Average Unit Acquisition Costs for Strategic Nuclear Delivery Vehicles

The U.S. Nuclear Weapons Cost Study Project was completed in August 1998 and resulted in the book Atomic Audit: The Costs and Consequences of U.S. Nuclear Weapons Since 1940 edited by Stephen I. Schwartz. These project pages should be considered historical.

Note: Acquisition costs include research, development, testing, and procurement costs. For reasons of scale, this chart does not include the B-2A ($2.6 billion each) bomber. Bomber and ICBM costs exclude air base and launch pad/silo construction costs. SLBM costs do not include associated submarine costs. Also excluded are the B-70 ($4.6 billion each) and B-1A ($4.2 billion each) bombers, which were never operationally deployed.

Source: Atomic Audit: The Costs and Consequences of U.S. Nuclear Weapons Since 1940 (Brookings Institution Press, 1998)