U.S. Nuclear-Weapons Plan Is So Expensive, It Can't Be Implemented

The U.S. plan for modernizing the nation's nuclear arsenal is so expensive that it cannot be implemented, the authors of a new study contend.

"It's just not real," Jeffrey Lewis, one of the report's co-authors, said in reference to the current U.S. modernization blueprint. "It's inconceivable to me that we will execute anything like the plan that they say they're going to do."

The analysis, released on Tuesday by the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, says the strategy to update the U.S. triad of nuclear-armed bomber aircraft, submarines and ground-based missiles would cost $1 trillion over the next 30 years, even under conservative assumptions.

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