Photograph Source: Richard Oriez – Public Domain
The Congressional Budget Office, CBO, this week calculated the “modernization” cost of the U.S. nuclear arsenal will be at least $1 trillion annually over the next ten years. Cost overruns for ongoing nuclear weapons programs have boosted total nuclear weapons costs 25% over CBO projections just two years ago.
The biennial CBO Nuclear Forces Review, mandated by Congress in 2014, found significant cost increases for all three legs of the U.S. nuclear triad; Intercontinental missiles, ICBM’s, nuclear armed submarines, SSBN, and nuclear capable long- range bombers. The increased cost of these programs rose $190 Billion since 2023, totaling $946 billion.
Nuclear weapons make up 10% of the total Department of Defense and National Nuclear Security Agency (DOE). The percentage of the defense budget expended for nuclear weapons programs has steadily increased since 2014, when it was 4% of defense spending. (The Department of Defense itself has never passed a financial statement audit, failing in each of the last eight years.)
The largest factor in nuclear weapons cost increases was the land-based ICBM component. SENTINEL, the proposed replacement for the Minuteman III ICBM, new missile silos, and associated nuclear command, control and communications, NC3 systems, have shredded original cost estimates, growing 87% to $141 billion from the 2020 proposed $78 billion.
Cost excesses for SENTINEL and its NC3 component have activated the Nunn-McCurdy ACT, 1983, to review any defense department program that exceeds its original budget by 25% and to terminate any defense project that exceeds its appropriations by 50%. Though the Secretary of Defense has deemed SENTINEL “essential for national defense” and therefor exempted from Nunn-McCurdy scrutiny, the program has faltered so severely that the CBO review found:
“The full extent of Sentinel’s cost growth remains uncertain. This is not all the cost growth that Sentinel will experience. Congressional Budget Office’s estimates of the program’s 10-year costs do not include all of the cost growth that the program is likely to experience.”
Sentinel was touted as the replacement for the land-based Minuteman III missile first deployed in the early 1970’s. The DOD’s “restructuring” of SENTINEL may well delay its deployment until 2050, according to CBO. Until then, Minuteman III will have to “replace its replacement”. Extending Minutman III will requiring billions of dollars in upgrades for its aging missiles, a cost not included in the latest CBO Review, but highlighted in selling the SENTINEL program to Congress in 2020.
The land-based leg of the nuclear triad has always been viewed as the most vulnerable in the nuclear arsenal. As such its launch protocols require “prompt” or “hair trigger” status. Prompt status increases both the likelihood of an accidental launch of a nuclear weapon, and significant costs to maintain crews and infrastructure on hair trigger alert.
The Union of Concerned Scientists testified to Congress in 2020 that “Land-based ICBM’s are superfluous and dangerous”, and called for the entire land leg of the nuclear triad to be retired. Former Secretary of Defense William Perry said “we could eliminate ICBM’s and save considerable cost. These are some of the most dangerous weapons in the world”. Heedless, Congress funded SENTINEL and its runaway costs.
The submarine- based nuclear delivery systems are viewed as the most secure leg of the nuclear triad. Of the $458 billion appropriated for “modernizing” the U.S. strategic delivery systems, more than one-half, $228 billion, fund nuclear armed submarines and newly designed submarine launched nuclear warheads. The twelve new Columbia class submarines will cost $12 billion each, three times more than their projected cost in 2010. The program is also years behind schedule.
Each Columbia class submarine will carry 16 Trident missiles, each with multiple warheads, totaling more than 100 nuclear warheads carried by each submarine. The first newly designed, warhead since the Cold War, the W-93, is being developed for Columbia submarines with variable explosive yields between 5 and 350 kilotons. (1 kiloton equals 1000 tons of TNT). Each Columbia submarine, if deployed will carry the equivalent of 35 megatons of explosive force. (1 megaton equals 1 million tons of TNT)
Some proponents of the W93 have advocated for renewed explosive nuclear testing to guarantee the new nuclear weapons work. Shattering the thirty-year-old moratorium on explosive nuclear testing could revive testing of nuclear devices that roiled the world from 1950 to 1992.
The “air component of the nuclear delivery triad, the U.S. bomber fleet, will cost $65 billion over the next ten years. These expenditures grew $2 billion from 2023 estimates and will fund the new B-21 bomber, and the Long Range Stand Off nuclear capable cruise missile. The full cost of the B-21, and B-52 refitting for nuclear and non-nuclear use, totals $149 billion for 2025-2034.
Re-engineering nuclear laboratories, manufacturing facilities for new plutonium pit bomb cores, building new U 235 enrichment factories and increased tritium production will cost $193 billion over the next 10 years, a 27% increase in the last two years.
The Command, Control and Communications, NC3, will cost an additional $154 billion over ten years. These NC3 systems involve an array of satellite, aircraft and submarine communication capabilities. These costs have grown by 32% since 2023.
In addition, the CBO Review added an automatic cost increase factor derived from historical DOD cost overruns. Applying this extra quotient adds another $129 billion to the Nuclear Forces Modernization cost, totaling $946 billion.
Over the next ten years the Congressional Budget Office estimates the U.S. will spend $10 trillion for the modernization of its nuclear weapons delivery systems. These projections do not include debt servicing costs and by no means the enormous lost opportunity costs.
Today’s nuclear weapons “modernization” began in 2010 when the Obama Administration pushed the Senate for ratification of the NewSTART nuclear weapons treaty with Russia. Senate Republicans, led by Jon Kyle, AZ, demanded increased funding for new nuclear weapons programs in return for their ratification votes. The Senate ratified NewSTART 71-22, and Obama promised $85 billion over 10 years ($120 billion in 2025 dollars) for nuclear weapons modernization.
With NewSTART expiring in February 2026 and the decadal nuclear “modernization” budget growing exponentially, from $120 billion in 2010 to $1 trillion today neither arms control nor cost control seem functional in 2025.
