Video Above: Networked Army Radar Destroys 2 Maneuvering Cruise Missiles
BY PETER HUESSY, PRESIDENT OF GEOSTRATEGIC ANALYSIS, POTOMAC, MARYLAND
The Congressional Budget Office, (CBO) was created in 1974 to help Senators and Representatives better understand the government’s spending. In a report now done every two years, CBO examines future nuclear deterrent spending.
CBO’s newest report on nuclear spending once again cleverly cooks the books claiming an unanticipated 28% growth in the newest ten-year estimates of nuclear spending. Fully half of the “growth” was simply due to CBO adding two more expensive out-years for two low spending early years as they moved the ten-year estimate to the right. The other half of the growth was a CBO guess as to future cost growth which they assume will exceed not mirror past cost growth.
However, the past reassessment of the NNSA budget for example was to get an accurate handle on NNSA spending which was done to better manage the programs, which has been largely achieved. Those numbers did dramatically increase. That won’t necessarily happen again.
For much of the history of these nuclear reports, CBO has mis-labeled all the nuclear spending as “modernization”. Occasionally the CBO will admit that sustainment and operations are not the same as modernization. For example, in its 2019 report, CBO admits the U.S. has “…not built any new nuclear weapons or delivery systems” for nearly four decades, yet still questioned whether the country should support the administration’s 2018 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) and by implication the 2018 bipartisan congressionally mandated National Security Strategy Commission (NSSC).
Both the NPR and NSSC warned of the growing nuclear threats from Russia and China and call for a serious nuclear modernization effort and additional nuclear investments. But despite these twin calls for more nuclear modernization, CBO also finds a way to use creative accounting tricks to make it appear nuclear spending is already markedly increasing and could if required be significantly curtailed. The line item for ICBMs, for example is $4.2 billion for FY2021. For the uninitiated, the line would be assumed to reflect the new GBSD program.
