The following is the Jan. 24, 2019 Congressional Budget Office report, the Projected Costs U.S. Nuclear Forces, 2019 to 2028.
From the report
The Congressional Budget Office is required by law to project the 10-year costs of nuclear forces every two years. This report contains CBO’s projections for the period from 2019 to 2028.
- 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 2019 budget requests would cost a total of $494 billion over the 2019–2028 period, for an average of just under $50 billion a year, CBO estimates.
- The current 10-year total is 23 percent higher than CBO’s 2017 estimate of the 10-year costs of nuclear forces, $400 billion over the 2017–2026 period.
- About $51 billion (or 55 percent) of the $94 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 2017 estimate. Thus, the period now includes two later (and more expensive) years of development in nuclear modernization programs. Also, costs in those two later years reflect 10 years of economywide inflation relative to the two years that drop out of the previous 10-year projection; that factor (in the absence of any changes to programs) accounts for about one-fourth of the $51 billion increase.
- About $37 billion (or 39 percent) of the $94 billion increase is projected to occur from 2019 to 2026—the eight years included in both this estimate and the 2017 estimate. That increase stems mainly from new modernization programs and weapons and more concrete plans for nuclear command-and-control systems.
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