The United States intends to continue improving its nuclear potential.
Last year, the White House developed a “three plus two” strategy, according to which, during the 25 years, the NNSAB would have to replace the Pentagon’s 7 types of nuclear weapons with the 5 new ones. According to the newspaper, in connection with this, “NNSAB intends to build several new facilities of the nuclear military complex, as well as to increase the amount of tritium content in nuclear warheads in order to increase their reliability and make them less likely to require maintenance.”
“This continues to be our strategy,” said Klotz. According to him, the United States "will ultimately have in its nuclear arsenal three different warheads that can be installed on two different types of missiles, both land-based and sea-based, as well as two types of warheads delivered by air."
“One of them is a free-fall bomb, and the other is (a warhead) mounted on a cruise missile,” the deputy minister said and stressed: “This continues to be our policy, and until such a policy changes, we will continue to concentrate efforts".
He explained that the “Double-76-1” warhead service life extension program for Trident missiles deployed on submarines “is deeply in production”. Now half the way has been covered, and it will be completed “somewhere in the 2019 fiscal year,” Klotz specified.
In turn, “the modernization of the Bi-61 nuclear bomb has not yet gone out of the design calculations phase,” he said. According to him, the result of the work should be "the replacement of the four existing variants of the bomb with one." “We hope that the first sample of the products will be ready for the 2020 fiscal year,” the deputy minister informed.
He also noted that "another nuclear bomb - the Bi-83 - continues to be monitored." “We will continue to carry out the work necessary to guarantee its safety and effectiveness while it is in service,” the NNSAB head said.
With regard to the most advanced warheads "Double-88" for sea-based missiles, for it developed a new mechanism for cocking the fuse and other components, said Frank Klotz.
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