New Sentinel nuclear warhead program is 81% over budget. But Pentagon says it must go forward
New Sentinel nuclear warhead program is 81% over budget. But Pentagon says it must go forward
The new Sentinel nuclear warhead program is 81% over budget and is now estimated to cost nearly $141 billion.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The new Sentinel nuclear warhead program is 81% over budget and is now estimated to cost nearly $141 billion, but the Pentagon is moving forward with the program, saying that given the threats from China and Russia it does not have a choice.
The Northrop Grumman Sentinel program is the first major upgrade to the ground-based component of the nuclear triad in more than 60 years and will replace the aging Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile.
It involves not only building a new missile but the modernization of 450 silos across five states, their launch control centers, three nuclear missile bases and several other testing facilities.
The expansiveness of the program previously raised questions from government watchdogs as to whether the Pentagon could manage it all.
Military budget officials on Monday said when they set the program’s estimated costs their full knowledge of the modernization needed “was insufficient in hindsight to have a high-quality cost estimate,” Bill LaPlante, under secretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment, told reporters on a call.
The high cost overrun triggered what is known as a Nunn-McCurdy breach, which occurs if the cost of developing a new program increases by 25% or more. By statute, the under secretary of defense for acquisition then must **undertake a rigorous review of the program to determine if it should continue; otherwise the program must be terminated. **
I'll go against the grain as a liberal leftist and say 141 billion for upgrading our entire nuclear infrastructure in today's political climate seems like a deal.
No shit. Wasnt the f35 total lifetime costs supposed to exceed 2 trillion?
Less moving parts and associated personel in nuclear silos and a big bomb. Absolute steal.
That being said, war is bad. But nukes are M.A.D.
Given the state of modern software design and corporate greed I'm not sure this will end well
I'm fairly sure it will end more poorly than I can possibly imagine.
We can probably save a couple save a couple dozen billion by running it all on Windows XP
The 5 states are Montana, Wyoming, Nebraska, North Dakota and Colorado.
Military spending budget? Military spending goal
Defense Department Dimmadollars
Healthcare please
The military spending isn't the reason y'all aren't getting healthcare. Nor is the cost of healthcare itself.
The current system costs the US government more than socialized medicine would. It's all about the lobbying.
Yes, and military lobbies govt so we are forced to join them to get healthcare
Read that as "New Sentient nuclear warhead"
The old nukes are very, very old. MAD doesn't work if people question if your weapons actually still work. They need an update.
Seems to be working for Russia. No one has bothered to call their bluffs in the last year over all the nuclear posturing.
The way military contracts work doesn’t sound like it’s working anymore either
They need an update but we can reduce the number of warheads we have to save money. I forget the exact number but it’s around 3k war heads.
Well I mean it's not like there's hundreds of thousands of Americans with crippling food insecurity, no homes, no healthcare, inadequate wages, poisonous water, and/or gun violence; so the government is fine making sure it has the capacity it nearly exterminate the human race. Right guys?
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed." - Dwight Eisenhower
So as far as legislators are concerned, a win-win.
I really hope they dont make enough to blow the whole planet again. Cold war quantity of nukes was absurd...unless Rodan shows up or something.
This isn't the program to produce more warheads. It's the program to update the missile force silos and rockets. Which was really needed.
Do the old ones work on floppy disks? Or was that still way too advanced at the time.
A lot of the old stuff isn't less advanced than floppy disks in any way, but definitely not compatible. It's all analogue components for most of the control rooms and computers.
The really big ones
If you want to know why they're overhauling them, John Oliver did an episode on it back in the first season or two of his show, which is now fully posted on YouTube
WOPR IRL.
Joshua would like to talk to you
I want a nuclear test way out in space. Just to make sure they work.
Bad idea, instant international incident. We've detonated nukes in space before but it's against all kinds of treaties to put them in orbit to start with.
62 years ago today.
Well that’s one way to deal with space junk…
Way too close. That was in the atmosphere and horrible.
Uhhh...
We've seen them work. Hiroshima?
Yeah. But people need to be reminded of how powerful these weapons are. The dumbs will never have known what WWII even was.
