While most national security spending is run through the Pentagon, the Department of Energy (DOE) also runs programs categorized in the budget as atomic energy defense activities, or budget function 053. Discretionary funding for the DOE’s atomic energy defense activities came to $33.7 billion, a 2.4 percent increase over the $32.9 billion appropriated for DOE’s atomic energy defense activities in the recently passed minibus appropriations bill. (For a look at the DOE’s full budget, click here.)
The bulk of this funding, $25 billion, is for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), a division of the Department of Energy that oversees the nation’s stockpile of nuclear warheads, as well as its nuclear nonproliferation activities and the Navy’s nuclear reactors. That’s a 3.6 percent increase over NNSA’s FY24 appropriations of $24.1 billion.
Within NNSA, weapons activities accounted for most of the increase in funding, jumping from $19.1 billion in FY24 appropriations to $19.8 billion in the FY25 request, a $700 million, or 3.7 percent, increase. Compared to FY23 enacted funding, however, the FY25 request for weapons activities added $2.7 billion, a 16 percent increase over just two fiscal years before.
According to the administration, this funding boost is tied to efforts to revamp the nation’s nuclear arsenal. These efforts include retrofitting or upgrading nuclear warheads, including those planned for deployment on the Sentinel ICBM, a new nuclear missile program intended to replace the Minuteman III missiles that currently comprise the land-based leg of the nation’s nuclear triad.
As we recently argued in Stars and Stripes, efforts to replace the entire ICBM fleet are costing far more than anticipated, and more than an alternative option of life-extending the current ICBM fleet, according to some analyses. Moreover, they simply aren’t necessary to maintain a credible nuclear deterrent. With 14 virtually undetectable Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines each capable of carrying 20 ballistic missiles that can each carry multiple nuclear warheads, not to mention the nation’s nuclear bombers, there’s simply no need to maintain the land-based leg of the nuclear triad. Yet, the money keeps flowing.
That’s likely due in part to the outsize influence of the nuclear weapons industry in U.S. nuclear weapons policy. Last October, the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States (CCSPUS) released a report arguing that the risk of nuclear conflict with Russia and China is rising, and that the U.S. needs to urgently pursue upgrades to the entire nuclear arsenal, including ICBMs. The report failed to mention that nine of the 12 members of the commission “have direct financial ties to contractors that would benefit from the report’s recommendations or are employed by thinktanks that receive considerable funding from weapons manufacturers,” according to reporting in the Guardian.
Rather than continuing to add funds for the NNSA’s nuclear weapons activities above and beyond the administration’s budget request, Congress should scrutinize the request and look for opportunities to save taxpayers money. Cutting funds to upgrade bombs for missiles we shouldn’t build anyway would be a logical place to start.
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