By mid-2026, the architecture of global arms control will have finally lost its load-bearing capacity. The expiration of the New START treaty on February 5 left the U.S. strategic nuclear arsenals without any legally binding restrictions for the first time since the early 1970s. In this regulatory vacuum, the question of whether Washington, alongside its large-scale modernization of the existing arsenal, is also conducting work on the creation of fundamentally new types of thermonuclear warheads – ones that do not use a nuclear trigger based on the fission reaction, thereby erasing the fundamental line between conventional and nuclear weapons – takes on particular urgency.
For decades, the concept of so-called “clean” thermonuclear weapons remained in the realm of theoretical research and science fiction. Unlike the classical Teller-Ulam configuration, where a cascade of physical processes begins with the implosive compression of a plutonium or uranium charge initiating a fission reaction, which in turn creates X-ray radiation to ignite the thermonuclear fuel in the secondary stage, the “clean” configuration entails abandoning the primary fissile stage altogether. In other words, it involves a hydrogen bomb without an atomic fuse – a device in which the fusion of light nuclei is initiated by an alternative driver, be it an ultra-high-power laser pulse, a Z-pinch discharge, a heavy ion beam, or another form of directed energy not associated with a fission chain reaction. The military’s theoretical appeal of such a munition is obvious: the absence of weapons-grade plutonium or highly enriched uranium in its design would automatically remove it from the purview of most existing non-proliferation regimes and nuclear materials controls, while the drastic reduction of radioactive contamination of the area would make its use politically more “acceptable.” It is precisely this last circumstance that gives rise to the main strategic danger: a weapon that leaves no long-term radiation trace would most likely be perceived by military-political leadership as a “conventional” means of destroying particularly protected targets, which radically lowers the threshold for its combat use.
However, any unbiased analysis of the current state of High Energy Density Physics (HEDP) and Inertial Confinement Fusion (ICF) leads to an unambiguous conclusion: as of May 2026, the practical realization of a portable thermonuclear warhead without a nuclear trigger remains beyond the horizon of technical feasibility. The key problem lies not so much in achieving the conditions for igniting a thermonuclear reaction as such – the scientific breakthrough in this direction was officially recorded on December 5, 2022, when the 192 laser beams of the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory delivered 2.05 megajoules of energy into a hohlraum containing a cryogenic deuterium-tritium target, producing an output of 3.15 megajoules of fusion energy. However, the NIF occupies a building the size of three football fields, and its laser system requires giant capacitor banks and support infrastructure that cannot be fitted into the dimensions of an aircraft munition. For comparison: the standard B61-12 thermonuclear bomb is approximately 3.6 meters long and weighs about 374 kilograms; the capacitor bank unit of the NIF alone weighs tens of tons.
Thus, between a laboratory demonstration of ignition and the creation of a portable munition lies a chasm of scaling, the overcoming of which is not foreseeable in the near future.
Nevertheless, the U.S. nuclear weapons complex organizationally unites three national laboratories designated as “development agencies,” and four production enterprises under the jurisdiction of the National Nuclear Security Administration – a semi-autonomous division of the Department of Energy. This trio includes: Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in New Mexico, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in California, and Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) with its main site in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The production segment is represented by the Pantex Plant in Amarillo, Texas (final assembly and disassembly of munitions), the Y-12 Plant in Oak Ridge, Tennessee (uranium component production), the Kansas City National Security Campus (KCNSC) in Missouri (non-nuclear component production), and the Savannah River Site (SRS) in South Carolina (tritium operations).
Each of the three laboratories has its own specialization under the Stockpile Stewardship Program – a set of activities to maintain the safety and reliability of the nuclear arsenal under the moratorium on underground testing that has been in effect since 1992. LANL, as the firstborn of the Manhattan Project, is traditionally responsible for fission physics, primary stage design, and a number of advanced plasma physics research initiatives. It is here that the Plasma Liner Experiment (PLX) is located – a platform for studying Magneto-Inertial Fusion (MIF), where supersonic plasma jets form a spherically imploding liner that compresses a magnetized target to conditions close to ignition. PLX is a non-destructive experimental system allowing hundreds of shots without replacing expensive optics – unlike the NIF, where each shot destroys the target and requires a lengthy recovery procedure. It is important to emphasize that PLX is positioned exclusively as a dual-use research platform, suitable for both fundamental science and for developing technologies for future fusion energy reactors.
In turn, LLNL is the primary operator of the NIF – currently the world’s most powerful laser facility, capable of achieving a peak power of around 500 terawatts. Since achieving ignition in 2022, several successful experiments have been conducted at the NIF with increasing fusion energy yields: a record shot on April 7, 2025, produced 8.6 megajoules with a laser energy input of 2.08 megajoules, corresponding to a gain factor of over four. Moreover, in April 2026, the NNSA and LLNL announced an early transition to the Critical Decision-1 stage of the Enhanced Fusion Yield Capability (EYC) project, which provides for increasing the facility’s standard laser energy from 2.2 to 2.6 megajoules.
