The Real Costs of U.S. Nuclear Modernization

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By Peter Huessy, President of Geo-Strategic Analysis, Potomac, Maryland and Warrior Maven, Nuclear Weapons, Senior Analyst 

Over the past three years, the U.S. Congressional Budget Office reports that the United States government has spent on average $11.8 million every second, $707 million every hour, $16.9 billion every day, and $6.2 trillion every year.

By comparison, when President John F. Kennedy was in office, at the height of the Cold War and amid concerns over missile and bomber gaps and Soviet nuclear-tipped missiles in Cuba, the U.S. government spent $186,000 per second, which projects to a 6,174 percent increase in government spending over the past sixty years.

Nuclear Deterrence

The United States is now modernizing its nuclear deterrent for only the third time since 1960 says Senator Jack Reed, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. And we are doing so after a holiday from nuclear acquisition that has lasted over four decades. 

So, we are now replacing weapons systems that are forty to seventy years old because their modernization can no longer be deferred. The only alternative option to modernization is “rust to obsolescence,” also known as getting the United States out of the nuclear deterrent business.

Given that every U.S. Nuclear Posture Review that was conducted by the past five administrations has concluded that nuclear deterrence remains a U.S. priority, the United States is once again embarking on a modernization effort of its bombers, submarines, and land-based missiles, as well as a life extension of its nuclear warheads and stockpiles and developing a new set of cyber-resistant nuclear command and control systems.