charles Richard told a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) on Tuesday.
"Our production capability [is] nonexistent in nuclear weapons complexes," Richard said. "We are just barely able to life-extend our weapons. We have no capability right now to actually make new weapons."
The strategic modernization program had not yet succeeded in modernizing or replacing any of the 50-year-old US strategic weapons systems, Richard added.
"Russia remains the pacing nuclear threat and [is] 80 percent modernization-complete while we are at zero," he said.
After the closure of the Rocky Flats Plutonium pit fabrication facility in the early 1990s, the United States no longer had the capability to produce key components to make new nuclear warheads. As a result, the making of components and materials needed to produce new nuclear weapons effectively stopped, Richard said.
