WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The costs of operating and modernizing America’s nuclear forces through 2034 are projected to soar to $946 billion, 25% higher than a 2023 estimate, a report by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office said on Thursday.
The new projection, however, does not include an 81% cost overrun of the Sentinel, a new intercontinental ballistic missile being developed to replace the Minuteman III, the mainstay of the U.S.-based ICBM force, the report said.
Analysts said the massive increase in the costs of running and modernizing the world’s second biggest nuclear arsenal would complicate U.S. President Donald Trump’s pledge to boost the defense budget to $1 trillion in fiscal 2026.
Nuclear weapons expenditures are divided between the Pentagon and the Department of Energy, the caretaker of the U.S. arsenal.
“The costs of the existing nuclear modernization program are skyrocketing beyond all expectation, said Daryl Kimball, head of the Arms Control Association, an advocacy group.
The CBO warned that Congress will need to decide in coming years “what nuclear forces the United States should field in the future and therefore the extent to which the nation will modernize.”
Trump has yet to lay out his nuclear weapons strategy or name senior officials to oversee that strategy. Moreover, Washington and Moscow have not reopened arms control talks even as the last pact capping deployments of U.S. and Russian strategic forces expires in less than a year.
Trump in February said he opposed building new U.S. nuclear weapons and he deplored the high costs of maintaining the arsenal.
He also expressed an interest in negotiating an arms control pact with Moscow and Beijing, which is expanding a nuclear arsenal that is smaller than those of the U.S. and Russia.
The CBO said that current plans by the Pentagon and the Department of Energy to operate U.S. strategic and tactical nuclear forces and buy new bombers, submarines and ICBMs would cost an estimated $946 billion, or an average of $95 billion a year, through 2034.
The 2023 CBO projection was $756 billion over the 2023-2032 period, the report said.
The CBO attributed the difference to the higher costs of programs including developing and fielding the Sentinel ICBM, modernizing the Pentagon’s nuclear command, control, communications and early-warning systems and upgrading the DOE’s production facilities, the report said.
The new projection also is higher because it extends two more years beyond that of the previous estimate, it said.
(This story has been corrected to say ‘Minuteman III,’ instead of ‘Trident III,’ in paragraph 2)
(Reporting by Jonathan Landay; Editing by Don Durfee and Michael Perry)
By Jonathan Landay
