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50-587: RRW may refer to: Reliable Replacement Warhead , American nuclear warhead design Rwanda , ITU country code Topics referred to by the same term [REDACTED] This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the title RRW . If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=RRW&oldid=1156796924 " Category : Disambiguation pages Hidden categories: Short description

100-545: A Freedom of Information Act action brought by the Nautilus Institute , the paper predicted catastrophic consequences for U.S. global interests as well as for the people and environment of Southeast Asia of a tactical nuclear weapons strike in the area. Going into great detail, the paper strongly contradicted game-scenario research from the RAND Corporation and other groups that was optimistic about

150-733: A Task Force of the Secretary of Energy's Advisory Board (SEAB), the RRW program and weapon designs should have the following characteristics: However, the full SEAB disavowed the Task Force's recommendations regarding the RRW, because the Task Force did not consider the program's potentially adverse impacts on U.S. nonproliferation objectives, which were beyond its expertise. The RRW program has not to date publicly announced that it has developed any new nuclear weapon designs which are intended to be placed into production. Presumably, once that occurs,

200-467: A common set of core design components to various use requirements, such as different sized missile warheads, different nuclear bomb types, etc. NNSA officials believe the program is needed to maintain nuclear weapons expertise in order to rapidly adapt, repair, or modify existing weapons or develop new weapons as requirements evolve. They see the ability to adapt to changing military needs rather than maintain additional forces for unexpected contingencies as

250-481: A design which was test fired in the 1980s, but never entered service. LLNL staff have previously hinted in the press that LLNL was considering a design entry based on the tested but never deployed W89 design. This warhead had been proposed as a W88 warhead replacement as early as 1991. The W89 design was already equipped with all then-current safety features, including insensitive high explosives, fire-resistant pits, and advanced detonator safety systems. The W89

300-506: A key program driver. However, Congress has rejected the notion that the RRW is needed to meet new military requirements. In providing funds for 2006, the Appropriations Committee specified, "any weapons design under the RRW program must stay within the military requirements of the existing deployed stockpile and any new weapon design must stay within the design parameters validated by past nuclear tests". According to

350-415: A military-issues physics summer study program named Project 137 was launched by physicists John Archibald Wheeler , Eugene Wigner , and Oskar Morgenstern . Participants included Murph Goldberger, Kenneth M. Watson , Nick Christofilos , and Keith Brueckner . Out of that program came the idea of a permanent institution for advanced scientific research, a proposed National Defense Institute, on behalf of

400-401: A modern new arsenal composed of such untested designs that would be more reliable, safe and effective than the current U.S. arsenal based on more than 1,000 tests since 1945". Critics maintain that this innocuous-sounding program could significantly damage US national security. Critics believe an expansive RRW program would anger US allies as well as hostile nations. They worry it would disrupt

450-533: A nuclear option. Co-author Wright later stated that the report's main finding was that "employment of nuclear weapons by the US would be of little use against a widely distributed opponent but disaster if copied by the opponent." In a nuclear counterstrike against U.S. troops, the report concluded that, in the worst-case, "the U.S. fighting capability in Vietnam would be essentially annihilated." Co-author Weinberg showed

500-544: Is also a concern. (See Nuclear weapons design and Teller-Ulam design for technical context.) The question of whether the plutonium-gallium alloy used in the cores of the weapons suffered from aging has been a major topic of research at the weapons laboratories in recent decades. Though many at the labs still insist on scientific uncertainty on the question, a study commissioned by the National Nuclear Security Administration to

550-506: Is classified, ranging from recommendations on the United States nuclear arsenal and missile defense, to electronic surveillance and cyber-security. Much of JASON's public work has involved energy and the environment, including Gordon MacDonald's project to model climate change that soon convinced him that fossil-fuel burning would lead to dangerous global warming that would outstrip any industrial cooling effects. For decades, MacDonald

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600-524: Is correct; in fact, the name is not an acronym at all. Mildred Goldberger , wife of group member Murph Goldberger , disliked the name given by the Pentagon, Project Sunrise, and suggested the group be named Jason, inspired by the mythological character Jason . JASON studies have included a now-mothballed system for communicating with submarines using extremely long radio waves ( Project Seafarer , Project Sanguine ), an astronomical technique for overcoming

650-700: Is different from Wikidata All article disambiguation pages All disambiguation pages Reliable Replacement Warhead In 2008, Congress denied funding for the program, and in 2009 the Obama administration called for work on the program to cease. During the Cold War , the United States, in an effort to achieve and maintain an advantage in the nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union , invested large amounts of money and technical resources into nuclear weapons design, testing, and maintenance. Many of

