Slashing Nukes Won’t Save Much $$: CSBA

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http://breakingdefense.com/2015/08/slashing-nukes-wont-save-much-csba/



Slashing Nukes Won’t Save Much $$: CSBA
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. on August 04, 2015 at 4:54 PM

WASHINGTON: Nuclear weapons are expensive. So are the bombers, missiles, and submarines used to deliver them. But in the context of total defense spending, budget guru Todd Harrison argues, they’re a relatively affordable — and strategically critical — part of our armed forces.

Even a package of radical cuts to nuclear forces — reducing submarines and ICBMs and largely eliminating air-dropped weapons — “would save you about $20 billion dollars over the next five years,” Harrison said this afternoon, discussing the latest study from the independent Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. For comparison, he said, implementing just one proposal from the Military Compensation and Retirement Modernization Commission — an adjustment to TRICARE health benefits for military dependents and retirees — would save $26 billion over the same period.

The difference over those same five years between what the Pentagon’s budget request says it needs and what the Budget Control Act would allow: $140 billion.

Cuts to nuclear forces would reap larger savings in the 2020s, Harrison said, $77 billion over that decade. That’s because several existing systems are aging out of service and need replacement in that same period: the Navy Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine with the Ohio Replacement Program; the Air Force B-52 bomber with the Long-Range Strike Bomber; the Air-Launched Cruise Missile (ALCM) with the Long-Range Stand-Off (LRSO) missile; and, towards the end of the decade, the Minuteman III ICBM with the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent (GDSB).