by Kingston Reif and Usha Sahay Outside of Congress, there is a strong consensus among security experts of both parties that the U.S. arsenal of approximately 5,000 nuclear weapons, deployed and in storage, greatly exceeds American security requirements. Inside of Congress, however, nuclear weapons have been subject to the same grinding partisanship as most important policy […]
Pentagon pushes for billions to refurbish nuclear bombs
by Kingston Reif Published in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists Online on October 25, 2013. Article summary below; read the full text here. At an estimated cost of more than $11 billion, the life-extension program for the B61 bomb would be the most ambitious and expensive nuclear warhead refurbishment in history. Concerned by this massive […]
Blown Opportunity: The Folly of Exempting Nuclear Weapons from Sequestration
by Kingston Reif While there is widespread agreement that sequestration is not a wise way to manage reductions in military spending, it is the law of the land. Unless Congress changes the legislation, the Pentagon will be forced to find $500 billion in spending reductions over the next decade beyond what is has already planned. […]
Don’t blame Moscow
Published in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists Online on August 5, 2013. Article summary below; read the full text here. On July 12, the US State Department released a major annual report on arms control compliance that has riled up nuclear weapons hawks. In its annual “Report on Adherence to and Compliance With Arms Control, […]
DefenseOne OpEd: What Ash Carter Gets Wrong about Nuclear Weapons Spending
Published in DefenseOne on July 24, 2013 What Ash Carter Gets Wrong about Nuclear Weapons SpendingHistorically, cost has not played a decisive role in the United States’ nuclear weapons policy. For most of the nuclear age, money for the nuclear enterprise was viewed almost entirely in the abstract: $1 million was just a number and […]
