Senior Science Fellow Philip Coyle spoke with The Daily Beast about President Trump’s proposed increase in the nuclear weapons budget.
“It would be remarkable if NNSA could get to 20 pits per year,” Phil Coyle, a nuclear expert with the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation in Washington, D.C., told The Daily Beast.
But in merely trying to spend billions of dollars on new pits, the United States signals to the world its intention to preserve and even expand its nuclear arsenal for a century or longer. And if the effort failed, America could start a new atomic arms race without actually building the pits it might need to actually compete in that same arms race.
“From an arms-control point of view, broadcasting that NNSA is trying to double the size of the U.S. nuclear arsenal, when it is extremely unlikely that NNSA could do it, will bring all of the blowback you’d expect from Russia and China, and no benefits to U.S. security at home,” Coyle explained. Read more
