Modernization costs for America’s aging nuclear arsenal will be expensive but will not exceed 5 percent of national defense spending in the coming decades, according to projections by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.
Upgrading and maintaining the US nuclear force posture will cost more than $700 billion over the next 25 years, the CSBA’s study states. Even as annual costs exceed $34 billion in the 2020s and 2030s, they will account for 5 percent or less of overall defense spending.
With the return of spending caps under sequestration looming, some liberal lawmakers have seized upon America’s nuclear arsenal as a source of potential savings. Earlier this year, Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., and Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., introduced legislation they maintain would save $100 billion, in part by reducing the number of nuclear submarines from 14 to eight, removing nuclear missions from the F-35’s portfolio, and postponing development of new intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and the long-range strike bomber (LRS-B).
CSBA’s report concludes that cuts to the nuclear program will not provide much relief to the Pentagon, particularly over the next five years, when sequestration’s caps cut the deepest.
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