The Congressional Budget Office predicts the costs of designing, producing, deploying and maintaining for 30 years the nuclear weapons and support systems currently sought by the Department of Defense as $1.2Trillion in 2017 dollars. At the current rate of inflation this will entail public expenditures of at least $1.7 Trillion, not to include cost overruns –always to be expected. This is a lot of money even by Pentagon standards. (as reported in “The Nation” April 8 Page 19 by Michael Klare)
For what??? —
A new ICBM to replace all Minuteman III’s (The Air Force plans to purchase more than 600 new missiles)
A new fleet of missile carrying submarines (Columbia Class–The Navy plans to by 12 each carrying 16 submarine -launched missile
A New Long-Range bomber (the B21 Raider to replace the B-2 and B-52. The Air Force plans to buy aat least 100 at an average cost of $606 million apiece)
A New air-launched cruise missile (called a “long-range stand -off weapon” LRSO The Air Force plans to procure 1000 having greater range, accuracy, and stealth capabilites than current cruise missiles)
Klare analyses all this spending within the context of the Trump 2018 Nuclear Policy Review” which asserts the need for more useable nuclear weapons. It leads in the opposite direction from the Obama nuclear policy. The ultimate result appears to lead to higher likelyhood of the use of nuclear weapons leading to another nuclear arms race squandering the assets of humanity and a higher likelyhood of a nuclear holocaust that would bring on nuclear winter that would likely bring human civiization to an end. Do we really want to do this??
The 2020 DOD budget includes $31 Billion for initiating these “upgrades” to the nuclear arsenal. Let your Representatives and Senators know what you think. Adam Smith (D-WA) chair of the House Armed Services Committee is raising the right questions. “WE could meet our needs from a national security standpoint with a lot fewer nuclear weapons”. Sounds like he’s got the picture at least.
