Nuclear Weapons: The Price
WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION, 14 Oct 2024
W.J. Hennigan | The New York Times – TRANSCEND Media Service
The USS John Warner, a nuclear-powered submarine of the type Australia. Source: US Navy
The United States is set to spend an estimated $1.7 trillion over 30 years to revamp its own nuclear arsenal.
10 Oct 2024 – To understand how the USA is preparing for its nuclear future, follow Melissa Durkee’s fifth-grade students as they shuffle into Room 38 at Preston Veterans’ Memorial School in Preston, Conn. One by one, the children settle in for a six-week course taught by an atypical educator, the defense contractor General Dynamics.
“Does anyone know why we’re here?” a company representative asks. Adalie, 10, shoots her hand into the air. “Um, because you’re building submarines and you, like, need people, and you’re teaching us about it in case we’re interested in working there when we get older,” she ventures.
A fifth-grade class at Preston Veterans’ Memorial School designs and builds mini-submarines as part of a curriculum created by the defense contractor General Dynamics.
Adalie is correct. The U.S. Navy has put in an order for General Dynamics to produce 12 nuclear ballistic missile submarines by 2042 — a job that’s projected to cost $130 billion. The industry is struggling to find the tens of thousands of new workers it needs. For the past 18 months, the company has traveled to elementary schools across New England to educate children in the basics of submarine manufacturing and perhaps inspire a student or two to consider one day joining its shipyards.
The coursework — on this particular day, welding crackers together with Easy Cheese to create mini-submarines — is one small facet of the much bigger preparations America is making for a historic struggle with its nuclear rivals. With Russia at war, China escalating regional disputes and nations like North Korea and Iran expanding their nuclear programs, the United States is set to spend an estimated $1.7 trillion over 30 years to revamp its own arsenal.
The spending spree, which the government began planning in 2010, is underway in at least 23 states — nearly 50 if you include subcontractors. It follows a decades-long freeze on designing, building or testing new nuclear weapons. Along with the subs, the military is paying for a new fleet of bomber jets, land-based missiles and thermonuclear warheads. Tally all that spending, and the bill comes to almost $57 billion a year, or $108,000 per minute for three decades.
This article is part of the opinion series at the brink, about the threat of nuclear weapons in an unstable world. Read the opening piece here.
Tags: Nuclear Ban Treaty, Nuclear Weapons, Nuclear Weapons Illegal, Nuclear war, Pentagon, US Military, USA, War Economy
This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 14 Oct 2024.
Anticopyright: Editorials and articles originated on TMS may be freely reprinted, disseminated, translated and used as background material, provided an acknowledgement and link to the source, TMS: Nuclear Weapons: The Price, is included. Thank you.
If you enjoyed this article, please donate to TMS to join the growing list of TMS Supporters.
This work is licensed under a CC BY-NC 4.0 License.
Join the discussion!
We welcome debate and dissent, but personal — ad hominem — attacks (on authors, other users or any individual), abuse and defamatory language will not be tolerated. Nor will we tolerate attempts to deliberately disrupt discussions. We aim to maintain an inviting space to focus on intelligent interactions and debates.
Read more
Click here to go to the current weekly digest or pick another article:
WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION: