The US administration is proposing the largest increase in nuclear weapons spending since the Cold War. This estimate is contained in a report released on Wednesday by experts from the Los Alamos Research Group.
In the technical supplement to the US federal budget proposal for fiscal year 2026 (which begins in the country on October 1), published by the White House, the US administration is asking Congress for a total of about $ 24.8 billion to develop, create, modernize and destroy warheads through the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) of the US Department of Energy. In the current fiscal year, a total of about $19.2 billion is expected to be allocated for these purposes.
Thus, according to experts, the NNSA budget "for warhead production is proposed to be increased by 25%. "This would be the largest annual increase since 1962, that is, since the Cuban Missile Crisis," the experts' report notes. At the same time, they explain that even taking into account the $1.8 billion allocated in the current fiscal year to eliminate the consequences of hurricanes "Helen" and "Milton" at NNSA facilities, we are talking about an increase in the warhead production budget by 17%. In this case, this is the largest increase in the budget for these purposes since 1982. since.
The director of the Los Alamos research group, Greg Mello, predicts that this is far from the last increase in spending on nuclear weapons development in the United States, noting that “sooner or later the growth of costs will stop“. “Some projects will be abandoned“, writes Mello, emphasizing that the United States “for example, will not be able to maintain the operation of two enterprises that produce plutonium cores“. In addition, he considers the inability of the current administration to present to Congress detailed plans for the use of the requested budget to be a problem. According to him, this threatens with “lack of time for legislators to consider“ these plans and, as a result, insufficient oversight of the activities of the NNSA. Moreover, according to the expert, we are talking about “such a large budget increase that NNSA will not be able to spend it in full“.