700-554: Is merely an excuse for designing new weapons and maintaining jobs at the weapons laboratories. They note that the Secretaries of Defense and Energy have certified that the existing nuclear weapons stockpile is safe and reliable in each of the last nine years. The existing stockpile was extensively tested before the US entered the moratorium on nuclear weapons tests. According to Sidney Drell and Ambassador James Goodby , "It takes an extraordinary flight of imagination to postulate

750-527: The Institute for Defense Analyses . In the early 1960s, JASON had about 20 members. By the end of the decade it had grown to over 40 members, with close ties to the President's Science Advisory Committee . In the early 1970s the backing institution for JASON was changed from IDA to SRI . The Vietnam War had a significant effect on JASON's membership and research focus. A major initiative of JASON became

800-655: The McNamara Line electronic barrier, promoted by the hawks. (According to Freeman Dyson, a member of JASON, this research was actually not carried out by JASON, but by a group called JASON EAST). By around 1966, the team had become strongly divided along political and ethical lines. In March 1967, Freeman Dyson, Robert Gomer, Steven Weinberg, and S. Courtenay Wright produced a report, approved by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and titled "Tactical Nuclear Weapons in Southeast Asia." Declassified in 2002 through

850-883: The United States National Academy of Sciences . Claire Ellen Max was the first female scientist invited to join in 1983. All members have a wide range of security clearances that allow them to do their work. The founders of JASON include John Wheeler and Charles H. Townes . Other early members included Murray Gell-Mann , S. Courtenay Wright , Robert Gomer , Walter Munk , Hans Bethe , Nick Christofilos , Fredrik Zachariasen , Marshall Rosenbluth , Ed Frieman , Hal Lewis , Sam Treiman , Conrad Longmire , Steven Weinberg , Roger Dashen , and Freeman Dyson . Some Nobel Prize-winning members of JASON include Donald Glaser , Val Fitch , Murray Gell-Mann , Luis Walter Alvarez , Henry Way Kendall , and Steven Weinberg . In chronological order: In 1958,

900-702: The Vietnam War 's McNamara Line electronic barrier . Although most of its research is military-focused, JASON also produced early work on the science of global warming and acid rain . Current unclassified research interests include health informatics , cyberwarfare , and renewable energy . For administrative purposes, JASON's activities are run through the MITRE Corporation, a not-for-profit corporation in McLean, Virginia , which operates Federally Funded Research and Development Centers (FFRDCs) for

950-507: The Department of Defense to support cyber-security research. In 2011, the panel published a public analysis of and recommendations for international greenhouse gas monitoring by the United States government. In 2014, the panel published results of its 2013 summer-study focus on health information exchange . In April 2019, JASON lost its contract with the Department of Defense. On 28 March, Representative Jim Cooper (D–TN), who chairs

1000-467: The Department of Defense, the Department of Energy , and the U.S. Intelligence Community . Most of the resulting JASON reports are classified. The name "JASON" is sometimes explained as an acronym, standing either for "July August September October November", the months in which the group would typically meet; or, tongue in cheek, for "Junior Achiever, Somewhat Older Now". However, neither explanation

1050-771: The Department of Defense. Wheeler was offered such a position by DARPA 's Herb York but turned it down, having put in the effort to establish Project 137. Murph Goldberger also turned down the request. However, in December 1959 Marvin Stern , Charles H. Townes , Keith Brueckner , Kenneth M. Watson , and Marvin Leonard Goldberger met in Los Alamos where several of them had been working on nuclear-rocket research and launched JASON as an ongoing summer study program, with financial and administrative support supplied by

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1100-715: The RNEP program does proceed. On March 2, 2007, the NNSA announced that the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory RRW design had been selected for the initial RRW production version. One of the selection reasons given was that the LLNL proposed design was more closely tied to historical underground tested warhead designs. It was described by Thomas P. D'Agostino, acting head of the National Nuclear Security Administration , as having been based on

1150-450: The RRW designs has been selected. Historically, the weapon's nuclear series identification is assigned at the entrance to phase 3, and if the design proceeds forwards to complete phase 2 and enter phase 3 this can be expected in 1–2 years. The design is intended for first production unit (FPU) delivery by the end of 2012. On March 2, 2007, the NNSA announced that the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory RRW design had been selected for

1200-416: The RRW program is described as: And (pp 94) Funding is listed as $ 25 million for FY 2006, $ 28 million for FY 2007, and $ 89 million for FY 2008. As defined in an earlier UC report, nuclear weapons engineering phases are: The FY08 RRW budget therefore indicates that one of the RRW designs has been approved and is entering the design definition and cost study phase. The document does not state which of

