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.

  • Whether or not the nation zooms over the fiscal cliff, the Pentagon’s budget is going to get tighter. This may be a challenge for some. But it’s also an opportunity for the Pentagon to shift away from Cold War weapons and reshape the U.S. military to deal with 21st century realities.

    It comes down to a simple question: Should the U.S. put its money toward a Cold War nuclear strategy? Or should those funds be spent to equip the military to address 21st century realities?

    November 14, 2012 - By Ben Loehrke
  • There's no doubt: Hurricane Sandy has left her mark. The damage the storm left to basic infrastructure on the East Coast will take billions of dollars and months (if not years) to repair. But, hurricane damage costs pale in comparison to the spending our country is already planning to dole out to America's nuclear weapons and related programs. 

    November 2, 2012 - By admin
  • Although the United States has not tested a nuclear weapon for twenty years, we still spend billions each year on an array of machines that conduct all kinds of diagnostic experiments to mimic nuclear explosions. One of the most expensive is called the National Ignition Facility (NIF).

    October 31, 2012 - By Paul Carroll
  • It's not easy to know how much our nation pays for our nuclear weapons programs. There is no official nuclear weapons budget. Instead, government spending accounts are often opaque, poorly defined and always spread out over several government agencies.

    October 7, 2012 - By admin
  • When 19 Senators write the administration to demand funding for a pet project, they usually get what they want.  But not this time.  This time common sense, fiscal realities and the hard work of dozens of Ploughshares Fund grantees combined to kill a wasteful and unnecessary nuclea

    September 23, 2012 - By Joe Cirincione
  • The Navy’s Aegis missile defense system is the backbone of the Obama administration’s Phased Adaptive Approach to missile defense. So why isn’t the Navy paying anything for missile defense? The omission, revealed by Pentagon missile defense budget estimates, says a lot about Navy priorities during an era of tightening budgets.

    August 27, 2012 - By Ben Loehrke
  • The US military isn’t known for refusing big guns or new toys. So it’s a telling sign when one of the nation’s top military leaders proposes serious cuts to the nuclear arsenal.

    August 6, 2012 - By Paul Carroll
  • Sixty-seven years ago in August, the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II, the only time that nuclear weapons have ever been used in warfare.

    August 2, 2012 - By Kelly Bronk
  • The B61 life extension program gets a gold medal for setting records as the most expensive nuclear warhead in U.S. history. It also gets another ignominious recognition – costing more than its weight in solid gold.

    July 30, 2012 - By Ben Loehrke
  • For lawmakers, the question of how to make a tight defense budget effective at protecting our country is foremost on their minds these days.

    July 25, 2012 - By Leah Fae Cochran