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Cut Down On Nukes To Shave the Deficit
Hugh Pickens writes "Joe Cirincione writes in the Atlantic that the US government is set to spend almost $700 billion on nuclear weapons over the next 10 years, roughly as much as it spent on the war in Iraq over the last decade. Most of the money will be spent without any clear guidance on how many weapons we need and for what purpose. As long as nuclear weapons exist, we will need some to deter nuclear threats from others, but do we really need to duplicate the entire nuclear triad for another 50 years? 'The Pentagon budget includes funds to develop a new fleet of 12 nuclear-armed submarines with an estimated cost of $110 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Also planned is $55 billion for 100 new bombers, and a new missile to replace the recently upgraded 450 Minutemen III intercontinental ballistic missiles. ... The consensus among military officials and bipartisan security experts is that nuclear reductions enhance US national security,' writes Cirincione. As the Nuclear Posture Review says, 'Our most pressing security challenge at present is preventing nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism, for which a nuclear force of thousands of weapons has little relevance.'"
"The consensus among military officials and bipartisan security experts is that nuclear reductions enhance US national security" citation needed for that.
I can't imagine cutting back while NK and Iran are arming up. Even Hugo Chavez is talking about going nuclear now. How does leaving us at the mercy of our enemies enhance our security? I'd like as much as the next person for nukes to go away entirely, but this Jimmy Carter attitude that the rest of the world is a cute cuddly place is horribly misguided.
Stop Iraq, Libya and Afghan wars. There is your savings and cost reductions. Keep our military strong here at home to DEFEND us.
NASA could use some new RTGs
Medical isotopes are in need as well. Maybe they can come with a small power plant or some process that uses the nuclear material
how long until
We need a thousand nukes just in case we want to nuke NK and Iran a thousand times?
Wouldn't a hundred times each be enough?
Because those next-generation bombers and submarines can't possibly be used for anything other than nuclear warheads.
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
As long as nuclear weapons exist, we will need some to deter nuclear threats from others, but do we really need to duplicate the entire nuclear triad for another 50 years?
That's why continued reductions treaties with Russia are important. Neither country is going to do this themselves. It's not as if both countries aren't actively reducing their arsenals.
Regarding the expenditures on bombers and subs... The thing about those is you need to always be building one or the industry dies. You can build it very, very slowly, but you need to be making one at some minimum rate or you'll lose the huge investment you put into learning to build them in the first place. Aircraft carriers are similar. The problem is that when you do this, your development costs don't get spread out so the cost looks enormous - but you have to spend that money or get out of the sub/airplane/ship business altogether.
There's an argument for that, but I don't think we're ready to give up our military power just yet.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
We've got enough to radiate entire countries, why do we need more? Okay yeah, now Chavez has one or two
but this Jimmy Carter attitude
Seriously? Grow up. This isn't a "Jimmy Carter attitude", unless you associate Jimmy Carter with common sense.
How does leaving us at the mercy of our enemies enhance our security?
How does your Ronald Reagan fear mongering attitude help us? See what I did there? How in the hell does this "leave us at the mercy of our enemies"?
My work here is dung.
That's just dumb. If you want to smash, rather than shaving the budget, you would buy more nukes, and nuke delivery systems, and withdraw all the troops we have stationed everywhere. We'd save a trillion dollars a year. You could use the proceeds from that to fund universal health care and a dozen missions to Mars. Or, you know, pay down the debt. Whatever.
... we don't even USE them. So why bother having so many of them? Especially if they cost so much...
I know a lot of the man power and costs is in keeping the weapons viable for use, but what would the cost to decommission them be? You cant just let them sit on the shelf, they have to be maintained or taken apart.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Currently the way weapons are built they cannot be used as fuel for powerplants due to the isotopes specific to weapons. They should make those weapons become fuel and cycle through the nuclear repertoire and be done with it.
