{"id":276864,"date":"2024-10-14T12:00:55","date_gmt":"2024-10-14T11:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=276864"},"modified":"2024-10-11T05:43:31","modified_gmt":"2024-10-11T04:43:31","slug":"nuclear-weapons-the-price","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2024\/10\/nuclear-weapons-the-price\/","title":{"rendered":"Nuclear Weapons: The Price"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

The USS John Warner, a nuclear-powered submarine of the type Australia. Source: US Navy<\/p><\/div>\n

The United States is set to spend an\u00a0estimated\u00a0<\/a>$1.7 trillion<\/a><\/em>\u00a0over 30 years to revamp its own nuclear arsenal.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

10 Oct 2024 –<\/em> To understand how the USA is preparing for its nuclear future, follow Melissa Durkee\u2019s fifth-grade students as they shuffle into Room 38 at Preston Veterans\u2019 Memorial School in Preston, Conn. One by one, the children settle in for a six-week course taught by an atypical educator, the defense contractor General Dynamics.<\/p>\n

\u201cDoes anyone know why we\u2019re here?\u201d a company representative asks. Adalie, 10, shoots her hand into the air. \u201cUm, because you\u2019re building submarines and you, like, need people, and you\u2019re teaching us about it in case we\u2019re interested in working there when we get older,\u201d she ventures.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

A fifth-grade class at Preston Veterans\u2019 Memorial School designs and builds mini-submarines as part of a curriculum created by the defense contractor General Dynamics.<\/p><\/div>\n

Adalie is correct. The U.S. Navy has put in an order for General Dynamics to produce 12 nuclear ballistic missile submarines by 2042 \u2014 a job that\u2019s projected to cost $130 billion. The industry is struggling to find the tens of thousands of new workers it needs. For the past 18 months, the company has traveled to elementary schools across New England to educate children in the basics of submarine manufacturing and perhaps inspire a student or two to consider one day joining its shipyards.<\/p>\n

The coursework \u2014 on this particular day, welding crackers together with Easy Cheese to create mini-submarines \u2014 is one small facet of the much bigger preparations America is making for a historic struggle with its nuclear rivals. With Russia at war, China escalating regional disputes and nations like North Korea and Iran expanding their nuclear programs, the United States is set to spend an\u00a0estimated\u00a0<\/a>$1.7 trillion<\/a>\u00a0over 30 years to revamp its own arsenal.<\/p>\n

The spending spree, which the government began planning in 2010, is underway in at least 23 states \u2014 nearly 50 if you include subcontractors. It follows a decades-long freeze on designing, building or testing new nuclear weapons. Along with the subs, the military is paying for a new fleet of bomber jets, land-based missiles and thermonuclear warheads. Tally all that spending, and the bill comes to almost $57 billion a year, or $108,000 per minute for three decades.<\/p>\n

This article is part of the opinion series\u00a0at the brink<\/a>, about the threat of nuclear weapons in an unstable world. Read the opening piece\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

READ FULL NYT<\/em> ARTICLE –><\/a> <\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

10 Oct 2024 – The US is set to spend an estimated $1.7 trillion to revamp its nuclear arsenal. The spending spree is underway in at least 23 states and follows a decades-long freeze on designing, building or testing new nuclear weapons. Along with the subs, a new fleet of bomber jets, land-based missiles and thermonuclear warheads.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":207885,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[68],"tags":[429,1301,450,2298,112,95,70,1594],"class_list":["post-276864","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-weapons-of-mass-destruction","tag-nuclear-ban-treaty","tag-nuclear-war","tag-nuclear-weapons","tag-nuclear-weapons-illegal","tag-pentagon","tag-us-military","tag-usa","tag-war-economy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276864","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=276864"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276864\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":276868,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276864\/revisions\/276868"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/207885"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=276864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=276864"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=276864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}