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The US Keeps Pouring Money Into Nuclear Weapons
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of Jacobin
Posted: October 25th, 2024
https://jacobin.com/2024/08/nuclear-weapons-budget-contracto...
The Pentagon is in the midst of a massive $2 trillion, multiyear plan to build a new generation of nuclear-armed missiles, bombers, and submarines. A large chunk of that funding will go to major nuclear weapons contractors like Bechtel, General Dynamics, Honeywell, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman. And they will do everything in their power to keep that money flowing. This January, a review of the Sentinel Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) program under the Nunn-McCurdy Act ... found that the missile, the crown jewel of the nuclear overhaul plan involving 450 missile-holding silos spread across five states, is already 81 percent over its original budget. It is now estimated that it will cost a total of nearly $141 billion to develop and purchase, a figure only likely to rise in the future. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists’ “Doomsday Clock” — an estimate of how close the world may be at any moment to a nuclear conflict — is now set at ninety seconds to midnight, the closest it’s been since that tracker was first created in 1947. Considering the rising tide of nuclear escalation globally, is it really the right time for this country to invest a fortune of taxpayer dollars in a new generation of devastating “use them or lose them” weapons? The American public has long said no, according to a 2020 poll by the University of Maryland’s Program for Public Consultation, which showed that 61 percent of us actually support phasing out ICBM systems like the Sentinel.
Note: Learn more about arms industry corruption in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.
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