One of the big expenses is the reliability of the nuclear arsenal. Nuclear material is hot - radioactive - and that means it's also "disappearing" as it decays. Triggers, main charges, and other elements of a nuclear warhead do age and this needs to be addressed. We've done a lot of work with computer models since we're no longer willing to test fire any of these weapons, even underground. But this only goes so far, and if you ARE going to rely on those computer models, then you HAVE to make sure that what was modeled is actually what is IN those warheads. If we don't do this, it won't matter how many missiles and warheads we have. They won't be viewed as a credible threat if we can't show that they'll actually work. And all of this is in support of the strategy of deterrence, which seems to be our only strategy so far, since we're not willing to forcibly stop proliferation. Whether deterrence is even a viable strategy going forward is certainly up for debate. But I can tell you this. If North Korea or Iran end up nuking us somehow, we damn sure better be able to flatten those countries, or else we should get used to the idea of getting periodically nuked.
Brawndo: It's what plants crave!
WTF do people think all the START things are? It stands for STrategic Arms Reduction Treaty. The US and Russia have been cutting back their arsenals for more than twenty years. The reason there is huge upcoming expenditures being budgeted for is because the US nuclear arsenal is pretty much late 1980's vintage. Nuclear warheads don't stay viable forever, and planes and submarines wear out. Most of the expenditure is going to be on the planes and submarines, not Nuclear warheads, and those planes and submarines have non-nuclear warfare use
The B-52 was designed as a nuclear bomber, but has probably dropped more conventional ordnance then all other aircraft combined ever. Most SSBNs around the world have been adapted to be capable of firing either non-nuclear IMRBM or non-nuclear cruise missiles. They aren't just sitting under the ice with a cargo of nukes waiting for the Russkis to push the button.
The expensive thing isn't nuclear weapons, it is launch platforms and manpower. If you start cutting those heavily you may as well cut the carrier fleets and a few army divisions as well and accept not having the ability to fight three different wars at once.
========
CINC, 4th Penguin Legion
Let's keep arguing about cutting Medicare and Social Security benefits while this $700 billion dollar waste of cash silently slips by!
The distraction is working.
Resources are diminishing, and some nuclear powers have an rapidly expanding population of young men.
So, that is something to keep in mind when discussing military issues.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
to save itself from Canada, Cuba and Mexico !! And yes some 10,000+ aren't enough.
It's China - which isn't a problem militarily now but certainly could be
I think you'll find that China has discovered a much easier and more profitable way to conquer the USA. A strategy they've been using successfully against America for 20+ years. They're simply buying the country.
Why bother risk getting nuked when you can simply accumulate debt from your adversary. At some point in the future the amount of american IOUs that China holds will exceed the GDP. After all, America bought Alaska off the Russians, so why shouldn't the chinese simply cash in their markers, for (say) everything west of the Rockies. Some might even be glad to see that bit go.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Just a reminder, that in order to FIX our government you will need to vote REPUBLICAN next year. Let's review:
Republicans will fix this nation! DEMOCRATS ARE AND WILL CONTINUE TO FUCK IT UP!
Subs - Even boomers have quite a few uses other than flinging nukes.
Aircraft - Same thing. The B-2 has been successfully used in many conflicts, none of which were its original design purpose (penetrating Soviet airspace with a nuclear payload)
Missiles - OK, hard to justify that one unless the article is missing something (like the missile being derived from an orbital launch vehicle, or developed with orbital launch as a secondary capability)
We've got more than enough bombs, but as delivery systems age, they need to be replaced. In many cases, the replacements can be more multipurpose than the units they replace.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Look at your biggest expenditure and start shaving it off bit by bit. That gives you the best return for the least amount of pain - And in the US that would be 1% off the militaries budget equating to many more % off someone else's budget. However the US is very conflicted about its military and how it uses it, and how much is actually needed ("we aren't the worlds police, but we can't not play that role"). But the population in general seems to equate military spending with greatness ("we can't let those god damned commies/terrists/gays/foreigners sneak up on us, like they did last time") so I can't see then ever agreeing to cut military spending.
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"Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent." - Isaac Asimov
If the US can't be the most powerful economically, it will attempt to retain its power through the military.
That works out to be a around 5.8% of this years annual deficit. Further military cuts will be required to make any meaningful cuts to the deficit.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZMwKPmsbWE
- Holy crap, I've got MOD points! Who thought that was a good idea.
