Reliable Replacement Warhead.

The House Armed Services Committee believes that it is too early to know whether the proposed Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) programme to develop new warheads for US nuclear weapons, can deliver on the objectives established for the programme. The Committee expressed its misgivings in a letter to US Secretary of Energy. Samuel Bodman, Secretary of Defence Robert Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. It came in response to a joint statement by the three officials on the urgent need to invest in the RRW programme, in which they declared that the US urgently needed to invest in a responsive nuclear infrastructure in order to achieve further reductions in the nuclear stockpile while maintaining a credible deterrent. They state that the only way this can be done, while addressing issues of sustainability, safety, security and reliability, is through the RRW programme. RRW aims to make US nuclear weapons safer and more secure against unauthorised use by incorporating state-of-the-art security features that cannot be retrofitted to older weapons. The ultimate goal is to transition to a smaller, more responsive nuclear infrastructure that will enable future administrations to adjust the US nuclear stockpile as geopolitical conditions warrant. The Committee said it could see promise in the RRW programme but took issue with the assertion that any delay in RRW would force the US to maintain a large stockpile of weapons and maintain it through increasingly costly and risky Life Extension Programmes, as well as raising the prospect of renewed underground nuclear testing to certify existing weapons.