1250-462: The RRW should be assigned a numerical weapon designation when the design selection is made. On December 1, 2006, the NNSA announced that it had decided to move forwards with the RRW program after analyzing the initial LLNL and LANL RRW proposals. At that time, NNSA's Nuclear Weapons Council had not selected which of the two designs to proceed forwards with. According to the FY 2008 NNSA budget (pp 88),

1300-578: The Reliable Replacement Warhead were being finalized by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Los Alamos National Laboratory , and that a selection of one of those designs would be made by November 2006, to allow the RRW development program to be included in the Fiscal 2008 US government budget. The article confirmed prior descriptions of the RRW, describing the weapons in the following terms: Based on prior weapons programs,

1350-455: The anomalous health incidents (AHI) were caused by a deliberate attack using a radio-frequency or any other directed energy weapon. JASON members, known informally as "Jasons," include physicists, biologists, chemists, oceanographers, mathematicians, and computer scientists, predominated by theoretical physicists . They are selected by current members, and, over the years, have included eleven Nobel Prize laureates and several dozen members of

1400-467: The atmosphere's distortion ( adaptive optics ), the many problems of missile defense, technologies for verifying compliance with treaties banning nuclear tests, a 1979 report describing CO 2 -driven global warming , and the McNamara Line's electronic barrier , a system of computer-linked sensors developed during the Vietnam War which became the precursor to the modern electronic battlefield. Among

1450-526: The defense hierarchy, the office of the Director, Defense Research & Engineering , name changed to Assistant Secretary of Defense (Research & Engineering) (ASD (R&E)) in 2011. In 2009, JASON issued its classified recommendations on the future of the United States nuclear arsenal , finding that a new generation of nuclear weapons was unnecessary. In 2010, JASON issued recommendations for

1500-676: The design, possibly including more fissile material in the pit and a thicker radiation case or hohlraum (see Teller-Ulam design: Basic principle ). In an April 15, 2006, article by Walter Pincus in the Washington Post, Linton F. Brooks, administrator of the US National Nuclear Safety Administration, the US nuclear weapon design agency within the United States Department of Energy , announced that two competing designs for

1550-561: The extent of my personal knowledge, the talk of using nuclear weapons in that war stopped after the JASON report on the subject." Gordon J. F. MacDonald , executive vice president of IDA at the time, reflected on the JASON report in 1998. MacDonald said that the "grim picture" painted in the report had a major effect on both Johnson and McNamara. It was central to McNamara's differences with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who were sanguine about

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1600-491: The federal government. The Department of Defense ended its contract with MITRE in April 2019, effectively cutting ties with JASON. However, due to the efforts of the Department of Energy as well as others within the government, to include an act of Congress, the contract was reinstated and is now again with the Department of Defense. JASON typically performs most of its work during an annual summer study. Its sponsors include

1650-420: The global cooperation in nonproliferation that is vital to diplomacy with emerging nuclear powers such as Iran and North Korea and to controlling clandestine trafficking in nuclear materials and equipment. JASON (advisory group) JASON is an independent group of elite scientists that advises the United States government on matters of science and technology, mostly of a sensitive nature. The group

1700-508: The independent JASON group concluded in November 2006 that "most plutonium pits have a credible lifetime of at least 100 years". The oldest pits currently in the US arsenal are still less than 50 years old. The concept underlying the RRW program is that the US weapons laboratories can design new nuclear weapons that are highly reliable and easy and safe to manufacture, monitor, and test. If that proves to be possible, designers could adapt

1750-439: The initial RRW production version. The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008 , H.R. 4986, Section 3111, forbids the expenditure of funds for the RRW program beyond Phase 2A; in effect, this prevents the RRW program from going forward without explicit Congressional authorization. Section 3121 Subsection 1 requires the study of the reuse of previously manufactured plutonium cores in any RRW warheads, so as to avoid

1800-405: The insensitive explosives ( PBX 9502 , LX-17 ) currently in use are highly stable and may even become more stable over time. The use of beryllium and highly toxic beryllium oxide material as neutron reflector layers was a major health hazard to bomb manufacturer and maintenance staff. The long term stability of plutonium metal, which may lose strength, crack, or otherwise degrade over time

1850-614: The manufacture of additional plutonium cores. Section 3124 reaffirms the commitment of the U.S. to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and encourages the mutual reduction in armament of the U.S. and Russia through negotiation. President Obama's 2009 Department of Energy budget calls for development work on the Reliable Replacement Warhead project to cease. Opponents of the RRW program believe it has nothing to do with making US weapons safer or more reliable, but

