“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.

Gen. Stephen Whiting, commander of US Space Command (SPACECOM), today called for a foundational pivot to maneuver-based space operations to echo how the rest of the Joint Force fights — including increased investment in enabling technologies such as refueling, repair and on-orbit logistics, as well as new scaled-up exercises.
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In a speech at the annual Space Mobility Conference in Orlando, Fla., he cited the core Marine Corps doctrine (MCDP 1) of “shattering enemy cohesion through rapid, focused, and unexpected actions” as a model for where space warfighting needs to go. He added that because size of SPACECOM’s area of operations is huge, making a maneuver warfare a reality requires “sustained” logistics based on-orbit.
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“We see that operational demand [for maneuver-related capabilities] at US Space Command as we’re thinking about our requirements in space, thinking about the missions that we’ve been given to to deter conflict and to win,” he said. “Those investments, we think, just have to continue to grow, and the Space Force is going to need more resources to do that.”

Further, Whiting said he has seen forward movement in demonstrating the value of maneuver capabilities such as rendezvous and proximity operations, refueling and responsive launch, including to the Space Force.

For example, the “Victus series of launch activities that the Space Forces has demonstrated to show the rapid launch capability, the ability to put things on orbit quickly,” he said. “That’s a part of this story, because we want to be able to replenish capability.”
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Whiting said it will take “a few more months” to hone an internal SPACECOM concept for such an exercise campaign, but that in his best-case scenario the Apollo Maneuvers series could launch circa 2027 given the need to “fit into the exercise schedule, fit into the training schedule.

“But we think with the various elements that are out there, there’s probably some way we can pull that together and, that’s, again, a conversation we want to have with a broader set of stakeholders to find where on the calendar can we put that in and then align everybody to such an activity,” he added.

In the nearer term, Whiting said SPACECOM intends to initiate a set of four quarterly tabletop exercises at the classified level involving commercial providers.

“This first one is going to be focused on thinking through weapons of mass destruction in space, if that were to happen,” he said. “It’ll be focused, from our perspective, on all of the joint functions. And as I mentioned today, movement/maneuver and sustainment are two of those joint functions; but fires, intelligence, information, command and control, all of those seven joint functions, will be the kind of things that we’re thinking through.”