What is the Cost of a Modernized Nuclear Deterrent?
By Peter Huessy, Senior Fellow, NIDS & Senior Fellow, Maven Warrior
The assessment of the how much the United States should pay for nuclear deterrence involves looking at both the legacy nuclear systems America maintains and the replacement or modernized platforms and warheads scheduled for acquisition. On top of which operating and maintaining a nuclear force is also part of the cost and this includes security forces, operating crews, and the bases from which the US forces are deployed. In addition, the National Nuclear Security Administration builds and maintains the thousands of nuclear weapons deployed and on alert as well as in the hedge stockpile of weapons that could be added to the nuclear force if needed.
A number of organizations publish such studies and have concluded that over the next three decades, the United States plans to spend as much as $1.7 trillion on nuclear deterrence and an average of $75 billion a year for the next decade. These numbers further give the impression that the US is planning to spend far more than is affordable and with smart choices can significantly reduce such costs as well as show some restraint in securing nuclear deterrence, a restraint that will also lead China and Russia to limit their already undertaken nuclear buildups.
The current legacy systems of the MMIII ICBMs, the B52 and B2 strategic bombers, and the Ohio class submarines have been in or will be in the US force when they are retired some 42-70 years. It is remarkable that the Navy and Air Force and the supporting aerospace industries have engaged in truly heroic efforts to keep these forces at the ready for ongoing deterrence, especially given the growing difficulty of sustaining systems that are not just decades beyond their certified life-cycle but becoming increasingly costly to sustain.
The current RDT&E and Acquisition budget request for new ICBMs, new submarines and submarine launched missiles, and the portion of the new strategic bombers that are designated for the nuclear force, plus a rough estimate for the costs of nuclear , control and communication, comes to under $19 billion annually. And over 30 years hardly reaches the highly exaggerated $1.7 trillion often used by nuclear abolitionists.
As a number of senior military officials have explained, if we do not sustain these legacy forces we are out of the nuclear business. But the ability of keeping the legacy forces for much longer is in serious question and thus as Admiral Richard and General Mattis and others have explained we have two choices. First, sustain the legacy systems as long as possible but forgo modernization and in the process disarm over time and get out of the nuclear deterrent business. Or second, modernize and stay in the nuclear business with the added cost of the new platforms, not the cost of the operations and maintenance we are already spending.
Forgoing modernization is thus not in the cards unless one is willing to unilaterally disarm. Some analysts do not even think that is a problem they have also concluded US conventional military capability is of such a magnitude that nuclear weapons are no longer needed.
