This Is Not Your Father’s Nuclear Flight Test Vehicle

For decades, the United States’ nuclear weapons enterprise has wrestled with an institutional paradox.

On one hand is the imperative to make the complex more “responsive” to global tumult and technical surprise, able to field new weapons quickly in reaction to unanticipated threats.

On the other are the unforgiving engineering requirements of thermonuclear warheads, devices whose development is measured in years.

No silver bullet solution to this unstoppable-force-meets-immovable-object conundrum will likely present itself.

But the contours of a new model in systems development are taking shape that may bring the long-sought responsiveness of the complex far closer to reality.

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