nuclear-news

 “The U.S. will spend an estimated $700 billion on nuclear weapons and related programs over the next ten years,” according to an October 11press release from Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA).  Citing that estimate, which was based on an analysis by the Ploughshares Fund, Markey and 64 other Democratic members wrote to the Super Committee on Deficit Reduction to propose a cut of $200 million in spending on nuclear weapons.

But Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH) said last week that the entire nuclear weapons budget for the next ten years is only about $214 billion.  He said that the cuts proposed by Democrats would therefore “amount to unilateral and immediate nuclear disarmament by the United States” with “catastrophic impacts to our national security and global stability.”….

according to Stephen I. Schwartz of the Monterey Institute of International Studies:

“Here’s the fundamental problem: No one in the government knows exactly how much has been spent or continues to be spent on nuclear weapons because there is not and has never been a unified, comprehensive budget to monitor all their costs across departments and agencies and over time,” said Mr. Schwartz, an author of several studies on nuclear weapons spending.

The nominal budget for nuclear weapons, said Mr. Schwartz, “excludes a number of very expensive and critical programs that make the nuclear arsenal usable, including overhead and support costs; most research and development costs for delivery systems and support equipment; all costs for tactical nuclear weapons; airlift and sealift costs for strategic and tactical nuclear weapons programs; most centralized command, control, communications programs associated with nuclear weapons; all intelligence programs that support the nuclear weapons mission; and some training costs.”….

http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/2011/11/cost_nuclear.html