There are a lot of pockets to line before any of that money actually turns into rocket fuel.
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Need anything more be said?
Even if they make a valid point (as this one seems to be) I find myself looking for the ulterior motive...
Reagan won out the cold war without firing a shot.
And he also ensured that our future would forever be saddled with debt. Which makes me laugh when I read the end of your original post:
Stop Iraq, Libya and Afghan wars. There is your savings and cost reductions. Keep our military strong here at home to DEFEND us.
Spend more on your military industrial complex than you take in on taxes. THERE is your ensured debt and eventual country-wide bankruptcy. Raise the debt ceiling? Sure why not? We've done it, how many times since Reagan?
You're in fantasy land where communists are nice people, just misunderstood. Never mind the hundred + million they've killed since the 1920's.
You're in a fantasy land where a large part of today's world population are mass murderers just because they live in a communist society! Put that blame on communist leaders and we'll talk. I rip China apart more than anybody on Slashdot, I don't need to hear you assume that I think they're misunderstood angels. Their leaders are human rights violators but I don't hold the citizens responsible for death. When you nuke a country do you think the leaders are the only ones that get hurt?
The only fear monger is you "Oh God we're all gonna die!"
What in the hell are you talking about? We're trying to have a discussion about possible ways to decrease our spending so we can catch up with the insane amount of debt we've been accumulating. And you totally skirted any indication that you even understand that whether we build a thousand more nukes or stick with our current numbers, the outcome is the same. We could hold the entire world hostage right now if we wanted to just by threatening to detonate all of our nuclear weapons on ourselves and I think it's time to consider that enough force if to increase that means $700 billion.
My work here is dung.
If the US Government is going to build 12 submarines anyways, I think they should be multi-purpose.
A powerplant that can quickly go anywhere in the world could be really useful. I imagined using the navy's nuclear reactors to power bubblers to help the bacteria break down oil in the Gulf of Mexico. The catchy title was To Save the Gulf, Send the Enterprise.
Now the Enterprise isn't outfitted with bubblers, or much else besides the equipment needed for its usual duties of launching airplanes to dogfight with Soviets and bomb stuff, so the proposal wasn't exactly feasible. But some guys at the Naval Research Institute said the idea had merit. Selected comment from the link is blockquoted below...
If the Government is going to spend a billion dollars on new submarines to fight the soviet menace, at the very least they could design in features that would be useful for disaster response... I imagine steam vents that could be attached to external electrical generators, or bubble generators.
Because we don't know when or where the next offshore oil rig is going to blow out...
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
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Why don't they sell a few of them? I'm sure they could find a buyer in Iran or North Korea, and I bet they'd pay a lot.
Stasis is death. Embrace change.
What use are nuclear weapons if you can't use them? North Korea can cough up a few nuclear bombs in the next decade, but has no means of deployment. Even if they do manage to get them to some kind of terrorists and actually hit Americans (or anyone outside NK for that matter), would you really want nuclear retaliation? That would be criminally atrocious and atrociously stupid.
The only "enemies" for these kind of weapons are Russia and China. Basically, China and the U.S. are gearing up for WW III, because neither one of them trusts the other not to start it, so they have to make sure they won't loose it alone. But I highly doubt if the U.S. needs to spend a hundred times as much in this "peace of attrition".
So, like... they mean, forever then?
Because let's face it... there's not a chance on this earth that every nuclear power going would just up and dismantle 100% of their nuclear arsenal. It wouldn't matter what we were facing... no disaster, no common threat... nothing.
I mean, I suppose if some disaster comes along and we end up getting obliterated entirely (not merely facing inevitable extinction, but actually ending up that way), there's a good chance that the threat of nuclear terrorism could be eliminated along with our species...
Until then... however... it ain't gonna happen. Of this, I am certain.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron." ~Dwight D. Eisenhower "The problem in defense is how far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without." ~Dwight D. Eisenhower Eisenhower was a great Republican, 5 star general, Supreme Commander, from the midwest with a lot of common sense.
