W80-4 LRSO Missile Warhead [LLNL-MI-675190] by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory - 2015

Livermore, CA: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, 2015. Presumed first edition/first printing. Ephemera. Very good. 8.5 inch and 11 inch sheet printed on both sides. Illustrations (color). Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) is a federal research facility in Livermore, California, United States, founded by the University of California in 1952. A Federally Funded Research and Development Center (FFRDC), it is primarily funded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and managed and operated by Lawrence Livermore National Security, LLC (LLNS), a partnership of the University of California, Bechtel, Babcock & Wilcox, URS, and Battelle Memorial Institute in affiliation with the Texas A&M University System. In 2012, the laboratory had the synthetic chemical element livermorium named after it. LLNL was established in 1952 as the University of California Radiation Laboratory at Livermore, an offshoot of the existing UC Radiation Laboratory at Berkeley. It was intended to spur innovation and provide competition to the nuclear weapon design laboratory at Los Alamos in New Mexico, home of the Manhattan Project that developed the first atomic weapons. Edward Teller and Ernest Lawrence, director of the Radiation Laboratory at Berkeley, are regarded as the co-founders of the Livermore facility.The new laboratory was sited at a former naval air station of World War II. It was already home to several UC Radiation Laboratory projects that were too large for its location in the Berkeley Hills above the UC campus, including one of the first experiments in the magnetic approach to confined thermonuclear reactions (i.e. fusion). About half an hour southeast of Berkeley, the Livermore site provided much greater security for classified projects than an urban university campus. The W80 is a small thermonuclear warhead (fusion or, more descriptively, two-stage weapon) in the U.S. enduring stockpile with a variable yield. It was designed for deployment on cruise missiles and is the warhead used in the majority of nuclear-armed US Air Force ALCM and ACM missiles, and their US Navy counterpart, the BGM-109 Tomahawk. It is essentially a modification of the widely deployed B61 weapon, which forms the basis of most of the current US stockpile. The very similar W84 warhead was deployed on the BGM-109G Gryphon GLCM.The idea of a W80-4 Life Extension Program (LEP) is refurbishing a W80 warhead with deputy components for aging record and components that have singular lifespans. Sandia's California site is obliged for growth of non-nuclear components and subsystems and for systems integration. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is responsible for a refurbishment of a chief bomb package and corner growth of detonators with reserve features.The W80-4 LEP is relocating from a judgment phase, that includes complement pattern development, automatic blueprint and rough member design, to a feasibility investigate phase, that includes some-more minute pattern work, sappy member technologies and fabricating antecedent hardware. The feasibility investigate phase, strictly famous as Phase 6.2, was authorized July 23 by a Nuclear Weapons Council (NWC).A life prolongation module refurbishes aging components that are reaching a finish of their use life. Scientists and engineers make decisions to reuse, remanufacture or redesign weapons components. A reused member is requalified to go behind into a arms though change. A member that's dynamic to be past a strange life is remanufactured to a strange specifications. In August 2014, a NWC, that coordinates save activities for a Department of Defense and a National Nuclear Security Administration, chose a W80-4 as a warhead for a Long Range Stand Off missile, a Air Force's inheritor to a stream Air Launched Cruise Missile. Updated standoff weapons ensure America maintains a credible and reliable strategic deterrent force. Standoff cruise missiles are launched from a bomber outside defended airspace and penetrate enemy territory - allowing a non-stealthy aircraft like the B-52 to strike well-protected targets.Outgoing Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh confirmed the need for standoff weapons for the bomber fleet at least until the new B-21 stealth bomber is fielded over the next two decades. However, even after the B-21 is deployed, other remaining bombers in the US inventory will still need a standoff weapon to hold a large number of targets at risk simultaneously and to enter highly defended airspace without compromising airmen and aircraft. Opponents are wrong when they claim the LRSO is a redundant capability because the B-2 and B-21 bombers are stealthy. First, they forget we will have B-52s in service until the 2040s. Second, the B-2's stealth, while state of the art for the 1990s, may soon be inadequate to penetrate deep into advanced defenses.