President Donald Trump’s plan to remake the U.S. nuclear arsenal is estimated to require $1.2 trillion, which is considerably higher than previous figures, according to the Congressional Budget Office report.
These predictions have raised concerns over how realistic the plan is. They also present Congress with a dilemma as to how they could find money for Trump’s other military priorities, such as building a bigger Navy.
“Congress still doesn’t seem to have any answers as to how we will pay for this effort, or what the trade-offs with other national security efforts will be if we maintain an arsenal of over 4,000 nuclear weapons and expand our capacity to produce more,” Representative Adam Smith said.
On the other hand, supporters claim that these projections amount only to about 6 percent of the Pentagon’s budget to rebuild the nuclear arsenal in the course of the next thirty years.
“The price is affordable and the mission is imperative. Those who might argue otherwise ignore the enormous cost of facing an increasingly insecure world with an eroding and uncertain deterrent,” the spokesman for the Republican members of the Armed Services said.
The nation’s nuclear weapons, bombers and missiles are included in the proposal for rebuilding the nuclear arsenal which is old and still uses Cold War-era technology.
The report comes only weeks before the Pentagon issues the Nuclear Posture Review, the first broad nuclear strategy of the Trump administration. The estimate of the budget office, issued on Tuesday relies on plans dating from former President Barrack Obama’s time in office. These plans, some senior administration officials say, may grow even more now that the White House is looking for new ways to counter North Korea and deal with Russia and China’s nuclear modernization. Trump has said he wants the U.S. nuclear arsenal to be “top of the pack”, but that he doesn’t understand why the number of deployed warheads has to be limited to 1,550. The New START treaty with Russia of 2010 sets this limit, but Trump has not said anything about breaking out of the treaty.
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