#MISSILE COMMANDER 2031 UPDATE#

Those projections are not meant to predict DoD’s and DOE’s future budgets, because Administrations typically change plans from year to year. 6 CBO projects that $551 billion of that total would be needed to implement the plans as DoD and DOE have laid them out-provided those plans did not change or experience any cost growth or schedule delays. Over the 2021–2030 period, the plans for nuclear forces specified in DoD’s and DOE’s 2021 budget requests, submitted to the Congress in February 2020, would cost a total of $634 billion, CBO estimates (see Table 1). 5 CBO’s Projections of the Costs of U.S. Nuclear Forces Through 2030 4 In addition, in October 2017, CBO published an estimate of the 30-year costs of nuclear forces under existing plans and under various approaches for managing the costs of modernization.

#MISSILE COMMANDER 2031 UPDATE#

3 Then the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2015 (P.L. 113-291) required CBO to update that estimate every two years. In response, CBO published Projected Costs of U.S.

nuclear forces, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013 (Public Law 112-239) required CBO to estimate the 10-year costs of operating, maintaining, and modernizing those forces. To help the Congress make decisions about U.S. The Biden Administration is widely expected to undertake a nuclear posture review to determine the nuclear policies and forces it will pursue. Over the coming years, the Congress will need to make decisions about what nuclear forces the United States should field in the future and thus about the extent to which the nation will continue to modernize its nuclear forces. Over the next two decades, essentially all those systems will have to be refurbished or replaced with new systems if the United States is to continue fielding those capabilities. nuclear forces consist of submarines that launch ballistic missiles (SSBNs), land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), long-range bomber aircraft, shorter-range tactical aircraft carrying bombs, and the nuclear warheads that those delivery systems carry. The nation’s current nuclear forces are reaching the end of their service life, and some delivery systems may not be capable of having their service lives extended further. Since that time, nuclear forces have figured less prominently in defense policy than conventional forces have, and for many years the United States did not build new nuclear weapons or delivery systems, choosing instead to sustain or extend the life of existing ones. defense policy, and a large arsenal was built. During the Cold War, nuclear forces were central to U.S. national security since they were developed during World War II. Nuclear weapons have been an important component of U.S. That increase stems mainly from new plans for modernizing DOE’s production facilities and from DoD’s modernization programs moving more fully into production.

About 36 percent of the $140 billion increase is projected to occur from 2021 to 2028-the years included in both this estimate and the 2019 estimate.

Also, costs in those two later years reflect 10 years of economywide inflation relative to the two years that drop out of the 10-year projection that factor (in the absence of other changes to programs) accounts for about one-fourth of the 49 percent increase. Thus, the period now includes two later (and more expensive) years of development in nuclear modernization programs.

Almost half (about 49 percent) of the $140 billion increase in that total arises because the 10-year period covered by the current estimate begins and ends two years later than the period covered by the 2019 estimate.

The current 10-year total is 28 percent higher than CBO’s most recent previous estimate of the 10-year costs of nuclear forces, $494 billion over the 2019–2028 period.

DOE’s costs would be primarily for nuclear weapons laboratories and supporting activities. Almost two-thirds of those costs would be incurred by DoD its largest costs would be for ballistic missile submarines and intercontinental ballistic missiles.

If carried out, the plans for nuclear forces delineated in the Department of Defense’s (DoD’s) and the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) fiscal year 2021 budget requests, submitted in February 2020, would cost a total of $634 billion over the 2021–2030 period, for an average of just over $60 billion a year, CBO estimates.This report contains CBO’s projections for the period from 2021 to 2030. The Congressional Budget Office is required by law to project the 10-year costs of nuclear forces every two years.

Missile commander 2031