Since 1943, Los Alamos National Laboratory has played a central role in national and global security. We help ensure the effectiveness of America’s nuclear deterrent through nuclear weapons design, certification, and component manufacturing.
The Laboratory ensures the safety, reliability, and performance of the nation's nuclear weapons through physics and engineering. LANL is the design agency for four of the seven weapon systems in the nation’s on-alert nuclear deterrent and one system—the W93—that is in development.
We fabricate nuclear and non-nuclear weapons components, including plutonium pits and detonators for the modern stockpile. We also develop explosives, polymers, targets for fusion experiments, weapons prototypes, and more.
We are the nation’s home for cutting-edge plutonium research and development and home to PF-4, the only full-capability plutonium facility in the U.S.
From dynamic imaging to neutron scattering to x-ray capabilities and beyond, people across the Los Alamos campus provide crucial research to support national security.
We have unique capabilities in nuclear nonproliferation, nuclear counterproliferation, and nuclear counterterrorism to prevent the unwanted spread and use of nuclear technology and materials.
Our advanced computing capabilities enable us to model and simulate the safety, reliability, and performance of nuclear weapons and help certify their functionality in the absence of full-scale nuclear testing.
For nearly 80 years, the United States has relied on nuclear deterrence—the threat of using nuclear weapons to discourage other nations from military aggression—to ensure global stability and prevent war.
For nuclear deterrence to work, the nuclear deterrent has to be credible. That's where Los Alamos National Laboratory comes in.
We support the design, production, and certification of current and future nuclear weapons in the U.S. nuclear stockpile. Los Alamos designed five of the seven weapons systems currently in the stockpile and, today, is responsible for the maintenance and modernization of four of those systems: the B61 family of gravity bombs, the W76 family of warheads, the W78 warhead, the W88 warhead, and is also the design agency for the W93.
We are guided by the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), Department of Energy (DOE), Department of Defense, Congress, and other institutions central to our mission.
Los Alamos National Laboratory is a federally funded research and development center with priorities set by the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration (DOE NNSA) and key national strategy guidance. We execute work across all of DOE’s missions: national security, science, energy, and environmental management. Scientific and engineering capabilities developed through LANL’s stockpile research are part of what makes DOE and NNSA a science, technology, and engineering powerhouse for the nation.
To provide the United States with flexible deterrence options across a wide range of conflict scenarios, the nuclear enterprise is developing new and advanced capabilities on accelerated timelines. This undertaking reflects the continual evolution of deterrence. As adversaries adjust their own nuclear postures, the United States continuously adapts its own, ensuring that our nuclear force is sufficient to deter aggression, reassure our allies and partners, and maintain global stability.
To react to changing deterrence requirements on a swifter timeline, NNSA established the Nuclear Deterrence Rapid Capabilities Team in 2025, drawing tools and expertise from across the enterprise. As part of this effort, our scientists and engineers are collaborating with counterparts at the Department of War to assess several new weapon concepts.
This initiative intends to deliver new deterrence options at a faster pace than traditional warhead acquisition programs. The team’s organizing principle is to compress the timeline for fielding new weapons from 10 years to within three to five.
The Rapid Capabilities Team is one of the most groundbreaking initiatives within the nuclear enterprise today, providing the means to design, prototype, and demonstrate future weapon systems for a modern deterrent. The weapon design and engineering work being performed under the program is pushing the bounds of what is possible and is being done much faster than at any rate since the end of the Cold War.
As America's adversaries pursue a variety of exotic delivery vehicles, from long-range underwater drones to hypersonic glide vehicles, our scientists and engineers are working aggressively to ensure the continued preeminence of the U.S. deterrent.
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