Thursday, November 9th 2017 (WASHINGTON) – With approximately 1,550 deployed nuclear warheads and additional 4,000-plus stockpiled weapons, the United States is tied with Russia in having the planet’s largest nuclear arsenal. The cost of maintaining that force will be $1.2 trillion, according to a new study by the Congressional Budget Office.
Over the next 30 years, the trillion-dollar-triad will undergo the first major modernization since the end of the Cold War, which will include upgrades to the country’s air, land and sea-based deterrent.
Yet, that $1.2 trillion price tag may end up being on the cheap side.
Already, President Donald Trump has made it clear that the country’s nuclear weapons are a critical priority. In October, Trump stressed that the nuclear arsenal needs to be “in perfect condition,” adding he wants the force “in tip-top shape.”
In an interview with Full Measure’s Sharyl Attkisson, Trump was focused on increasing military strength, particularly in light of a nuclear North Korea. “We’re putting [ourselves] in a position where we’ll be stronger than we ever have been ever in our history proportionately and otherwise,” the president said, adding, “we are very, very strong and getting stronger all the time.”
In the coming months, the Pentagon will be outlining the Trump administration’s priorities for nuclear policy, strategy, capabilities and force posture in its Nuclear Posture Review. The CBO anticipates that the Trump administration may recommend changing modernization plans and even the size of the nuclear force he inherited from the Obama administration.
When the Obama administration completed its initial review in 2010, North Korea had not yet claimed to have tested a hydrogen bomb or an intercontinental ballistic missile, and U.S. relations with the other nuclear superpower, Russia, had not yet taken a turn for the worse.
Kingston Reif, director of disarmament and threat reduction policy at the Center for Arms Control, believes the Trump administration is likely to change the doctrine developed under his predecessor.
“The indications are that the administration could take steps to increase the role that nuclear weapons play in U.S. policy and could pursue new types of nuclear weapons that aren’t currently part of the U.S. arsenal,” he said.
Recent reports have suggested that Trump may be considering reintroducing tactical or battlefield nuclear weapons into the mix. The weapons, sometimes described as being below 0.3 kilotons or 300 tons of TNT equivalent, were discontinued by George H.W. Bush in 1991 at the end of Cold War.
Defense budget analyst Todd Harrison explained that contrary to some of the president’s public statements, there are very few ways the current president can significantly increase the arsenal in the next four to eight years. President Trump has taken to Twitter on a few occasions to call for a “stronger and more powerful” arsenal. Before taking office, he said the U.S. should “strengthen and expand its nuclear capability.”
Some proponents of these low-yield weapons have argued that they are more practical and make a more credible deterrent than larger bombs in the U.S. arsenal. Opponents have warned that reintroducing mini-nukes could lower the threshold for use, or cause other nuclear powers like Russia or China to rethink their own doctrines. Both scenarios, critics warn, would increase the risk of a nuclear conflict.
THE COSTS AND TRADEOFFS
Despite the steep price, lawmakers are currently on track to fully fund the nuclear modernization effort for this year. The defense authorization bill has called for funds for the new Columbia-class nuclear submarine, the new B-21 bomber, and a new ground-based strategic deterrent to replace the aging Minuteman III ICBMs.
The costs of modernization are expected to be around $30 billion over the next decade, but as the programs get closer to completion, the costs go up. According to the CBO estimate, by the 2030s the cost to upgrade and maintain the triad will top $50 billion per year.
“Unless moves are made to adjust these plans in some way, the likely outcome is that we will encounter a budget trainwreck,” Reif said. He warned that under current projections, there will not be enough money to pay for everything the Pentagon has planned for both the nuclear arsenal and recapitalizing conventional forces.
He explained that “choices are going to have to be made, trade-offs are going to be made.”
There is nothing easy about the trade-off between spending money on conventional forces that have been strained after 16 years of war and budget cuts and a deterrent that many leaders believe has kept the peace for the past 70 years.
“I think the real question is can we afford not to modernize,” said Sen. Angus King (R-Maine). He stressed that the danger of nuclear confrontation is increasing, not decreasing. “Clearly, cost is going to be an issue. But the cost of security is also an issue.”
The growing price tag of the nuclear deterrent also has fiscal hawks caught between a rock and hard place.
Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.) warned that the country is now teetering between two crises: a fiscal crisis and defense readiness crisis. “We are facing the absolute, dire necessity to recap our military and the price is very, very expensive and finding the money is very difficult,” he said. At the same time, he argued the country has to find a way to finance it.
Harrison explained that even in an era of defense spending cuts and high demand for conventional weapons, financing the triad will only cost about 5 percent of the total defense budget.
“The question is are we willing to pay for it.”Harrison agreed that the Trump administration will likely have to make hard choices about whether to fund the immediate readiness needs of the military or the long-term needs, weapons programs.
“There are a lot of big tradeoffs,” he noted. “Ultimately it’s a matter of strategy.”
CUT THE COSTS, CUT THE ARSENAL?
In the CBO report, there are nine recommendations for how to cut the cost of the nuclear arsenal. Essentially, they boil down to cutting programs, cutting the size of the force, or delaying their implementation.
Under the 2010 New START Treaty, the United States and Russia are currently limited to 1,550 deployed nuclear warheads across various platforms. That agreement was made at the beginning of the Obama administration after the president became the first U.S. leader in the atomic age to call for a “world without nuclear weapons.”
While the cuts in New START only amounted to a 10 percent reduction in the total number of nuclear weapons on the planet, it prompted calls for even further cuts.
One proposal was made during Obama’s term in office to continue to reduce the overall level of deployed nuclear warheads down to 1,000 warheads. According to a Pentagon follow-up nuclear review, reducing the deployed arsenal to 1,000 warheads would still be sufficient to achieve U.S. deterrent objectives.
Some staunch arms control advocates have called on the United States to unilaterally limit its arsenal without a new treaty with Russia, but the Pentagon argued against such steps, ultimately deciding that a unilateral arms reduction would not be prudent.
Kingston Reif is among the arms control proponents who believes the current U.S. arsenal is already overkill. “Given that the United States has more nuclear weapons than it needs for its security, it would be counterproductive and undermine U.S. security to overspend on nuclear weapons at the expense of higher priority programs,” he said.
Others have proposed cutting the triad down to a dyad, eliminating an entire delivery platform. Former Secretary of Defense, William Perry has repeatedly recommended getting rid of the ICBM leg of the triad.
Perry argued in a New York Times editorial that by downsizing the modernization plan to replace the Minuteman III missiles could save tens of billions of dollars, improve nuclear security and reduce the risk of an “accidental nuclear war.”
“These missiles are some of the most dangerous weapons in the world,” he wrote, recalling a handful of close calls and false alarms during the Cold War that nearly resulted in the U.S. launching a barrage of U.S. nuclear missiles. He and others have argued that nuclear-armed submarines and long-range strategic bombers will provide as much redundancy and survivability as the three-legged deterrent.
There is little question among policymakers, defense officials and national leaders that as long as the threat of nuclear weapons persists, the United States needs to have a credible, functional, safe nuclear arsenal.
“If we don’t modernize parts of our nuclear arsenal, then, over time, those delivery systems, the ICBMs, the sub-launched ballistic missiles, and the platforms…they will gradually age out of our inventory,” Harrison said. Then the United States will be left with no choice in the matter of having a smaller arsenal.
The cost of maintaining and modernizing the U.S. nuclear arsenal is something that Americans should take an interest in, Harrison continued. “This money belongs to the American taxpayers; it’s being used to provide for the national security of the country.”
As the CBO recommendations make clear, there are a lot of choices available for managing and upgrading America’s strategic deterrent, he concluded. “It’s not just a matter of keeping all of the nuclear weapons and modernizing them or getting rid of them all. There are a lot of choices in between.”
During a September visit to Minor Air Base in Nebraska, home to two of the three legs of the triad, Secretary of Defense James Mattis made it clear that the Pentagon is open to all considerations in its upcoming nuclear posture review.
“We’ve got three legs of the triad. Does each one need to exist? Within each leg, there are different weapons — does each need to be there? Are they stabilizing weapons, are they necessary?” Mattis said all of these are questions that are currently being answered.
The Department of Defense was unable to comment on the expected release date of the Nuclear Posture Review, but it is likely to be complete sometime in early 2018.