Cold War go brrrrr
but the Pentagon is moving forward with the program, saying that given the threats from China and Russia it does not have a choice.
So fucking stupid. As if Russia or China would nuke the U.S. if the U.S. stopped making more nuclear weapons. Putin isn't that crazy and neither is Xi.
Small correction: It's not a warhead expansion, it's a delivery system update. 60 year old rockets and silos don't cut it.
Putin isn’t that crazy and neither is Xi.
No. But the next guy might be. And we can't just nip down to the store and pick up some nukes on a moment's notice.
With this logic the whole world should arm themselves with nukes, like yesterday. We don't know if the U.S.' "next guy" won't be Trump.
Nobody's going to nuke anyone, and I'll take this to my grave. The only worry would be extreme religious cultists getting nukes, like al queda or taliban who would actually use it, but they'll never be even close to getting them or I'll eat my shoe. Real powers will never let them.
All of the people that control the nukes are at the topmost rungs of society, with families and the most luxuries. They have the most to lose, no matter what.
Also, nobody has a big red button. There's a massive chain of command that has to go along with it. The chain of command is not some 19yr old army grunt following orders. I'm talking the high up chain of command, many people, that have to go along with a launch for it to happen. These people are also high up, and know that their luxurious way of life, and families, are over forever in a nuclear war. They don't want to survive in a bunker for a few years then die of starvation or cancer slowly.
I dont know for sure obviously, but I feel that the people who control the nukes are the ones with the most to lose. I have zero fear of a true nuclear war. Zero.
Eh, given how old the crap is, I'm not sure I agree. Cancel an aircraft carrier or some F-35s if necessary, but I do want a strong nuclear deterrent for whatever the future may bring, not shit that might become vulnerable to a new countermeasure.
Not a "good enough" deterrent, but a strong one.
That said, we probably could pare the stockpile back. But modernization and updates are important. These missiles are older than we are, unless you're some hip Lemmy grandpa or something.
I guess, but the U.S. also supposedly has 3708 warheads, with another 1336 "retired" warheads which are supposedly just sitting around waiting to be disarmed, which sounds like code to me for "we can still use these if we feel like it."
https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/nuclear-weapons-who-has-what-glance
Maybe if we're going to start updating our nukes, we can actually start dismantling the old ones?
You know what, there's a small chance they would if they knew. But let's say the Pentagon stopped all silos and kept it hush. Russia and China would never know whether they stopped or where remaining ones would be.
It's not the weapons itself that protect the USA but solely the fact they are probably somewhere and they know how to trigger them.
This is overkill. In every aspect. Need, justification, budget, maintenance. The definition of a US defense department toy. It's a flex. But it's a covert flex, which is the definition of stupid. We're not talking trap track but government decisions and that boggles my mind.
You know what, there's a small chance they would if they knew. But let's say the Pentagon stopped all silos and kept it hush. Russia and China would never know whether they stopped or where remaining ones would be.
Under the terms of the New START treaty, the US and Russia conduct inspections of each other's nuclear weapons programs:
The treaty provides for 18 on-site inspections per year for U.S. and Russian inspection teams
Both countries are intimately familiar the other's weapons systems.
You have a nuclear triad. Even if all the silos went kaput (extremely unlikely) and everyone knew it there are still nuclear subs somewhere in the world carrying nukes. The truth is you only need to have enough functional nuclear weapons to make any attack a very bad day for everyone. That number isn’t that high given a nuclear weapons destructive capacity.
You know what, there’s a small chance they would if they knew. But let’s say the Pentagon stopped all silos and kept it hush. Russia and China would never know whether they stopped or where remaining ones would be.
If nothing else*, they would notice the changes in budgeting. The amount of money we spend every year on maintiaing the nuclear arsenal is staggering. if that suddenly paired back or chanced it'd be basically public information. Maybe not specifics, but there's enough detail to know what's being spent on what.
MAD only works if the other party thinks you can, and you will. Also, once you start using MAD it's almost impossible to stop.
Putin keeps nuclear saber rattling against Ukraine aid. The US has limited it's involvement because of it. The more sure you are in MAD, the less cautious you need to be of someone else miscalculating and hoping for a favorable exchange.
