Amid escalating nuclear threats from Russia, China, and North Korea, the United States has committed billions of dollars to maintain and modernize its Cold War nuclear arsenal, as well as launch new ballistic missile programs to replace its existing ones.
In the wake of a series of heavy losses suffered by Russian forces in eastern Ukraine in the Kharkiv region, Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has routinely reminded the world since the war began that Moscow's nuclear arsenal is the largest in the world, issued a vague but ominous threat to use a nuclear weapon. "If the territorial integrity of our country is threatened, we will undoubtedly use all available means to protect Russia and our people," he said on September 21 in a nationally televised address. "This is not a hoax."
Until recently, statements from the Kremlin appeared to be primarily for show, but recent statements prompted US intelligence to use satellites and fly over Russia's Kaliningrad to look for any moves it might find suspicious of Russia's strategic arsenal.
And while the Biden administration formed a team of experts to develop strategies for responses if Russia did the unthinkable, attention in Washington was again turned to the American nuclear arsenal, which was designed to win the Cold War several decades ago, and whose maintenance and operation has become a task that requires huge amounts of money, given that Its lifespan has exceeded its maximum years of service, resulting in extensive maintenance shifts as parts supplies dwindle, according to Time magazine .
Maintenance or replacement?
When US President Joe Biden took office, he tried to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in American politics, to the point that he considered the idea of reducing a portion of ICBMs. But that option was scrapped last year, once intelligence agencies decided that China was expanding its stockpile of nuclear weapons faster and more aggressively than previously expected.
An administration official told Time : "As you watch China rapidly grow, looking to triple the number of weapons it possesses, it does not seem appropriate that the United States unilaterally seeks a decline at this point in time." This view was reinforced by the Russian attack on Ukraine, during which President Vladimir Putin threatened to use nuclear weapons against the United States and European allies.
And if the United States decides it needs to keep its ground-based missiles, it should fund a new weapon instead of continuing to pump billions into the existing fleet, as former Secretary of Defense and Republican Senator from Nebraska Chuck Hagel said, “The nation needs to either replace these systems.” or dispose of it.
It is noteworthy that the US nuclear arsenal currently consists of 3,800 warheads.
Expensive task
The final decision on whether and how to replace the old US nuclear forces rests with Congress. With Biden now joined, the Pentagon is betting he'll get all of his $1 trillion plan to replace all three legs of the US nuclear triad, including $100 billion to replace all ICBMs.
Now, with the Biden administration largely continuing with its predecessors' plans to modernize or replace America's nuclear triad of ICBMs and ballistic missile submarines, as well as long-range strategic bombers, the Pentagon is on the cusp of striking what has long been dubbed the "bow wave". ', which is the military term for offsetting the long-awaited costs that have been accumulating for years, according to Defense One .
According to Time, if Congress decides to maintain the current fleet, it will burden the military budget, given the increasing cost of maintenance, as the price of maintenance of ICBMs alone has increased by 17% over the past half-decade, reaching nearly $482 million annually.
And in the latest Congressional Budget Office report , US nuclear forces will cost $634 billion over the next 10 years. Over the next 30 years, the cost to maintain all of these new weapons could reach $2 trillion, according to the Arms Control Association .
100 billion to build a new system
According to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists , the United States is building a new weapon of mass destruction, the $100 billion Ground-Based Strategic Nuclear Missile (GBSD), which is set to replace the aging Minuteman III ICBM.
The US Air Force plans to order more than 600 of these missiles, which will be able to travel 6000 miles and carry a warhead 20 times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Like its predecessors, the GBSD fleet will be housed in underground silos, widely spread out in three groups known as "wings" across five states.
To complete the task, the US Air Force in September 2020 awarded defense company Northrop Grumman an initial $13.3 billion contract to begin engineering and manufacturing the missile, but that would be just a fraction of the total bill. Based on a Pentagon report cited by the Arms Control Association and Bloomberg News , the government will spend more than $100 billion to build the weapon, which will be ready for use around 2029.
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