Thanks to dozens of Nobel-winning physicists, hundreds of physicists and engineers and thousands of unsung heroes for changing the world, 66 years ago tomorrow.
Do be aware that that has impacts on the economy. Strangely enough, we build a lot of our military hardware in the US. Just stop buying it, and an awful lot of US jobs go out the window. And then those unemployed people stop buying VCRs and houses and fast food...
I'm not saying its a reason to not cut the military budget - it isn't. For one, if we're going to keep people employed by dumping tax dollars into an industry, I can think of a few I'd rather pick than Killing People. But if we're going to stop spending all those dollars in the first place, which is the only way to pare down the deficit, we might need to spend _some_ of the dollars we save trying to create jobs to replace the ones we remove.
That's just dumb.
It breaks my pluginses, my precious!
Former presidents have warned us of such abuses of the Military Industrial Complex.
Today the M.I.C has been painting itself into a smaller and smaller corner of which they cannot get out of without getting the wet paint of their lies all over themselves... and here is why...
Population growth has a way of pressuring social change. It happened in what is described in metaphorical terms as the tower of babel, which is more and event happening around the world, each growing society in its own time. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_of_Babel -n Julian Jaynes explains it as the break down of the bicameral mind to that of more than just awareness but consciousness. The use of higher level abstractions, introspection, the first recorded suicides, and the wrongful use of abstraction was discovered a tool of deception.
The next event of social change was of moving from a limited mathematical symbol set of the roman numerals to the easier to use and more powerful Hindu Arabic decimal system with its zero place holder. the idea of nothing (the abstraction of zero) can have value was hard to comprehend.
Today we are at another threshold of change due to population growth and communication technology.
Of the near 7 billion people on this planet its becoming realized that its some fraction of 1% messing things up for the rest of us. Its becoming clear there are those who are psychologically unfit to command anyone. Verifiable psychopaths who pursue the increase in the military industrial complex with such tactics as invading a country base on a unverified claim and media hype and in the process killing over 100,000 civilians. Thsi done in teh name of protecting the freedoms of Americans while the same excuse is then being used by these psychopaths to strip teh very freedoms they claim to protect, away from Americans.
Now if another country came to the US and killed 100,000 American civilians, would we hate them? Of course!!
And this is how the psychopaths, like drug addicts, try to verify and validate their disease. Making enemies, not friends.
But today the mass majority of the population knows, all but these few, share in doing the same daily things called living...
Efforts like Wikileaks only helps to expose the dillusions of power these few have and how sick they really are.
Money is an abstraction. We do not need it to be productive, we only need man power, knowledge and natural resources, of which we have plenty.
Knowledge begets knowledge and waring knowledge begets more waring knowledge... and like wise, productive knowledge begets more of its own...
The waring mindset is going to destroy itself...
.... But the industrial military complex would not get the money they they have grown accustom to. Republicans are all for cutting government spending until you really are talking about cutting government spending. And not that the Democrats disagree. They are all on board, because we are talking serious campaign cash here.
The fact is that there is no justification for the level nuclear and conventional forces we are paying to maintain now. We should be building down, and maintaining enough nuclear weapons to serve as a deterrent. We have to have perhaps even the best military technology. But the idea that we have to spend at these levels to be safe is hugely over blown. China needs us as a market. Their nuclear arsenal should be counted as protecting us. Same with Europe. Asia's Industrial giants (like Japan, S Korea, etc.) can also be counted on for conventional deterrents, if not nuclear. All these countries are safe, and not spending at the percentage of GNP nor in absolute dollars the way we are. Why? Because they don't have to, and neither do we.
We can reduce our military expenses across the board. It is great to invest in technology, and even in military infrastructure. But there isn't any point in having a great defense if we collapse under the debt required to construct and maintain a huge military. And many, many people (esp. Republicans) argue that it is this outcome, of allowing their military to destroy our economy, that brought down Russia.
Why do we think we are immune?
Cut expenses. If you don't want to cut services, and you don't want to raise taxes, then cut the military.
Is this really that hard to understand? Why doesn't the public wake up to the common sense of this? What does the military have to do, wire tap young murdered girls before anyone cares?
