Navy Test-Fires Trident II D5 Sub-Launched Nuclear Weapons

U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Ronald Gutridge

By Kris Osborn, Managing Editor,Warrior Maven

The Navy test-fired two unarmed Trident II D5 nuclear missiles March 26, as part of an effort to assess various upgrades and sustain an undersea nuclear attack option amid a quickly-changing threat landscape, service officials said.

The weapons were fired off the coast of Southern California from the USS Nebraska, a nuclear-armed ballistic missile submarine.

The missile launch also represents next steps in an ongoing Navy-Lockheed effort to modernize the 1980s-era weapon for service through the next several decades. The US nuclear arsenal has taken center stage in light of the Pentagon’s new Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) and Russia’s recent announcements claiming new advanced nuclear attack capabilities.

The Pentagon’s NPR not only calls for aggressive nuclear weapons modernization and the introduction of new low-yield nuclear weapons but also heavily emphasizes the need to maintain and modernize its current, and somewhat aging, inventory of air, land and sea nuclear weapons.

Seen in this light, the test is fundamental to an ongoing Trident II D5 life-extension program aimed at ensuring the weapon can serve well into the 2040s and beyond.

“The Trident II D5 was first introduced in 1989 and is slated to serve through the life of the Ohio-Class submarines and also function as a weapon for the new Columbia-Class ballistic missile submarines, so we’ve been addressing obsolescence issues, ” John Daniels, Strategic Systems Program, told Warrior Maven in an interview.