Maintaining the nuclear triad for the next 20 years could cost more than $500 million, according to the Center for Nonproliferation Studies. The group released a fact sheet about U.S. nuclear weapons spending late last week in advance of a more detailed report on the topic that will be released this spring attempting to estimate the costs of maintaining a triad of bombers, intercontinental ballistic missiles and submarines. “The costs for the nuclear mission are expected to grow substantially over the next 20 years if each leg of the nuclear triad is modernized to replace existing nuclear systems, ie., launchers, missiles and bombers,” the group said. “Decisions are currently being made on which systems to replace and in what numbers, and preliminary estimates suggest spending will increase to more than $25-30 billion per year for maintenance and procurement, not including many of the associated costs to maintain the nuclear arsenal.”
The group said that it will cost at least $143 billion for the United States to maintain its nuclear deterrent over the next eight years, which includes direct costs like National Nuclear Security Administration weapons work and work on strategic delivery vehicles but does not include other work related to the deterrent “because those numbers are not readily identified in current budget documents.” A handful of groups have over the past few years tried to pinpoint the cost of maintaining the nation’s nuclear deterrent, most recently the Stimson Center. Its 2012 report estimated that it costs as much as $31 billion a year to maintain the nuclear deterrent, which was less than a 2009 estimate by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace that suggested at least $52 billion was spent annually on nuclear weapons. Carnegie’s figure also included work to clean up the nation’s Cold War era nuclear legacy, nonproliferation and missile defense.
