For Immediate Release: May 18, 2026
Media Contacts: Daryl G. Kimball, executive director (202-463-8270 x107), Xiaodon Liang, Senior Policy Analyst (x113)
(Washington, D.C.) — The Arms Control Association (ACA) calls on Congress to reject and cut down the president’s request for a defense budget of $1.5 trillion dollars. Coming after several years of large increases to defense spending and in the absence of demonstrable progress in diplomatic steps to avoid arms racing and unnecessary military expenditure, the request is an unjustified and indefensible imposition on the American people.
“Both this administration and its predecessor have failed to convincingly justify several years of explosive growth in spending on nuclear weapons modernization and upgrades, an ambitious and destabilizing scheme for strategic missile interceptors, and other major weapons systems. The new budget request far exceeds any justifiable requirements, will line the pockets of military contractors, and steal taxpayer funds away from programs that address the real needs of Americans,” said Daryl G. Kimball, executive director.
“As the Trump administration seeks the largest military spending increase in U.S. history and massive increases in Defense and Energy Department spending on nuclear weapons, it has failed to seriously pursue lower-cost strategies to mitigate national security dangers, including effective nonproliferation diplomacy with Iran and bilateral nuclear arms reduction negotiations with Russia,” Kimball noted.
The budget calls for massive increases in military spending, including $71.4 billion for Pentagon nuclear weapons programs, $85.8 billion for missile defense and the president’s Golden Dome project, and $27.4 billion for nuclear weapons activities at the National Nuclear Security Administration.
“The United States is already set to spend more than $946 billion on its nuclear weapons systems in the decade between 2025 and 2034, according to the Congressional Budget Office. That estimate does not include recent hikes in cost estimates for several major nuclear modernization programs,” noted ACA senior analyst Xiaodon Liang.
One example of an unjustified nuclear program is the Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) that is on track to cost upward of $200 billion and breached Pentagon cost-control measures.
“Because these ground-based missiles are vulnerable to attack by nuclear-armed adversaries, they pose a use-it-or-lose it dilemma for the president, creating an unnecessary escalation risk in the U.S. nuclear posture. ICBMs are an extravagance in an era when an enemy surprise attack is a lesser risk than escalation—particularly accidental escalation—in a crisis. Meanwhile, the Pentagon has ignored calls to forego Sentinel and instead life-extend the existing Minuteman III missile until all land-based ICBMs can be phased out through mutual, verifiable arms reduction agreements,” Liang added.
Despite Trump’s expressions of interest in “denuclearization talks” with Russia and China, the administration failed to pursue a new nuclear arms control framework with Russia to succeed the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) in the year before the agreement’s expiration on Feb. 5, 2026, while also failing to engage China on a bilateral basis.
“While it is tragic that U.S. and Russian leaders failed to engage in meaningful negotiations on a successor agreement to New START, it is also notable that following the expiration of New START, the United States proposed multilateral strategic stability talks as a means to achieving a 'new era' of nuclear arms control,” Kimball noted.
“A ‘multilateral’ approach to nuclear arms control may sound appealing. Indeed, all five nuclear-armed states have treaty obligations to engage in good faith negotiations to halt and reverse the nuclear arms race. But without a serious strategy for success, Trump’s approach could be a formula for further inaction, especially given the complexities of a five-sided negotiation involving states with different force sizes, force structures, nuclear postures, and strategic cultures,” Kimball warned.
“Such an initiative should not be allowed to substitute for the immediate commencement of serious bilateral talks between the United States and Russia and the United States and China on nuclear risk reduction, strategic stability, and nuclear arms reductions that could also yield concrete arms control and risk reduction outcomes, and perhaps more quickly,” he suggested.
“The Trump administration has also advocated for an expansion of the U.S. strategic missile defense system that could cost $185 billion by the end of this presidency according to the Pentagon’s own admission, would not establish an effective workable defense for the U.S. homeland, and would likely encourage Russia and China to improve their offensive capabilities so as to be able to overwhelm any new U.S. missile defense architecture,” Liang said.
The Congressional Budget Office recently estimated that a missile defense shield that satisfies the president’s stated goals would cost $1.2 trillion – far more than the $185 billion the Pentagon plans to request.
Other excessive nuclear programs include third and fourth warheads for the sea-based leg of the strategic triad (the W93 and the future sea-based warhead), a nuclear bunker buster (the Nuclear Delivery System Air-Delivered), the sea-launched cruise missile, and large-scale plutonium pit production in two states.
“We also oppose the president’s proposed budget hikes because it is designed, in part, to pay for his costly, reckless, and illegal war of choice against Iran. American consumers are already paying for the president’s mistake at the gas pump and their tax dollars should not be used to support an expansion of a war that should never have been launched,” Kimball said.
For these reasons, ACA joined other organizations to encourage Congress to reject the president’s budget request. ACA is one of a diverse array of organizations, led by the Coalition on Human Needs and Public Citizen, which jointly issued an open letter on April 3 to Congress calling on members to oppose the $1.5 trillion budget request.
Instead of further wasteful and excessive spending on the U.S. nuclear weapons enterprise, ACA calls on Congress to question the military effectiveness and strategic wisdom of the expensive nuclear build-up underway. Legislators should press the administration for evidence of tangible progress toward reducing military and nuclear competition with Russia and China through hard-headed and sensible risk reduction and arms control diplomacy.