Is nuclear modernization bankrupting the country?

CBO has once again published a ghost story trying to scare Congress and the public into jettisoning our nuclear modernization efforts due to estimates that the $1 trillion ten-year cost of such an effort is not affordable. Daryl Kimball, the head of the Arms Control Association, echoes these conclusions with a call to reign in the “skyrocketing” costs of nuclear modernization. He calls for the Sentinel ICBM program to be eliminated and instead keep the legacy Minuteman III ICBM force as a means of saving money.

Kimball references a 2014 Rand report that recommended the MMIII missile system go through a life extension program, to be followed after a number of decades by a new missile system, then known as the GBSD (ground based strategic deterrent) and now the Sentinel.

In fact, the USAF requested, and Congress approved in the late 1990s a near decades long effort to redo the guidance and propulsion systems for MMIII. Both were replaced and the system was given a life extension to keep the land based deterrent in the force “through 2030” as required by law. And the USAF will now continue to keep MMIII on alert until fully replaced by the Sentinel, now estimated by 2050.

However, Kimball ignores that the MMIII missile, including its guidance and propulsion elements, have a service life that is not unlimited and cannot be in force through 2080 which is the current plan for Sentinel. This is also true of the ICBM warheads, as now retired NNSA administrator Dr. Jill Hruby explained at a Hill seminar in 2023.

As noted, the Sentinel is designed to be deployed through 2080, which brings its annual average cost to $2.8 billion, which is hardly unaffordable. The MMIII missiles will continue in operation as previously reported but as a total force the MMIII ICBMs have to be replaced, especially as the cost of operation and sustainment continues to escalate. The HASC just passed reconciliation legislation added $500 million for MMIII enhancements including guidance and propulsion work, test and repair equipment, ground mechanical and electrical needs, and infrastructure.

Without Sentinel, the ICBM force would eventually have to stand down. But the Strategic Command requirements is a force of very close to 400 ICBM warheads on daily alert with the ability to penetrate defenses and operate more efficiently. A MMIII force being retired and trending toward obsolescence does not provide that. And as previous studies have revealed, replacing the current ICBM on alert warheads with those on submarines, as one alternative, would cost over $100 billion. If one replaces the 800 ICBM warheads Sentinel could have if deployed with a partial force of multiple warheads per missile, the acquisition costs to buy submarines and SLBMs instead would be north of $200 billion.

Kimball also misses that the CBO cost numbers are not for modernization alone. Nearly 60-65% are for operations and sustainment of the current, New START bounded force. The CBO estimates also do not include any additional buildup in nuclear forces except for some modest RDT&E for the SLCM-N. Otherwise the CBO report is an estimate of the program of record as agreed to by the US Congress and the Obama administration in December 2010 during negotiations over the 2010 New START treaty and subsequent Senate ratification of the agreement. Hardly a dangerous start to an arms race as the planned force fits entirely within the framework of the New START arms control agreement.

To their credit, Arms Control Today (ACT) correctly reported the cost of the bomber leg of the Triad has not “skyrocketed” but has fallen dramatically. Reports ACT, the B-21 program is, according to the nominee to direct DoD acquisition, “a successful acquisition program by all accounts,” as the five-year production costs have fallen 28 percent from $19.1 billion, as estimated in fiscal year 2023, to $13.8 billion in fiscal 2025.

In short, some two-thirds of the CBO budget estimate is the cost of the nuclear deterrent without any platform modernization that so worries Kimball. And whatever “arms race” Kimball thinks the current program of record is undertaking was initially agreed to in 2010, not 2023 or 2025, and as noted within the boundaries of the New START arms agreement.

Much of the cost Kimball worries about is for critically needed elements of the nuclear deterrent which have to be upgraded even if the US did not build a single new bomber, ICBM, SLBM, submarine or cruise missile. The warheads for the entire TRIAD also have to be replaced, as mentioned above, and the nuclear command and control needs to be fully upgraded to overcome, for example, current cyber and other threats while ensuring complete command of the nuclear force by US officials. These efforts come to fully one-third of the costs identified by CBO, with close to another third for the operations and sustainment—not modernization—of the current legacy and nuclear force, which is now between 30-55 years old.

A significant part of the increase in costs CBO identified is that years of high acquisition over the ten year estimate replaced years of low level research and development, which is normal during the acquisition process.

If one looks at the research, development, and acquisition costs of the new ICBMs, submarines and their missiles, the nuclear portion of the new bomber, as well as new warhead and NC3 work, the $350 billion over a decade comes to 3.5% of a ten-year flat DoD budget, and some .4/10ths of one percent of the projected Federal budget or one out of every $257,000 spent by Uncle Sam. The annual FY25 budget cost for these platforms comes to $17.1 billion according to Senator John Hoeven (R-ND), a member of the Senate defense appropriations subcommittee which handles these programs, or 2% of the current defense budget.

And while it is true all elements of the nuclear Triad including warheads and command and control are being modernized or replaced, the purpose is to sustain and make credible nuclear deterrence. The cost to upgrade our nuclear deterrent simultaneously is due to the US Congress and subsequent administrations– after the collapse of the USSR– putting off or kicking the modernization can down the road, with the full throated support of Mr. Kimball and his arms control colleagues. That “holiday from history” as retired USAF General Garret Harencak called it, had serious consequences, indeed. Given the nuclear threats cascading around the globe, the American nuclear upgrades come not a moment too soon. More delay will simply play into the hands of our nuclear armed enemies and undermine our assurances of our extended deterrent to our allies.

Peter R. Huessy is President of Geo-Strategic Analysis and Senior Fellow, National Institute for Deterrent Studies.