Presentation by Michael Bennett, an analyst in CBO’s National Security Division, at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. November 20, 2017.

“The Obama Administration’s 2017 plans for nuclear forces would cost about $1.2 trillion (in 2017 dollars) over the 2017–2046 period, CBO estimates. About $400 billion of that total would pay for modernization, according to CBO’s assessment of the most recent detailed plans for the Departments of Defense and Energy. This presentation analyzes options that would reduce the 30-year costs of nuclear forces by between 2 percent and 11 percent if they were implemented for the next generation of systems (and more if they were implemented now). Those options would affect the capability of nuclear forces in different ways.”