... so why shouldn't the chinese simply cash in their markers ...
Because they need to buy US bonds in order to drive the relative value of their currency down in order to maintain their export based economy.
It is inaccurate to think that China's current advantage is merely low cost labor. For simplistic goods, say beaded necklaces for Mardi Gras, that are priced as commodities low labor costs do help. However for the more technical and advanced goods, say an iPhone, labor represents a smaller component of the overall costs. I think GE recently announced expanding production of jet engines in the US, IIRC labor was only 15-20% of the cost of the engine so outsourcing for low labor wasn't helpful. What gives China an advantage in higher end goods is not labor costs, rather it is a currency that is artificially devalued. So what can they do with all those US dollars exporters are collecting? The exporters can't return those dollars to the various world markets, that would move the Chinese currency in the "wrong" direction. So the government buys the dollars from the exporters. What is the government to do with the dollars, like the exporters they can not return them to a world market. However they can buy US treasury notes, that will not cause their currency to rise in relative value. So as long as China has an export based economy driven by an artificially low currency they can not get rid of those notes.
Just a commentary from some random blogger.
You see this money goes to paying a lot of bright people and fast computers to design these nuclear weapons, we could shift these resources (people & computers) to other tasks (such as safer nuclear reactors to solve global warming) but we can't just stop paying these people and give the money to doctors for healthcare instead. We need these people and their skills, we can retarget their efforts to other endeavours but these new efforts still need money in the same way that the nuclear weapons program does. So you can't just save money (without the cost of loosing a huge brain trust) but you can invest in other things with that money.
For all those bombers, nukes, subs, etc. that everyone here wants to cut, that's all well and good, but please remember this: people like to bitch how America doesn't make anything anymore, but like it or not, if there's something we do make well -- something that pays a middle class wage -- it's the tools for waging war.
Keep in mind that we're not talking about re-purposing those hundreds of billions for roads, schools, and entitlements; we're talking about CUTTING it (we're going broke, remember?). And doing that while unemployment stands at 9.2% won't have the effect some here seem to believe.
This is simply wrong. People who spend their time thinking about these issues don't believe this at all. That's why we have nukes.
My understanding is that they are trying to update the warheads themselves as well as the delivery systems. This is both due to the fact that the existing ones are aging and becoming less reliable and because newer ones are more efficient, thus requiring fewer of them. This in turn also means lower maintenance costs going forward.
They certainly aren't trying to build new warheads to boost the count. We have treaties in place that prevent that.
Congress critter discussion:
--sarcasm mode on--
Of course we need all of those things in the budget for the next X number of years. It's either that or lay off the trained force that builds the darn things and scale back the number of defense spending related jobs in my home state. And those people vote, darn it, and they by golly are not going to vote for me if I cost them their jobs by doing the RIGHT THING!!
* Rubber Stamp *
---sarcasm mode off---
Any questions about why we need these weapons now?
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html
"Nuclear weapons are ironic because they are about using space age systems to fight over oil and land. Why not just use advanced materials as found in nuclear missiles to make renewable energy sources (like windmills or solar panels) to replace oil, or why not use rocketry to move into space by building space habitats for more land? "
Maybe ironic humor is our last, best hope against the war machines?
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Oil accounts for 92% of its exports. Most of that must be imported to the U.S. Venezuela’s oil is heavy and loaded with sulfur, unlike Libya’s light sweet stuff. Nobody else can buy the stuff because there refineries can’t handle it..
The government is heavily dependent on this. The oil pays for subsidized food, payments on the national debt [which is growing rapidly], pay for Cuban security specialist and doctors. etc.
I think the U.S. could get by easier without Venezuela then the other way. The U.S. would face $5 gas. Venezuela would face ruin.
There is a documentary on Chinese business practices called "Return of the Dragon". After a hostile takeover bid fails, Tang Lung goes on a killing spree. Its part of the culture, and you can't defend yourself from it.
Why wouldn't they stockpile biological agents if the US increases its nuclear stockpile? Isn't this one-upmanship (really more like chickenshit) the engine of any arms race?
