U.S. Spending on Nuclear Weapons Exceeds $52 Billion
Most U.S. Government spending on nuclear weapons-related programs is unclassified. But it is functionally secret since such spending is widely dispersed across many programs in several agencies and it is not formally tracked or reported.
A new study prepared for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace estimated that the cost of U.S. nuclear weapons and weapons-related programs exceeded $52 billion last year.
“That’s a floor, not a ceiling,” said Stephen I. Schwartz, who led the study with Deepti Choubey. The estimate does not include the costs of classified nuclear weapons programs or nuclear-related intelligence programs, among other limiting factors.
The $52 billion figure far exceeds the total annual budget for international diplomacy and foreign assistance ($39.5 billion) and comprises roughly 10% of all national defense spending.
Because nuclear weapons costs are not officially tracked, it has been difficult or impossible to perform “cost-benefit” analyses of nuclear policies or to debate priorities among competing nuclear weapons programs. Yet such priorities naturally emerge, undebated.
Thus, the majority of nuclear weapons spending (55.5%) is allocated towards upgrading, operating and sustaining the U.S. nuclear arsenal. A much smaller fraction (10%) is devoted to controlling the spread of nuclear weapons and technology, the study found.
“The disparity suggests that preserving and enhancing nuclear forces is far more important than preventing nuclear proliferation,” said Mr. Schwartz.
The authors urge that a formal accounting of nuclear weapons spending be conducted by the government and reported to Congress and the public in order to provide greater clarity. And they recommend that an increased fraction of nuclear security spending be directed towards preventing nuclear proliferation.
The full report and the underlying data are available from the Carnegie Endowment. See “Nuclear Security Spending: Assessing Costs, Examining Priorities,” by Stephen I. Schwartz with Deepti Choubey, January 2009.
Despite significant political momentum behind reform efforts, limited attention has been paid to the federal workforce that will actually be responsible for interpreting and implementing new permitting regulations and better outcomes.
Nearly 150 organizations and government officials have endorsed the call to action and solutions for extreme heat, now public at HeatAgenda.US Washington, D.C. – July 7, 2026 – As millions of Americans continue to struggle to stay cool following one of the hottest Independence Day holidays on record, the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), one […]
Addressing rising heat will take all of us. Together, we can create heat-safe homes, workplaces, schools, childcare facilities, and communities – the backbone of a heat-ready nation.
We sat down with biomedical research pioneer Lee Hood to talk moonshots, metascience in medicine, and the Human Phenome Initiative.