The German Federal Office of Bundeswehr Equipment, Information Technology and In-Service Support (BAAINBw) has commissioned the Bremen-based startup POLARIS Raumflugzeuge to build a two-stage, horizontally launching, and fully reusable hypersonic research aircraft the size of a fighter jet.

We therefore call on the Trump Administration to create a new an institutional home designed to re-establish the nuclear weapons infrastructure purpose as the firm foundation on which our national deterrence policy should rest.

The National Nuclear Security Administration should be established as a stand-alone sub-cabinet agency, reporting directly to the President, with clear authority and a singular mission: delivering the U.S. nuclear deterrent.

The U.S. will be capable of defending “the entire nation” against ballistic missiles and other aerial threats via Golden Dome by summer 2028, and grow the architecture by 2035 to address the full range of threats as defined by the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Golden Dome director said at the Space Systems Command (SSC) Industry Days conference here.
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Guetlein’s 2026 near-term priority is to deliver a command-and-control (C2) system that will sit on top of other tactical C2 systems by this summer, and to demonstrate the platform before President Donald Trump. He has a consortium of six contractors on individual C2 contracts “working it together and holding each other accountable through peer pressure,” he said.

By summer 2027, Guetlein’s team must integrate the various weapon interceptors for Golden Dome before demonstrating an operational capability that can be used against “credible threats” in 2028, he said.
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The Pentagon is also courting Wall Street to fund Golden Dome. The U.S. government has estimated that fielding the architecture could cost around $175 billion, while independent analysts have suggested the full cost could run as high as $500 billion. Guetlein recently visited New York City to meet with “$10 trillion of investment capital,” including Blackstone and JPMorgan Chase, he said.

The U.S. Air Force is considering "modular" missile silos to house the service's future LGM-35A Sentinel ICBM by Northrop Grumman [NOC]. Such modular silos would use pre-cast concrete and standardized components to reduce construction cost and time, but the approach may also mean less silo hardening and present logistical challenges in transporting the large modules, which would be dropped into place at existing sites...

“Five significant threat vectors” are of concern to U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM), Adm. Richard Correll said on Wednesday at the Nuclear Deterrence Summit in Arlington, Va. in his debut public address after taking over last month as the head of STRATCOM.

“At the top of the list would be cyber as a contested domain each and every day,” Correll said. “Right below that is counter U.S. space capabilities–in other words, assured space capabilities regardless of capabilities being fielded by any potential adversary to put at risk our ability to develop what we need from space that enhances the joint force.”

“Electromagnetic spectrum is contested,” he said. “And it’s broader than electronic warfare. It’s the ability to understand what’s happening in the electromagnetic spectrum, maneuver for advantage in that spectrum, and being able to deliver whatever capability is needed. The fourth one I would mention is novel missile systems that challenge our missile warning and tracking architecture, keeping pace with that, maintaining our advantage and ability to track whatever systems are fielded and then, on the defensive side of that, how do we think about the assured command and control that you have to sustain for your strategic warheads.”

“The fifth one is really large,” Correll said. “It involves the defense industrial base, the national labs, and STRATCOM, and it is the supply chain. Do you understand where the risks are in that supply chain? How are you accounting for that? How do you know that transistor you have is gonna perform always the way you want it to, when you want it to?”

The Pentagon's inspector general has opened an audit of the Missile Defense Agency's management of the Standard Missile-3 Block IIA interceptor, launching a review as the agency retools how it buys one of its most important and expensive missile defense systems.

“I can’t tell you the exact number [of pits], because that’s classified,” Mason told Defense Daily sister publication the Monitor on the sidelines of the summit, adding, “if we told you how many pits we make every year, and you kept track, you would know how many W87-1s there are, and that’s a classified thing.”

However, Mason obliged this past year “has gone exceptionally well. We met or exceeded all our production objectives, and at the same time, we significantly ramped up the pace of infrastructure work to remove old equipment and install new state of the art equipment so that we can increase the production up to full rate production over the next couple of years.”
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Bob Webster, deputy Laboratory Director for Weapons at Los Alamos, also confirmed in a panel at the summit Wednesday that “we are now ahead of schedule” to get 30 pits per year by 2028 at Los Alamos.
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Mason added that “given the fact it’ll be a while before Savannah River’s online, we’re eager to do as much as we can to fill that gap.”

Los Alamos would initially make cores for the first stages of W87-1 warheads, which are to top the Air Force’s planned silo-based Sentinel missiles some time next decade. Savannah River will make cores for the W93 warheads, which would be used in the Navy.

U.S. Space Command will, for the first time, invite representatives from commercial space companies to take part in classified wargames focused on sensitive national security scenarios, underscoring the increased integration between military and commercial space infrastructure.

Gen. Stephen Whiting, commander of U.S. Space Command, said the initial exercise will examine how the United States would respond to the potential deployment of weapons of mass destruction in space, a scenario he described as “a future that none of us want to happen.”