I wish the rest of the world would just give the US the assets it wants, and we could stop all this foolishness.
But what happens when you have a glut of pyramids that you built by soaking up excess labour? The nice thing about war toys is you get to blow them all up, and everybody cheers. Well, maybe not everybody.
If, instead, we used the weapons to attack the military industry itself, then we don't have to employ those people. That is a win-win.
Well, for subs you want to build at least 3. That way you can always have 1 out to sea. Anything less and you will have times when all of your subs are in dock. Just look at the aguish the British are having with their subs. And that assumes the only thing the sub is being a nuclear deterrent and that no backup is needed.
If you are planning to do anything else with your sub [Recon, special unit warfare, launching cruise missiles close the enemy cost, etc.] you had better hope that you are operating in a single theater a time.
Planes are kind of the same thing. If they have a single task [such as a B1-B] you can get away with fewer. If they can do multiple things then you are going to want more.
Lastly, if you build 12 subs, the 12th sub is going to be about ½ the cost of the first. The first subs are going to be more expensive until the workers figure out the best way to put things together better. And I am not talking about spreading R&D costs over multiple units [which is also true]. We are talking about assembling a highly complex machine. Planes tend to be the same.
So as you note, testing is done with computers these days. The DoE has bigass supercomputers and keeps building new ones, a major reason is to accurately simulate (down to the atomic level) our nuclear weapons. Ok, well turns out those badass supercomputers are good at other kinds of simulations too, and get used for them. They aren't worthless, military only, things.
All I'm saying is consider all angles. Part of that "savings" would be cutting the US's highest end supercomptuer program. Now of course you wouldn't have to cut it, you could keep that and use them just for other kinds of research, but then your savings are less because you still spend the billions on them.
Always you need to look at the full impact of this. It is easy to look at something and say "If we cut it we save that much!" However consider what all you are cutting. You may find there is stuff in there you'd want to keep, and then your savings aren't quite what you claimed.
How about we just say no....that way we save 700 billion dollars over 10 years, and force not only the recycling of our weapons, but also maybe come back from our economic crisis and recover a bit of dignity as a nation being strict on development of nuclear arms...practice what we preach, right?
Obama, if your listening, get a clue, tell them hell no!!!
These fucken Americans soon or already don't have money for necessities like health, food, fuel, ..
You thought the Greeks, Irish, Portuguese were screwups, you ain't seen nothin' yet.
I am confident that very few here will understand this, but part of what goes into making the US dollar the de facto currency throughout the world is the US military's strength. The reason that investors flock to US treasuries, keeping interest rates at insanely low levels, despite the massive debt, large persistent deficits and dysfunctional government, is to a large part because of the military. Don't misunderstand, there are other positive reasons why investors choose the US, but as the Gartman Letter has rightly pointed out, "The reserve currency of the world has been and always shall be the currency of the nation with the strongest military". Cutting back on the military, while the US owes so much money to China, and everyone else, would be financial, if not corporeal suicide.
https://twitter.com/#!/cnbcfastmoney/status/63978352364617729
Let's see.... The Atlantic, Slate and CBS all considered America's nuclear deterrent and concluded that we should disarm.
Move along. Nothing new to see here....
The US has cut its arsenal down from something like 20K nukes to about 5K, and those are becoming obsolete. Meanwhile, neither Bush nor Obama has been able to keep N. Korea from going nuclear, keep Iran from trying to go nuclear, keep Pakistan from ramping-up production of nuclear bombs and spreading the technology, nor keep China from increasing its arsenal or Russia from modernizing its launchers. Yeah, this sure sounds like a great time to disarm, I'm sure the rest of the world will follow since the history of the world is replete with examples of global peaceful coexistence and cooperation....
Only a moron thinks that a weapon in his own hands is more dangerous than more of the same weapons in the hands of his enemy...which, of course, explains Atlantic Slate and CBS...
The Constitution requires the federal government to provide for the national defense.... but then The Atlantic, Slate, and CBS probably think the Constitution is either quaint and obsolete or a "living document" with words whose meanings can only be discovered via large applications of pot.
