A Primer on the Cost of Upgrading the U.S. Nuclear Weapons Arsenal
The U.S. is spending billions annually to upgrade its nuclear arsenal, going so far as to recruit even school children for the project. What should Catholic Workers be doing in response?
Welcome to this bonus issue of CW Reads, the long-read edition of the Roundtable newsletter. Today, we’re bringing you Paul Popinchalk’s primer on the United States’ multi-decade, $2 trillion program to upgrade its nuclear weapons systems—a program that most Americans remain unaware of. His piece appeared in the most recent issue of The Catholic Radical, newsletter of the Sts. Francis & Therese Catholic Worker in Worcester, Massachusetts.
At the end of the article, you’ll also find links to two articles in the “On the Brink” series that he references.
America’s New Nuclear Spending Spree
by Paul Popinchalk
in The Catholic Radical, January 2025
I am a member of Massachusetts Peace Action and a lifelong pacifist. I’m also a husband, father, and grandfather who despairs about the global tensions that could result in nuclear war. I grew up in the small farming community of Preston, Connecticut and I’ve been following a series in The New York Times entitled "At the Brink." The October 10th issue caught my eye because it discussed how America is preparing for its nuclear future by focusing on a fifth-grade classroom at Connecticut’s Preston Veterans Memorial School. In Melissa Durkee’s classroom, the children were engaged in a six-week course taught by a defense contractor from General Dynamics, the leading manufacturer of the US nuclear ballistic missile submarine fleet. When the contractor asks the children, “Does anyone know why we are here?” 10-year-old Adalie shoots her hand into the air and replies, “Because you’re building submarines and you need people and you’re teaching us about it in case we’re interested in working there when we get older?”
Adalie is correct. The US Navy has put in an order for General Dynamics to produce 12 nuclear ballistic missile submarines by 2042, a job that’s projected to cost $130 billion. Thousands of workers will be required to fulfill this order. General Dynamics over the past 18 months has traveled to elementary schools across New England to teach children the basics of submarine manufacturing and perhaps inspire some students to consider one day joining the shipyard.
The US already fields a fleet of 12 ballistic missile submarines. Each of these submarines has 20 active missile tubes with each missile carrying 4 or 5 warheads. Every submarine possesses 2.5 times the explosive power of ALL the bombs dropped during World War II.
This is only part of the spending spree that currently drives our nation’s preparation for nuclear war. The Pentagon oversees the US nuclear triad. This is a three-sided military structure that consists of land-based, air-launched, and sea-based nuclear weapons systems. The Air Force manages 400 Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missiles, each with a single nuclear warhead. All of these missiles are scheduled for replacement. These missiles are located in silos 80 feet underground in the backyards and farm fields of midwesterners in Wyoming, Nebraska, Colorado, Montana, and North Dakota. The new missiles will be installed over 20 years at a cost of approximately $141 billion. For the past two years, representatives of the US Air Force have scoured the northern Great Plains to talk to residents about the plans for the new missiles and support buildings that will need to be constructed under this renewal program over the next 20 years.
Another key element of these weapon systems upgrades is the manufacturing of what the industry calls plutonium pits to create the cores that trigger the explosions of nuclear bombs. Congress has directed the Los Alamos National Lab in New Mexico to produce 30 plutonium pits a year by 2026 along with another 50 pits per year to be created at the Savannah River National Laboratory in South Carolina. When this mass production of these plutonium pits was undertaken at the Rocky Flats production site in Colorado, things did not go well. There were rampant environmental violations and huge security issues related to the risk of stolen material getting into the hands of bad actors. The price tag for this decades-long program is estimated to cost $2 trillion. The intellectual capability of tens of thousands of America’s finest scientists and manufacturing workers and all the trillions of dollars that these programs will cost over decades is to reinforce the perverse concept of MAD, Mutual Assured Destruction. It is the theory that nuclear-armed enemies of the United States will never attack us because they understand that our response will guarantee the annihilation of our opponents.
In 1963, Saint John XXIII, writing in his Encyclical Letter Pacem in Terris, urged the prohibition of atomic weapons and stated that authentic and lasting international peace cannot rest on a balance of military power but only mutual trust. He called for the breakdown of the climate of distrust that could dismantle international arms control frameworks and the growth of new military technology. His foresight has turned out to be sadly accurate.
Pope Francis, after his 2019 apostolic journey to the Atomic Bomb Hypocenter Monument in Nagasaki, Japan, said:
“...one of the deepest longings of the human heart for security, peace, and stability. The possession of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction is not the answer to this desire; indeed, they seem always to thwart it…. In a world where millions of children and families live in inhumane conditions, the money that is squandered ...through the manufacture, upgrade, maintenance, and sale of ever more destructive weapons, is an affront crying out to heaven.”
This waste of human and material resources is occurring at a time when the Department of Housing and Urban Development estimates that there are over 650,000 homeless people in the United States.
In September 2017, Most Reverend John Wester, Archbishop of Santa Fe in Albuquerque, New Mexico, wrote a pastoral letter entitled Living in the Light of Christ’s Peace, following his trip to Japan where he visited Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In the letter, he wrote: “It was a somber, sobering experience as I realized that on August 6, 1945, humanity crossed the line into the darkness of the nuclear age. Historically, the Archdiocese of Santa Fe has been part of a peace initiative, one that would help make sure these weapons would never be used again. I believe it is time to rejuvenate that peace work.”
And so it is that we are called to raise up our voices and oppose this war funding and ask instead that we dedicate our treasure to immediate and sincere negotiation and dialogue to reduce the threat of nuclear war and lessen the suffering of humanity. We are blessed beyond measure that Worcester’s member of Congress, Representative Jim McGovern, along with Representative Earl Blumenauer of Oregon, have introduced House Resolution 77, a critical legislative organizing vehicle to elevate congressional debate and leadership on nuclear disarmament at this moment when the risk of nuclear war is greater than it’s been in over 60 years. This resolution called on the US to embrace the goals and provisions of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and to take concrete steps to prevent nuclear war. Let us take to the streets and educate our fellow citizens about this critical call for action.
From the editor of The Catholic Radical: The author’s references are available on request at theresecw2@gmail.com.
Saints Francis & Thérèse Catholic Worker is part of a coalition that has protested in New London, Connecticut against General Dynamic’s work on new nuclear submarines. April 2025 protests, including nonviolent civil diosbedience, will be detailed in the February-March issue of The Catholic Radical.
Read the introduction to The New York Times’ “At the Brink” series.
Read “At the Brink: Confronting the Risk of Nuclear War”
About us. Roundtable covers the Catholic Worker Movement. This week’s Roundtable was produced by Jerry Windley-Daoust and Renée Roden. Art by Monica Welch at DovetailInk. Roundtable is an independent publication not associated with the New York Catholic Worker or The Catholic Worker newspaper. Send inquiries to roundtable@catholicworker.org.
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