Speaking Jan. 28 at the SpaceCom Space Mobility conference, Whiting said the idea for a commercially integrated tabletop exercise was driven by reports that Russia intends to field a nuclear weapon in orbit. “A nuclear detonation in outer space would cause devastating consequences for the United States, the world and the global economy,” he said.

The W80-5, a new variant of the W80 warhead family, is on a “more aggressive schedule” to go on the nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missile (SLCM-N), weapons directors said on the final day of Exchange Monitor’s Nuclear Deterrence Summit.
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“This one just came up and we’ve been working on it for less than a year at this point, but really looking at accelerating that program as well and looking at some creative ways where we might be able to deliver that capability to the Department of War earlier than anticipated as well,” Gonzales said.
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“As part of the congressionally mandated SLCM-N program, NNSA went through a selection process to determine what the best warhead would be for it,” Wallin told Defense Daily sister publication the Monitor after the panel. “And so it’s within the W80 family.”

The Department of the Navy has worked to re-evaluate its hypersonic weapons portfolio with lower cost systems that can be fielded in larger numbers. HALO’s exquisite design resulted in extremely high costs for development, including additional research into hydrocarbons that can detonate in the short length of the missile’s scramjet or ramjet motor. Since then, the U.S. Navy has pivoted toward systems that use solid rocket motors.

Candidates for OASuW Increment 2 are now weapons like the Advanced Capacity Maritime Effector (ACME), which explicitly mentions investment into new propulsion methods for time sensitive strike, aiming for rapid development. ACME FNC lists goals for an engineering and manufacturing development phase in FY2030 and early operational capability in FY2031.

China Lake’s internally developed Capacity High-Altitude Integrated Naval Strike Weapon (CHAINSAW), a testbed missile used to test ramjet propulsion, is another option for a future OASuW 2.0 missile. The U.S. Navy tested CHAINSAW on a BQM-34 target drone last year.

Lockheed Martin has its internally developed Mako as a potential OASuW 2.0 weapon candidate, which it unveiled at Sea Air Space 2024 after seven years of internal research and development.

The U.S. Navy is evaluating multiple options all capable of being rapidly fielded in the coming years.

The National Nuclear Security Administration reported a record number of tritium extractions during fiscal years 2025 and 2026.

The big picture: Tritium, an isotope of hydrogen, boosts the yield of nuclear weapons. But it quickly decays, requiring repeat harvests.

Driving the news: Thirteen tritium extractions were conducted in nine months at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, according to the NNSA.
That surpasses a previous benchmark of eight extractions in 12 months during fiscal years 2022 and 2023.

What they're saying: "What I think it shows is that Savannah River has been, over the past several years, in an upswing on tritium production, and that is really good for" the nuclear arsenal, Frank Rose, a former NNSA deputy and assistant secretary for arms control, verification and compliance, told Axios.
"If you're going to move forward with a larger stockpile, you're going to need more tritium."

Zoom out: The National Defense Strategy, published Jan. 23, commits to upgraded armaments "amidst the changing global nuclear landscape."

Lockheed Martin said it will quadruple its Thaad missile-defense system output, to roughly 400 interceptors a year, in response to demand from Pentagon officials gearing up for conflicts on multiple fronts.
The defense contractor said Thursday it reached an agreement with the Defense Department to increase Thaad output over the next seven years, building on a separate agreement from earlier this month to sharply boost the production of Patriot missiles over the course of seven years.
To support increased production, Lockheed Martin said it would break ground on a new facility in Camden, Arkansas.
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Lockheed currently produces about 96 Thaad missile-defense systems each year. The Thaad, which stands for Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, is an American anti-ballistic missile system that can be used as backup against missiles both outside and inside the atmosphere.
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Lockheed Martin is well positioned to perform under the Defense Department’s new weapons acquisition structure, Taiclet said. Pentagon leaders have shaken up the way the U.S. military buys weaponry, equipment and software by making purchases more quickly, and from a broader range of potential suppliers.
This shakeup paved the way for Lockheed Martin to enter an agreement with the Defense Department earlier this month to increase its Patriot missile output to roughly 2,000 interceptors a year.

Responding to a question from Conservative MP Ben Obese-Jecty, Pollard said Project BOYD is intended to address the complexity and speed of modern military planning.

He explained that the programme is designed to “harness AI to transform complex, time consuming and resource intensive command and control planning cycles through machine-speed, data-centric decision making.”

Singapore will set up a national space agency in April, Minister-in-charge of Energy and Science and Technology Tan See Leng announced on Monday (Feb 2).

The National Space Agency of Singapore (NSAS) will provide decisive leadership for Singapore to seize opportunities in the expanding space economy and the new possibilities posed by democratised access to outer space, he said at the inaugural Space Summit.