Preserving the existing aresenal is all fine and well. I'm not for eliminating it. The current warheads have x number of years left in them. What's it going to cost to restart the program?
If I remember, there 's little or no capability to make the nuclear material anymore or at least the tritium to add to the weapons. And I don't think this is a process where you're "Hey, we need tritium" "Ok i'll have it for you tomorrow."
So if we maintain and THEN need to build new bombs, whats it going to cost? Probably north of $1 trillion/yr.
It certainly works for Japan. They've had an outsourced nuclear deterent for decades. Of course, no one asks if there really are nuclear weapons on board the carrier that's based at Yokosuke and the like. Wink. Nudge.
Maybe we could contract with Pakistan or India to provide ours. They might even get into a bidding war over it.
I didn't even think of this, but I do agree reducing our upkeep on nuclear arms is a very good idea for reducing our budget. However, just like a few people pointed out, if you don't have any nukes you start to look weak. Most of the world still operates on the third world principle, where true strength is derived from might and power. Being able to bulldog anything into the ground. Even if it shows more strength to disarm ourselves when other people are building nukes.
Nukes in themselves are a deterrent, but I think we should start concentrating on something similar to a nuclear shield or some sort of passive method for cleaning up after nuclear fallout. Being on the defensive traditionally requires less resources and it's a completely different game since no one is doing it. Adding to that, more R&D could be spent on better nukes that will get to their target without exploding, rather then the massive hindenburgs of nukes we built in the 60s.
The US is turning into a giant me-too, where we do everything everyone else does that we see as good or makes them look good, but we generally don't plow ahead of anyone anymore. We invented nukes in the first place, you think we'd be the first country that figures out how to deal with them.
Cut arts and pbs, fund nukes. Done.
That wasn't so difficult, LOL
The ONLY thing that can get the US back on track is to return to pre-Reagan tax levels, with top marginal rates in the 75-90% range. Nobody NEEDS more than $200K/year to live, let alone millions. That money is more useful when it is allocated to providing what low-income families NEED, like education, nutritious food, stable housing, stable neighborhoods, college, job training, and other things that will make them more productive and valuable to society.
The Constitution says it is the responsibility of the US Government to "provide for the general Welfare," and this is a task it has failed miserably at.
I say we scrap our entire nuclear arsenal and replace it with this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_bombardment#Project_Thor
Same amount of destruction, zero radiation, faster delivery to target, zero decay over time. Everything we need in a nuke, without the nuke part.
And I'm willing to bet, considering NASA can put men on freaking Mars for just under $14B, we can EASILY do this for $20B. We can save $90B and still create better WMDs.
In modern times, it has become fashionable for everyone to reduce their nuclear arsenal. The only problem with that logic is the fact that the US is the ONLY nation that honors that. If North Korea, Iran, Russia, et al followed the US, then MAYBE you could make the argument that disarmament would work. However, it is obvious that they sign said treaties while blatantly ignoring them. In other words, US reduction in its nuclear arsenal increases the threat from our enemies.
Now lets factor in suicidal nations like Iran. In that case, our only hope is to have as many nukes as possible to overcome their inevitable attack.
That said, here's a thinker for you: cite a single instance in which a psycho nation has witnessed US disarmament and been "inspired" to follow suit. (not counting fake "disarmament" claims)
The nuclear bombs are $700 billion over 10 years? What about saving $600 billion a year, or $6 TRILLION dollars over 10 years? Would American like that? Here's how, spend MORE on nukes, but nuclear power not nuclear weapons, and get off foreign oil. Do everything you can to electrify transport; electric cars, fast rail, trolley buses. The EIA says peak coal could be around 2030, so it's time to start building out your electric transport systems and Gen3.5 nukes (like the AP1000 that are incredibly safe) and Gen4 nukes that eat waste. (When GE finally releases it's S-PRISM). Whether or not you think spending $700 billion on nuclear BOMBS over 10 years, well, that's up to your defence policy. But I will say that it could make sense to enter more weapons treaties and reduce the global arms by BURNING the bombs in nuclear reactors for clean energy security!
At least for the subs it has more to do with shipyards in the NE than anything else...
"Shave that bitch!"