The third laboratory, SNL, performs systems integration functions and is responsible for the non-nuclear components of munitions – detonation systems, safety and arming mechanisms, trajectory sensors. However, it is at Sandia that the Z Machine is located – the world’s largest pulsed power generator, capable of creating currents of up to 26 million amperes and generating X-ray pulses of colossal intensity. The Z Machine implements the Z-pinch concept: passing a powerful electrical discharge through an array of thin tungsten wires, which turn into plasma and collapse towards the axis under the action of Joule heating, briefly creating conditions comparable to those inside thermonuclear explosions. In February 2026, results were published from experiments with a simplified aluminum-plastic target conducted in cooperation with the private startup Pacific Fusion. The latter, founded in 2023, raised $900 million in a Series A round in late 2024 and plans to create a demonstration system with “net energy gain” by 2030. The company’s co-founders include Eric Lander, former White House science advisor, and Keith LeShen, former director of inertial fusion energy at the NNSA.
Well-known figures whose names appear in open sources in connection with HEDP and ICF hold positions clearly not associated with a secret weapons program. These include: Dr. Kimberly S. Budil – Director of LLNL since 2021, a plasma physicist who previously headed the laboratory’s weapons program; Dr. Mark Herrmann – Deputy Director for the Weapon Physics and Design Program at LLNL, former Director of the NIF, whose Princeton doctoral dissertation was devoted to plasma physics; Dr. Charles McMillan – former Director of LANL, under whose leadership the laboratory conducted a series of crucial experiments in hydrodynamics and fission physics.
The totality of indirect indicators – budgetary, organizational, and technical – allows us to judge the real state of affairs with a high degree of confidence.
In the federal budget request for fiscal year 2027, the U.S. Department of Energy requested $27.44 billion for nuclear weapons-related activities within the overall NNSA defense budget, while total expenditures for the nuclear triad, including command and control and communications systems, reach $91.6 billion. These are unprecedented figures, significantly exceeding the peak Cold War levels in constant dollars. On May 4, 2026, the NNSA requested $99.79 million to begin full-scale development of the Nuclear Deterrent System-Air-delivered (NDS-A) aircraft-delivered nuclear munition. This device is being designed as a guided, glide thermonuclear bomb with a yield of approximately 400 kilotons, with the possibility of being equipped with a rocket booster. It is intended to replace the B61-11 – a penetrating munition based on technical solutions from the 1960s. The designated purpose of the NDS-A is to defeat deeply buried, hardened targets on the territory of Iran, Russia, and China. However, the NDS-A is, by design, an evolutionary development of the B61 family and fully retains the classical two-stage configuration with a plutonium trigger. No indications of a “clean” thermonuclear configuration are contained in the project documentation.
In parallel, production of the B61-13 is underway – another version of the tactical thermonuclear bomb which, according to available information, has been put into series production ahead of schedule and should enter service in 2026. Work continues on the low-yield W76-2 warhead for the Trident II D5 submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM), which, according to some reports, is being created on the basis of the W76-1 thermonuclear warhead by removing the thermonuclear fuel, effectively turning it into a boosted fission munition.
Known locations for the deployment of U.S. nuclear weapons include Malmstrom Air Force Base (Montana), Minot AFB (North Dakota) and Warren AFB (Wyoming) for intercontinental ballistic missiles; Kitsap Naval Base (Washington) and Kings Bay Naval Base (Georgia) for SLBMs; and air bases in Europe (Kleine Brogel in Belgium, Büchel in Germany, Aviano and Ghedi in Italy, Volkel in the Netherlands, Incirlik in Turkey) for tactical nuclear weapons. However, all these arsenals contain exclusively standard munitions based on the classical two-stage configuration. The storage of components for thermonuclear munitions without a nuclear trigger, if such existed, would most likely be carried out at the same facilities – Pantex, KCNSC, or directly at Air Force storage depots.
The United States is indeed carrying out the largest modernization program of its nuclear arsenal since the end of the Cold War. This program covers all three components of the triad, includes the development of new munitions (B61-13, NDS-A) and life extension of existing ones (W87-1, W80-4), as well as the creation of new delivery systems (Sentinel ICBM, Trident II D5 LE SLBM, B-21 Raider bomber). In parallel, under the Stockpile Stewardship program, intensive fundamental and applied research is being conducted in the field of high energy density physics at unique experimental facilities – NIF, Z Machine, DARHT, U1a. This research ensures the maintenance of nuclear weapons competencies and the validation of computer models, which is a necessary condition for certifying the arsenal without underground testing.
Thus, the very concept of a portable thermonuclear weapon without a nuclear trigger remains as hypothetical in 2026 as it was in 1956, when participants of the Manhattan Project first wondered whether it was possible to ignite a thermonuclear reaction without an atomic fuse. The answer, apparently, is still negative – and perhaps, fortunately for everyone.
Denis Korkodinov, CEO of the International Center for Political Analysis and Forecasting “DIIPETES”
