From ABC News:
The Pentagon has raised to $95.8 billion the estimated cost of fielding a new fleet of land-based nuclear missiles to replace the Minuteman 3 arsenal that has operated continuously for 50 years, officials said Monday.
The estimate is up about $10 billion from four years ago.
The weapons, known as intercontinental ballistic missiles, or ICBMs, are intended as part of a near-total replacement of the American nuclear force over the next few decades at a total cost of more than $1.2 trillion.
$100 billion certainly sounds like a lot of money, though could feasibly argue that these nukes will pay for themselves over the course of 50 years with a measly $2 billion upkeep cost per year.
Of course, if anyone proposed investing $100 billion dollars to fight climate change — which would have a much more demonstrable impact of fiscal responsibility over the course of 50 years — they would be scoffed at by every conservative in the country (and probably a few centrist neoliberal voter-types, too). Even the Pentagon's own reporting acknowledges that climate change could feasibly eviscerate the effectiveness of the US military over the next 2 decades.
And yet, there's still a better chance they'll spend $100 billion in taxpayer dollars on more nuclear weapons — inherently designed as mutual deterrents, with no actual intention of ever using them — than to put that money towards saving the god damn Earth beneath our feet.
Pentagon estimates cost of new nuclear missiles at $95.8B [Robert Burns / ABC News]
Image: Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons
