background preloader

U.S Nuclear weapons budget

Facebook Twitter

Which President Cut the Most Nukes? DOVES who once cheered President Obama for his antinuclear crusades and later fell silent as he backpedaled are now lining up to denounce him. A recent skewering by the Federation of American Scientists details how Mr. Obama, despite calling repeatedly for “a world without nuclear weapons,” has reduced the size of the nation’s atomic stockpile far less than did any of his three immediate predecessors, including both Presidents Bush. Critics are calling out the president not only for modest cuts but also for spending more than previous administrations to modernize the remaining arms and for authorizing a new generation of weapon carriers.

They call the upgrades an enormous waste of money, citing estimates that put the nation’s costs over the next three decades at up to a trillion dollars. Mr. Some critics, while conceding short-term gains from Mr. For his part, Mr. Even so, the transformation of cheerleaders into detractors marks a turning point for a vocal part of Mr. The American Nuclear. $1 Billion for a Nuclear Bomb Tail - Strategic Security Blog - Pale Moon. The U.S. Air Force plans to spend more than $1 billion on developing a guided tailkit to increase the accuracy of the B61 nuclear bomb.

The cost is detailed (to some extent) in the Air Force’s budget request for FY2014 , which shows development and engineering through FY2014 and full-scaled production starting in FY2015. The annual costs increase by nearly 200 percent from $67.9 million in FY2014 to more than $200 million in FY2015. The high cost level will be retained for three years until the project decreases after production ceases in FY2018.

Some additional funding is needed after that to complete the integration and certification on (see graph). Production of the guided tailkit is intended to match completion of the first new B61-12 bomb in 2019, a program that is estimated to cost more than $10 billion. Although the number is a secret, it is thought that the U.S. plans to produce roughly 400 B61-12s. This publication was made possible by a grant from the Ploughshares Fund. 56% Favor U.S.-Russian Nuclear Arms Reductions - Pale Moon. PRINCETON, NJ -- Americans, by 56% to 38%, support a reduction in U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals.

Democrats are most inclined to support it -- saying they would vote for such a law if they could -- while Republicans are about evenly divided in their views. A March 2-3 Gallup poll asked Americans how they would vote on a number of potential issues, most of which President Barack Obama raised in his recent State of the Union address, including U.S. -Russian nuclear reductions. Obama is considering a plan for further reductions in U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons, beyond those agreed to in the 2011 New START treaty. Gallup asked about that treaty -- also in the referendum format -- in December 2010 and found results similar to those from the current poll, with 51% saying they would vote for the treaty and 30% against it.

However, Gallup has found much greater support for U.S-Russian or U.S. Implications President Obama favors a new agreement to cut U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons. Last Nuclear ‘Monster Weapon’ Gets Dismantled | Danger Room. In the 1960s, the skies above the United States were patrolled by agents of the apocalypse. Air Force B-52 Stratofortresses circled the North American continent, 24 hours a day, cradling two megabombs in their bellies. Those B-53 bombs each weighed 10,000 pounds. Were one to drop on the White House, a nine-megaton yield would destroy all life out into suburban Maryland and Virginia. It was the ultimate Cold War weapon, the one that Major Kong would have ridden into Armageddon at the end of Dr. Strangelove. And on Tuesday, it will no longer exist. Out at the Energy Department’s Pantex Plant near Amarillo, Texas, the last of America’s B-53s is in storage. “It’s the end of the era of monster weapons, if you will,” says Hans Kristensen, who directs the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of the American Scientists.

First brought into the U.S. nuclear stockpile in 1962, the B-53 was so big because it was so dumb. And it was designed to burrow deep. A Nuclear-Free Mirage? Obstacles to President Obama’s Goal of a Nuclear Weapons Free World » FAS Strategic Security Blog. Stockpile stewardship. Stockpile stewardship refers to the United States program of reliability testing and maintenance of its nuclear weapons without the use of nuclear testing. Because no new nuclear weapons have been developed by the United States since 1992,[1] even its youngest weapons are at least 21 years old. Aging weapons can fail or act unpredictably in a number of ways: the high explosives that condense their fissile material can chemically degrade, their electronic components can suffer from decay, their radioactive plutonium/uranium cores are potentially unreliable, and the isotopes used by thermonuclear weapons may be chemically unstable as well.[2] Stockpile Stewardship and Management Program[edit] The Stockpile Stewardship and Management Program is a United States Department of Energy program to ensure that the nuclear capabilities of the United States are not eroded as nuclear weapons age.

Facilities[edit] See also[edit] Enduring Stockpile References[edit] External links[edit] Nuclear Weapons Budget and the Budget Control Act. How will the administration’s nuclear weapons budget fare under the recent budget agreement? The bottom line seems to be that it will face around a 10% cut below the administration’s request. Where those cuts will fall, however, is an open question.The administration requested almost $11.8 billion for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), which includes both nuclear weapons and nonproliferation funding. The House called for $10.6 billion in NNSA funding, $1.2 billion less than the request and roughly equal to FY2011.

Most dramatically, it cut one-third of the funding for the planned Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement-Nuclear Facility (CMRR-NF). The administration considers this (expensive) facility to be a high-priority item, and its completion is key to increasing the production of new plutonium “pits,” the fissile material core of a nuclear weapon. In the House, this means different things to different bills. About the author: Mr. Nukes of Hazard Blog - Blog. The deal reached between the White House and Congressional leadership to raise the debt limit could include major cuts to defense (perhaps as large as $950 billion over the next decade).

How will this impact current plans to modernize and replace U.S. nuclear delivery systems (i.e. missiles, submarines, and bombers) and U.S. nuclear warheads and their supporting infrastructure? According to the White House, the first phase of debt reduction would cut $350 billion from the Pentagon's budget over the next decade, a figure similar to President Obama's April 2011 proposal to cut security spending by $400 billion over twelve years. The second phase of the deal includes a trigger mechanism that could cut an additional $500-$600 billion from the defense budget (also known as function 050, which includes NNSA's weapons activities account) if a congressional committee can't agree on an additional cut of at least $1.2 trillion to discretionary government spending later this year.