nuclear-news

The News That Matters about the Nuclear Industry Fukushima Chernobyl Mayak Three Mile Island Atomic Testing Radiation Isotope

Over $8.25 billion to extend the life of B61-12 atomic bomb

bomb B61-12Updated B61 Nuclear Bomb to Cost $8.25 Billion, Defense News,  By: Aaron Mehta, October 19, 2016 WASHINGTON – The life-extension program for the B61-12 atomic bomb will cost just over $8.25 billion, according to a new estimate from the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA).

The new cost estimate was completed over the summer as the agency prepared to enter the production-engineering phase of the program. The baseline cost of the program is $7.605 billion, with an additional $648 million in “funds leveraged from other NNSA programs for technology and manufacturing readiness,” according to an agency statement – money that has common applications across multiple weapon systems.

That cost does not include the estimated $1.3 billion that the Department of Defense plans to spend on developing and procuring tailkits for the weapons. With that included, the total cost for the program sits at roughly $9.5 billion.


The NNSA is a semi-autonomous department within the Department of Energy. While the Defense Department manages the delivery systems of the nuclear force — ships, planes and missiles — NNSA has oversight over the development, maintenance and disposal of nuclear warheads.

The agency is perusing a modernization plan known as the “3+2 Strategy,” under which the NNSA is consolidating the American arsenal of warheads into five variants. The five ballistic-missile warheads now in service are being consolidated into three new interoperable warheads known as the IW-1, IW-2, and IW-3, while the five bomb and cruise-missile warhead types are being consolidated into two replacement warhead designs, the W80-4 and the B61-12. …….http://www.defensenews.com/articles/updated-b61-nuclear-bomb-to-cost-825-billion

Advertisement

October 22, 2016 - Posted by | USA, weapons and war

1 Comment »

  1. Surely they could do something better with all that money other than giving atomic bombs a “life extension.” Why have bombs that can destroy the world? There’ll be no winners, just a world of dead bodies, dead animal life including in the oceans and so on. And you won’t be here to declare yourself the winner of the war, and imagine if you were the only person left! Good luck, have fun!!!

    Comment by Frank Hosszu | November 11, 2016 | Reply


Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

%d bloggers like this: