The US Congressional Budget Office said that the country would spend $1.2 trillion over the upcoming 30 years to upgrade the nuclear arsenal of the United States. As much as $800 billion of the amount will be spent to maintain the existing arsenal, and $400 billion will be used to modernize strategic nuclear forces of the United States.
The US navy plans to replace Ohio class nuclear submarines with state-of-the-art strategic submarine missile cruiser Columbia. The US Air Force will receive a new promising strategic bomber B-21 Raider. The US Air Force plans to completely replace all 400 Minuteman-3 ICBMs with a new promising carrier.
The money will also be spent to upgrade nuclear warheads and improve the control system for strategic nuclear forces that need to be kept at the highest level of alert for the purpose of maintaining the nuclear triad.
This is the first of such plans of the United States to analyze and forecast spending on nuclear weapons during the period of 30 years. A lot of money is to be spent on nuclear-capable aircraft and special ammunition for them.
The Budget Office of the US Congress will assign $313 billion for nuclear submarines, $149 billion for intercontinental ballistic missiles, $266 billion for strategic bombers and $44 billion for other systems. The spending nears $890 billion for the Department of Defense and $352 billion for the US Department of Energy.
The Budget Office believes that efforts to maintain combat readiness of existent arms systems will eventually cut the spending on strategic nuclear forces by 50 percent during 30 years. However, the Pentagon disliked the idea and easily proved that the weapons that the United States has now will become hopelessly obsolete as an effective deterrent factor during the upcoming two decades.
Despite the colossal amount of $1.2 trillion, this is only six percent of the total amount to be spent on national defense of the United States for the indicated period of 30 years.
In the structure of annual spending on national defense, the costs on strategic nuclear forces will amount to approximately 5.5 percent in 2017 before they will increase to approximately eight percent in the late 2020s - early 2030s and then drop to about 4.5 percent in the 2040s.
If the Trump administration does not resort to reasonable prudent actions in terms of financing SNF modernization programs, but opts to increase the spending on the purpose, then the costs on nuclear weapons will threaten other priority national security programs of the United States, analysts say.
Pravda.Ru
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