US will build its first new nuclear warhead in 40 years with multi-billion dollar sub-launched W93 needed 'to keep pace with future adversary threats' amid growing tensions with rival superpowers Russia and China

The Pentagon is preparing to build its first new nuclear warhead in 40 years as a means to 'keep pace with future adversary threats' as tensions continue to grow worldwide. 

The W93 warhead, which will be designed to be launched from submarines, is part of a $19.3 billion budget being requested by the National Nuclear Security Agency in 2025. The production is set to begin in the mid 2030s. 

The revelation came as part of prepared remarks from Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm and NNSA Administrator Jill Hruby in a Senate testimony this week. 

Feasibility studies on the W93 have been underway at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, the birthplace of the atomic bomb, since 2022. All U.S. warheads begin life there in a plutonium pit that was built by engineers in the 1980s. 

The new warhead is based on existing designs and therefore will not need to be tested before being put into action. President George H.W. Bush signed an order in the 1990s banning underground nuclear tests.

The W93 will be carried on Navy's new Columbia-class submarines as well as the existing Ohio-class, shown here. The new ships that cost a total of $109.8 billion

An unarmed D5 missile is launched from the USS West Virginia

The program is being undertaken in parallel with the United Kingdom's Replacement Warhead program continuing our coordination through the U.S.-U.K. Mutual Defense Agreement,' Granholm said. 

The W93 will be carried on Navy's new Columbia-class submarines as well as the existing Ohio-class. The new ships, 12 in total, will cost $109.8 billion. 

Among the warhead's more sophisticated features is insensitive high explosives used for triggering. It will also have a greater range than the current W76 and W88 warheads. 

In addition to the W93, the DOD will spend nearly $3 billion on on modernizing other warheads currently in the military's arsenal.  

The U.S. will spend more than $750 billion over the next 10 years replacing almost every component of its nuclear defenses, including new stealth bombers, submarines and ground-based intercontinental ballistic missiles in the country's most ambitious nuclear weapons effort since the Manhattan Project.  

It's been almost eight decades since a nuclear weapon has been fired in war. But military leaders warn that such peace may not last. 

They say the U.S. has entered an uneasy era of global threats that includes a nuclear weapons buildup by China and Russia's repeat threats to use a nuclear bomb in Ukraine. They say that America's aged weapons need to be replaced to ensure they work.

'What we want to do is preserve our way of life without fighting major wars,' said Marvin Adams, director of weapons programs for the Department of Energy, in 2023.

U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm pictured with National Nuclear Security Administration head Jill Hruby, the pair announced the development of the W93 this week 

Feasibility studies on the W93 have been underway at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico , the birthplace of the atomic bomb, since 2022

 'Nothing in our toolbox really works to deter aggressors unless we have that foundation of the nuclear deterrent.'

By treaty the U.S. maintains 1,550 active nuclear warheads, and the government plans to modernize them all. 

At the same time, technicians, scientists and military missile crews must ensure the older weapons keep running until the new ones are installed.  

The new program has also drawn criticism from non-proliferation advocates and experts who say the current arsenal, though timeworn, is sufficient to meet U.S. needs. Upgrading it will also be expensive, they say.

'They are going to have extreme difficulty meeting these deadlines,' said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, a non-partisan group focused on nuclear and conventional weapons control, said in 2023. 

'And the costs are going to go up.'

He cautioned that the sweeping upgrades could also have the undesired effect of pushing Russia and China to improve and expand their arsenals.

In February, US officials voiced concerns that Russia was developing a type of nuclear weapon that could disable US satellites in outer space. 

Analysts tracking Russia's space programs say the space threat is probably not a nuclear warhead but rather a high-powered device requiring nuclear energy to carry out an array of attacks against satellites. 

These might include signal-jammers, weapons that can blind image sensors, or - a more dire possibility - electromagnetic pulses (EMPs) that could fry all satellites' electronics within a certain orbital region.

The Kremlin has dismissed the allegation that it is developing this kind of weapon.