For a generation, the U.S. “triad” of nuclear-capable bombers, submarines, and intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) has inched toward obsolescence as the nation focused on other pressing security threats like terrorism and cyberattacks, writes W.J. Hennigan.
Today these Cold War weapons are years beyond their intended service lives, resulting in exhaustive maintenance shifts and dwindling supplies of spare parts.
That leaves the U.S. facing unappealing choices.
It can keep the current fleet, but at increasing cost—the price of ICBM maintenance alone has risen 17% over the past half-decade, to nearly $482 million per year. It can retire some of its nuclear forces, potentially upsetting the global strategic balance that is designed to ensure that if any one country starts a nuclear war, all will be annihilated in it.
What the Pentagon wants to do is spend an estimated $1 trillion or more in the coming decades to replace all three legs of the triad.
Read about the $100 billion mission to modernize America’s aging nuclear missiles at the link in our bio. Photographs by Benjamin Rasmussen (@benjaminras) for TIME
