Over the next decade, the U.S. will spend an estimated $756 billion on modernizing and maintaining its current and future nuclear forces, or about $75 billion per year, a new report from the Congressional Budget Office found.
Looking at the 10 years from 2023 to 2032, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), found that U.S. spending on nuclear weapons would rise 19 percent from the 2021 projection of $634 billion annually through 2030. CBO crunches nuke spending numbers every two years.
“Altogether, annual budgets for those programs (excluding the allowance for cost growth) would rise steadily from about $50 billion in 2023 to a peak of about $75 billion in 2031 before dropping slightly in 2032,” CBO estimated in the report published July 14. “DoD would incur about two-thirds of the costs.”
The 10-year total includes $305 billion for the operation and sustainment of current and future nuclear forces, $247 billion for the modernization of strategic and tactical nuclear delivery systems and the weapons they carry and $108 billion for modernizing National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) facilities and equipment at various nuclear weapons laboratory sites.
About $660 billion of the total will go toward Department of Defense and Department of Energy modernization plans as laid out in the fiscal year 2023 budget, CBO found. Of that amount, $247 billion will cover nuclear weapons and delivery system modernization.
Spending on NNSA nuclear weapons laboratories through 2032 will total $148 billion, CBO projected. That funding will cover activities at labs and weapons production facilities that are “not directly attributable to a specific type of warhead but that are related to maintaining current and future stockpiles of nuclear weapons.”
DOE’s plans to refurbish or build new facilities for producing materials and components used in nuclear weapons would cost about $49 billion over the 10-year period, in CBO’s estimation.
