The $4 Trillion Deletion

The $4 Trillion Deletion

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists -- November/December 1996

By Stephen I. Schwartz, Director, U.S. Nuclear Weapons Cost Study Project, Foreign Policy Studies

"No accurate data exists on the recurring or cumulative cost of the nuclear posture for any of the nuclear weapon states, though without doubt a realistic full costing would yield staggering figures." ? Report of the Canberra Commission on the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons, p. 41

Members of the U.S. Nuclear Weapons Cost Study Project were surprised to read that. In July 1995, we released a detailed preliminary report on our unprecedented effort to tally the total cost of everything associated with the U.S. nuclear weapons program since its inception in 1940. We estimated that?at a minimum?costs were about $4 trillion in 1995 dollars.

We also reported that once we had obtained more detailed (classified) budgetary data from the Defense and Energy Departments, and developed a methodology to count frequently overlooked costs such as personnel and operations and maintenance, the figure would certainly go much higher.

Our findings received widespread attention across the United States and around the world, and they were published as the cover story in the fiftieth anniversary issue of the Bulletin ("Four Trillion Dollars and Counting," November/December 1995). That the Canberra Commission could have failed to notice this was troubling.

In fact, the commission did notice. According to the commission's staff director, Rory Steele, "We were aware of your $4 trillion figure and it appeared in early drafts of the report." However, the commission later decided that "to explain the figure in terms of scope and limitations and then to hazard a guess about costs in the other nuclear weapon states would be an unwarranted diversion in the discussion." That was unfortunate. The inclusion of our data would have strengthened the commission's arguments against the commonly held view that nuclear weapons provide effective defense on the cheap.

For example, our final report (Atomic Audit: The Costs and Consequences of U.S. Nuclear Weapons, 1940-1995, forthcoming) documents how government officials paid little or no attention to either the annual or cumulative costs of myriad nuclear weapons programs, to the point that the official classified Air Force history of the early years of the atomic program (completed in 1959) was forced to utilize estimated costs because "there was no current, systematic account of Air Force atomic costs."

This lack of concern over the cost of nuclear weapons contributed to the huge numbers eventually built (70,000 warheads and bombs, nearly 4,700 strategic bombers, and more than 6,100 ballistic missiles) and the often arbitrary way in which they were designed and deployed.

Such "accounting amnesia" influences nuclear policy-making even today. Congressional proponents of a crash program to deploy a national missile defense system argued earlier this year that despite the potential threat, missile defense was seriously underfunded until President Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) came along in 1983. Proponents also argued that we had never before deployed a ballistic missile defense system. Both charges display an alarming ignorance of U.S. nuclear history.

Since the mid-to-late 1950s, the United States has spent nearly $100 billion on various efforts to thwart ballistic missile attack. About half of this total?$51 billion?has been spent since 1983 on SDI and its offspring, theater missile defense. In late September, Congress appropriated an additional $3.7 billion for fiscal year 1997.

What was the rest spent on? The biggest chunk?$22 billion?went for developing and deploying the Safeguard antiballistic missile system in North Dakota between 1968 and 1978. That effort resulted in our only operational missile defense system, albeit one designed to defend Minuteman ICBMs rather than people.

What happened to it? A few months after Safeguard became operational, the Air Force belatedly determined that its limited benefits were far outweighed by its enormous operating costs. The Air Force shut it down.