Nuclear Budget

The US nuclear weapons budget is vast, difficult to decipher and rife with waste and excess. Following is analysis and opinion from Ploughshares Fund staff, grantees and guests on the continuing effort to shed light on and ultimately correct the nuclear budget.

  • Hiroshima Day 2017

    Hiroshima Day 2017

    On August 6, 1945, the United States became the first and only nation to use a nuclear weapon in combat, when it dropped the ‘Little Boy’ atomic bomb on Hiroshima and ‘Fat Man’ on Nagasaki three days later. The two bombings killed at least 129,000 people and injured many others. Radiation from...

    August 4, 2017 - By Ploughshares Fund
  • Ending Wasteful Nuclear Spending

    Ending Wasteful Nuclear Spending

    Our nuclear budget campaign, spearheaded by groups like the Federation of American Scientists, Taxpayers for Common Sense, and Women’s Action for New Directions worked to create a new conversation about the unacceptable costs of nuclear weapons.

    March 1, 2015 - By Mary Kaszynski

  • The Nuclear Budget Battle Takes the Front Page

    It is understandable that the American public generally doesn’t know much about nuclear weapons – how many there are, how much they cost, why we still have so many. The topic has not been “news” for most of the past fifteen years or so. Media attention on security issues instead gravitates toward the major crises of the day. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the fight against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, the intermittent but predictable Israeli-Palestinian clashes.

    September 23, 2014 - By Paul Carroll

  • Rolling Back the Tide

    It started with one explosion in 1945. An explosion unlike any the world had ever seen. The first nuclear weapon, detonated by the United States, launched an era of nuclear proliferation that persists to this day. With the end of the Cold War, nuclear weapons are increasingly irrelevant, but the threat they represent is still very real. The tide of proliferation has ebbed. Now we have the chance to roll it back to end the threat of nuclear weapons forever.

    July 1, 2014 - By Peter Fedewa

  • A Step Back for Nuclear Security

    According to a recent interview, the number one worry that keeps the President up at night is "loose nukes." Speaking at the Nuclear Security Summit in March, President Obama expounded on the idea that loose nukes pose the biggest threat to our security: Russia, he says isn’t “the number-one national security threat to the United States. I continue to be much more concerned … with the prospect of a nuclear weapon going off in Manhattan.”

    June 12, 2014 - By Usha Sahay

  • Your Nuclear Weapons Taxpayer Receipt

    No one likes tax day. The paperwork. The anticipation of a return. The shock of owing more. None of it is fun. Least of all paying for wasteful programs that do little to nothing to keep the American people safe. Like upgrading bombs that cost more than their weight in gold. Or building new nuclear weapons that will never be used. It turns out, on average, each of us paid about $81.50 in nuclear weapons taxes in 2013.

    April 15, 2014 - By admin

  • Dirty Budgets Threaten Obama's Daring Vision

    On April 5th 2009, Barack Obama gave an unprecedented speech in Prague, in which he dedicated his presidency to laying the ground work for a world without nuclear weapons. “As the only nuclear power to have ever used a nuclear weapon,” he said, “the United States has a moral responsibility to act.” Today, an out-of-control nuclear weapons budget threatens that vision.

    April 7, 2014 - By Amanda Waldron

  • Nuclear Weapons Threaten to Bust the Defense Budget

    Over the past two weeks, experts have published over two dozen articles criticizing the nuclear spending plans in President Obama's defense budget for Fiscal Year 2015, a notable increase in the level of discussion on this topic. Below, we provide, by date of publication, some of the best stories on the nuclear budget and why experts believe these plans do not match our real defense needs.

    March 12, 2014 - By Lauren Mladenka

  • The Navy’s Nuclear Bailout

    Bailout was a naval term before it was a financial term. Bailing out a ship means, essentially, to save a sinking ship by taking a bucket and heaving water overboard.

    October 1, 2013 - By Ben Loehrke

  • How would you Spend $11.6 Billion?

    In our recent call to reallocate U.S. nuclear spending to programs that better address 21st century security concerns, we asked people to tell us what they would buy with the $11.6 billion the U.S. expect to spend updating the B61 – a budget busting relic of the Cold War that is stationed in Europe. Here’s what a few of you had to say.

    July 18, 2013 - By admin