At least where it concerns maintaining the U.S. nuclear arsenal under the care of the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration, the National Security Strategy that President Donald Trump released this week does not depart radically from the nuclear modernization plan set in place by his predecessor.
The United States must sustain “a nuclear force structure that meets our current needs and addresses unanticipated risks. The United States does not need to match the nuclear arsenals of other powers, but we must sustain a stockpile that can deter adversaries, assure allies and partners, and achieve U.S. objectives if deterrence fails,” according to the document released Monday.
In a nod to persistent worries about brain drain at the Department of Energy’s nuclear weapon complex, the new security strategy also calls for “maintaining and growing the highly skilled workforce needed to develop, manufacture, and deploy nuclear weapons.”
The Barack Obama administration sounded similar notes in 2016 when it embarked on the current nuclear modernization program. Those efforts include upgrading or replacing aging warheads, missiles, bombs, and aircraft. Together with maintenance costs, the Obama-era modernization plan is expected to cost some $1.2 trillion in the 30 years from 2017 to 2046, the Congressional Budget Office estimates.
Trump proposed a billion-dollar raise for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) in fiscal 2018, which would bring the agency’s annual budget to about $14 billion. Most of the proposed raise — which has not arrived because Congress has extended 2017 spending levels through Jan. 19 after failing to pass a 2018 budget this summer — would go to the agency’s weapons programs.
The NNSA is responsible for maintaining and repairing U.S. nuclear warheads. The agency is now funding five major life-extension programs for nuclear weapons by homogenizing different versions of the B61 nuclear gravity bomb and refurbishing warheads for air-launched cruise missiles, plus ground- and submarine-launched ballistic missiles.
As of Sept. 1, the United States had 1,393 nuclear warheads deployed on a combination of 660 intercontinental and submarine-launched ballistic missiles and bomber aircraft, according to the State Department. Roughly another 200 tactical nuclear weapons are deployed at several bases in Europe.