1900-579: The more recent activities was a non-consensus-commensurate (in other words, providing a view alternative to the prevailing one in the federal executive department which commissioned the report), and now declassified, report to the State Department dismissing sounds associated with the Havana syndrome cases as caused by crickets as opposed to microwave weapons. This was followed by a 2021 report, in which JASON again found no compelling evidence that

1950-632: The need for a longer-lasting and reliable stockpile has taken a high priority. Prior nuclear weapons produced by the U.S. had historically become extremely compact, low weight, highly integrated, and low-margin designs which used exotic materials. In many cases the components were toxic and/or unstable. A number of older US designs used high explosive types which degraded over time, some of which became dangerously unstable in short lifetimes ( PBX 9404 and LX-09 ). Some of these explosives have cracked in warheads in storage, resulting in dangerous storage and disassembly conditions. Most experts believe that

2000-490: The nuclear option; this ultimately led to McNamara's resignation. RAND experts also conceded the report's credibility. There arose internal conflict between hawkish JASON members such as William Happer , Edward Teller , and William Nierenberg and others such as MacDonald, Sid Drell , and Richard Garwin . Public attention to JASON's involvement in the Vietnam War led to public criticism and attacks, even against JASON members who were not hawks; for example, MacDonald's garage

2050-479: The political point of view of the writers and the increasing political division: I have to admit that its conclusions were pretty much what we expected from the beginning, and if I had not expected to reach these conclusions then, for the ethical reasons that we left out of the report I would not have helped to write it. Seymour Deitchman, a national security consultant who served with the IDA for over 28 years, said, "To

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2100-549: The primary as the "SKUA9" design which he said had been tested a number of times. The W89 warhead design was a 13.3-inch-diameter (340 mm) by 40.8-inch-long (1,040 mm) weapon, with a weight of 324 pounds (147 kg) and yield of 200 kilotonnes of TNT (840  TJ ). As noted above, major safety features inherent in the tested W89 design include: Modifications for the RRW design would probably have included replacing beryllium neutron reflector layers with another material, and increased performance margins throughout

2150-638: The strategic forces subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee , revealed that the MITRE Corporation , a nonprofit based in McLean, Virginia , that manages the JASON contract, received a letter from the Department of Defense ordering it to close up shop by 30 April. However, on 25 April 2019 the National Nuclear Security Administration in the Department of Energy offered the group an 8-month contract that would continue to employ JASON. About half of JASON's work

2200-481: The weapons designed required high upkeep costs, justified primarily by their Cold War context and the specific and technically sophisticated applications they were created for. With the end of the Cold War, however, nuclear testing has ceased in the United States, and new warhead development has been significantly reduced. As a result, the need for high technical performance of warheads has decreased considerably, and

2250-515: The weapons will receive numbers in the US warhead designation sequence, which currently runs from the Mark 1 nuclear bomb (aka Little Boy ) to the W91 nuclear warhead, which was cancelled in the 1990s. RRW designs would presumably receive designations after that number, though new RNEP nuclear bunker buster weapons could conceivably be type-standardized and numbered prior to any RRW reaching that point, if

2300-413: Was a prominent scientific advocate for action on climate change. Current JASON energy research has included reports on advanced biofuel production and how to reduce the Department of Defense's carbon footprint for strategic and environmental reasons. However, several other members of JASON, including past chairs Nierenberg, Happer, and Koonin, have cast doubt on climate science and policies that would limit

2350-494: Was also reportedly designed using recycled pits from the earlier W68 nuclear weapon program, recoated in vanadium to provide the temperature resistance. The W89 warhead was test fired in the 1980s. It had entered Phase 2A technical definition and cost study in November, 1986, and Phase 3 development engineering and was assigned the numerical designation W89 in January 1988. The lead designer, Bruce Goodwin, referred to

2400-423: Was also the channel through which JASON received funding from other sponsors. DARPA's decision came after JASON's refusal to allow DARPA to select three new JASON members. Since JASON's inception, new members have always been selected by its existing members. After much negotiation and letter-writing—including a letter by Congressman Rush Holt of New Jersey —funding was subsequently secured from an office higher in

2450-404: Was burned down and Richard Garwin was called a "baby killer." Around this time, some members critical of the war left, and others directed JASON research into unclassified, non-military work on behalf of the U.S. Department of Energy on problems like global warming and acid rain . In 2002, DARPA decided to cut its ties with JASON. DARPA had not only been one of JASON's primary sponsors, it

2500-516: Was created in the aftermath of the Sputnik launch as a way to reinvigorate the idea of having the nation's preeminent scientists help the government with defense problems, similar to the way that scientists helped in World War II but with a new and younger generation. It was established in 1960 and has somewhere between 30 and 60 members. Its work first gained public notoriety as the source of

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