The Defense Department might need $18 billion added to its budget to keep it afloat once the bow wave of nuclear modernization programs crashes ashore in 2021 and beyond, according to the Pentagon’s director of cost assessment and program evaluation (CAPE).
The Defense Department is planning for a substantial increase in its top-line budget in parallel with a major ramp up in platform production beginning in fiscal 2021 when it will be producing nuclear submarines, a new bomber and replacing its aging ICBMs, said Jamie Morin, who served in several senior management positions with the Air Force before becoming CAPE in 2014.
“This year’s future year’s defense plan is the first one in which the real bulk of the nuclear bow wave is within the planning horizon,” Morin said Monday at a conference hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.
The final year of the five-year future years defense plan (FYDP) being ironed out alongside the fiscal years 2017 budget will see “substantial bills” for building the first Ohio-replacement sub, replacements for the Minuteman III ICBM and the Long Range Strike Bomber, now designated the B-21.
“It’s on the order of $12-18 billion a year where we were in this last decade, which was a very low period for investment in the nuclear enterprise,” Morin said. “Investment for the department in the nuclear enterprise is cyclical.”