Trump Administration Increases Nuclear Weapons Budget

July/August 2025
By Xiaodon Liang

New programs and accelerated funding would sharply raise Pentagon spending on nuclear forces to $62 billion under the Trump administration’s fiscal year 2026 defense budget request.

Detailed justification of the request, published June 26, arrived after months of complaints from lawmakers about administration delays, and without information typically provided by the armed services on cost projections for future years.

The president’s proposal includes spending $4.1 billion in research and development funding for the behind-schedule Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) program, $10.3 billion across R&D and procurement accounts for the B-21 stealth bomber, and $11.2 billion in R&D and procurement for Columbia-class ballistic missile submarines.

The nuclear-capable sea-launched cruise missile program, proposed by the first Trump administration in 2018 but opposed by former President Joe Biden, would add $1.9 billion in R&D funding to the modernization program in fiscal 2026, according to the request.

With proposed spending on Department of Energy nuclear weapons programs reaching $25 billion in this year’s budget request, nuclear forces would cost a total of $87 billion in fiscal 2026 under the White House plan. That would represent a 26-percent increase over the Biden administration’s last budget request, and the second year in a row in which total nuclear costs have increased by more than 20 percent. (See ACT, April 2024.)

Speaking June 12 as an impatient House Appropriations Committee voted on its defense budget bill even before the administration released its full request, Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Calif.), chairman of the defense subcommittee, noted that the absence of line-item and justification documents meant “the committee was unable to examine up-to-date program execution data and found it more difficult to assess either opportunities for increased investment or for additional reductions and eliminations.”

Under the president’s defense spending plan, substantial portions of the Sentinel ICBM and the B-21 bomber allocations—and all the sea-launched cruise-missile funding—will be paid for through a supplementary budget reconciliation bill. The final version of that bill adds an additional $1.7 billion for nuclear weapons programs compared to the House text passed in May. (See ACT, June 2025.)

The president’s proposed $4.1 billion in total Sentinel funding in fiscal 2026 would represent a marked increase over the money spent last year. After Congress cut the new ICBM’s budget to $3.2 billion for fiscal 2025, down from an initial request of $3.7 billion, the Pentagon shifted a further $1.2 billion to other programs as the Air Force continued to reassess its plans for the missile following a Nunn-McCurdy cost overrun review. (See ACT, September 2024.)

“An adjustment of this magnitude should have been accompanied by proactive communications including robust details on a rephasing plan,” House appropriators chided the Air Force in their bill report.

Gen. Thomas A. Bussiere, commander of U.S. Air Force Global Strike Command, said June 16 in an interview with Defense Daily that he approved several weeks ago modified plans for the overhaul of existing silos or construction of new silos for two of three ICBM missile wings. The Air Force believes the Sentinel program will depend “predominantly” on new silos for the ICBM program, the service told Breaking Defense in early May.

The Sentinel missile itself may not be tested in flight for the first time until March 2028, two years behind schedule, the Government Accountability Office said in its annual weapons acquisition report.

The $10.3 billion budget for the B-21 bomber would represent a sharp rise over the $5.3 billion in R&D and procurement funding enacted by Congress in both fiscal 2024 and 2025. It is also a jump when compared with the $6.0 billion that the Air Force indicated last year that it likely would ask for in fiscal 2026.

The funding increase is in line with an acceleration of bomber production previewed by the Air Force in hearings earlier this year. (See ACT, May 2025.)

The cost of the Columbia-class program will increase from $9.8 billion to $11.2 billion under Navy plans. Navy officials told the Senate Appropriations Committee’s defense subcommittee June 24 that the lead boat is now two years behind schedule and will not be completed until March 2029.

The Pentagon intends to spend $25 billion on Golden Dome programs to acquire and integrate new and existing missile defense systems. The Missile Defense Agency (MDA) requested large increases to R&D programs for command and control and battle management, ground-based missile defense sensors, and the Aegis sea-based midcourse missile defense program. The agency’s overall funding would increase 27 percent, from a fiscal 2025 enacted budget of $10.4 billion to $13.2 billion in the fiscal 2026 proposal.

The Aegis program, which would see its procurement and R&D budgets increase to $2.1 billion in fiscal 2026, also will conduct “underlay design and development to deliver an Aegis Combat System and containerized SM-3 [interceptor] as part of the expanded Homeland Defense architecture,” the MDA’s budget documentation said. The program envisions using the Block IIA variant of the SM-3 interceptor, which MDA tested against an ICBM-range target in 2020.

The MDA previously proposed a homeland defense “underlayer” in its fiscal 2021 and 2022 budgets, but Congress largely defunded this effort. (See ACT, January/February 2022.)

The Space Force would receive $2.6 billion in base and reconciliation R&D funding for the missile tracking layer of its Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture in low-Earth orbit, up from $1.7 billion last year.

The budget documents also indicate that the Air Force intends to revive a boost-glide hypersonic missile program that was scrapped after a series of disappointing tests. The Air-Launched Rapid Response Weapon would receive $387 million in procurement funding in fiscal 2026, after Congress initially zeroed out the program in the fiscal 2024 budget and the Air Force declined to ask for more money in fiscal 2025. (See ACT, January/February 2024.)

But the other Air Force hypersonic weapon, the scramjet Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile, would also receive a funding boost, from $467 million in fiscal 2025 to $803 million in fiscal 2026.

Meanwhile, the parallel Army-Navy programs to jointly develop a common hypersonic missile will see modest budget cuts, from $904 million to $798 million on the Navy side, and from $1.1 billion to $891 million on the Army side. The Army is already procuring its variant, known as the Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon, with eight missiles ordered last fiscal year and three planned for this year.