The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office’s estimate does not include recently discovered cost overruns in the Sentinel missile project.
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- The Congressional Budget Office estimates that operating, sustaining, and modernizing U.S. nuclear weapons will cost $946 billion between 2025 and 2034.
- The projection is 25%, or $190 billion, higher than the CBO’s last 10-year cost estimate.
The price to maintain and modernize America’s nuclear weapons continues to rise, according to a report from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
According to the April 24 report, U.S. taxpayers will pay approximately $946 billion over the next decade to sustain, operate, and modernize the country’s nuclear weapons; its fleet of bombers, submarines and missiles designed to deliver the weapons; and related support and production infrastructure.
The projection is 25% − or $190 billion − higher than the CBO’s last ten-year cost estimate, which covered 2023 to 2032.
More than half of the increase is due to cost overruns, the CBO said. The office pointed to the new Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile project as a major driver of the jump, in addition to smaller increases in other programs and weapons production facilities run by the National Nuclear Security Administration.
Advocates for fewer nuclear weapons pointed to the estimate as a warning about the potential consequences of allowing arms control agreements to quietly expire. But supporters of nuclear modernization contend the U.S. needs an updated arsenal to compete with Russia and China on an increasingly unstable world stage.
In a statement, Arms Control Association executive director Daryl Kimball argued the “skyrocketing costs” of the nuclear arsenal are likely to “go even higher.” He highlighted that the CBO estimate does not fully account for recently assessed cost increases to the Sentinel program; a mandatory review in 2024 revealed an 81% increase in the program’s price tag.
Kimball said the administration of President Donald Trump should engage China on arms control and take action to maintain nuclear weapons deployment limits set by the New START treaty with Russia, which expires in early 2026.
“Failure to do so will undermine U.S. and global security and could mean that more taxpayer dollars are wasted on weapons of mass destruction rather than programs that meet real human needs,” he argued.
The CBO bases its estimates on agency budget proposals and accounts for slight cost overruns that align with an agency’s historical patterns.
The nuclear arsenal and its associated costs represent a growing share of the nation’s defense budget, which could soon hit $1 trillion a year. The CBO estimates nukes will account for 8.4% of national defense spending between 2025 and 2034, a significant increase compared with 3.9% in the 2014 defense budget.
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