http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/aging-nuclear-arsenal-grows-ever-more-costly/ar-AA7eeQg
.....elements of the systems are virtual museum pieces. An example is the B-52. One of the massive gray bombers recently sitting on a tarmac at the Global Strike Command at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana rolled off Boeing Co.'s assembly line in 1960 - during the Eisenhower administration.
............ B-52s will probably fly another 26 years. By the time the bomber retires, it will be 80 years old - older than any strike aircraft ever flown in military service.
The other legs of the nuclear triad are 450 1960s-era Minuteman III missiles based in silos in Wyoming, Montana and Nebraska, and 14 Ohio-class submarines from the 1980s that are also nearing the end of the design life of their nuclear propulsion systems.
The nuclear warheads that these vehicles carry are maintained at the legacy sites of the Manhattan Project. Although it is significantly smaller than in its Cold War heyday, the Energy Department industrial complex stretches from South Carolina to California with more than 40,000 employees.
..............The nation's nuclear weapons stockpile has shrunk by 85% since its Cold War peak half a century ago, but the Energy Department is spending nine times more on each weapon that remains. The nuclear arsenal will cost $8.3 billion this fiscal year, up 30% over the last decade........ modernization could reach $1 trillion over the next 30 years.
..............."Simply stated, there is no plan for success with available resources," said Norman Augustine, a former Pentagon and defense industry official who is leading a review of the Energy Department's bomb program.
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Lets thank God that it is useless, and replace it with a system that is scarier, more deadly and cheaper.
Hoping it will be just as useless, for less money.
