The Obama administration’s 20-year plan for the U.S. nuclear arsenal would reduce the number of deployed and stored warheads from 5,000 to a range of 3,000 to 3,500 and significantly increase spending on the complex that maintains them, according to newly disclosed documents.
Unclassified sections of the National Nuclear Security Administration’s plan show that annual costs for the weapons complex would increase from about $7 billion in fiscal 2011 to $8.4 billion in 2017 and more than $9 billion by 2030.
The agency’s infrastructure will support “active, logistic spare and reserve warheads,” according to the plan, but it will not be “designed to have the capacity to support a return to historical Cold War stockpiles, or rapidly respond to large production spikes.”
The plan does not say how many of the 3,000 to 3,500 warheads would be active or deployed.
Full Story: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/14/AR2010071405719.html