Inside the delicate art of maintaining America’s aging nuclear weapons

KANSAS CITY NATIONAL SECURITY CAMPUS, Mo. In this image provided by the U.S. Air Force, Senior Airman Jacob Deas, 23, left, and Airman 1st Class Jonathan Marrs, 21, right, secure the titanium shroud at the top of a Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile on Aug. 24, 2023, at the Bravo 9 silo at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana. In this image provided by the U.S. Air Force, Airman 1st Class Jonathan Marrs, 21, left, and Senior Airman Jacob Deas, 23, right, work to dislodge the 110-ton cement and steel blast door covering the top of the Bravo-9 nuclear missile silo at Malmstrom Air Force Base, Mont., Aug. 24, 2023. “The United States has not regularly manufactured plutonium pits since 1989,” the Government Accountability Office noted in a January 2023 report, adding that the Energy Department’s National Nuclear Security Administration has provided “limited assurance that it would be able to produce sufficient numbers of pits.” Webster has been at Los Alamos since Ronald Reagan was president. “I want to see the new stuff.” ___ Copp reported from Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico; the Kansas City National Security Campus, Missouri; Malmstrom Air Force Base, Montana and F.E.