The United States is facing an increasingly constrained fiscal environment, with the 2011 Budget Control Act (BCA) placing mandatory limits on spending. At the same time, all three legs of the U.S. nuclear triad—land-based, sea-based, and airborne—are due for extensive modernization.
Further programs are needed to sustain the U.S. stockpile of nuclear warheads. These necessary programs—and the nuclear arsenal in general—have come under fire for being too expensive.
In reality, nuclear-related costs represent only a minor fraction of the total defense budget while providing an outsized benefit. Nuclear forces counter the only truly existential threat faced by the United States: the use of nuclear weapons against the U.S.
READ: The Daily Signal