The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) today released it’s report into world wide spending on nuclear weapons in 2020. The report found that despite the pandemic, spending on weapons of mass destruction actually increased by $1.4 billion to an eyewatering $72.6 billion. According to the report the United Kingdom spent £4.46 billion ($6.2 billion) on it’s nuclear programme in 2020, or £8,467 every minute.
Section of the report covering UK nuclear weapons expenditure.
“The United Kingdom has 225 nuclear weapons which it can launch from submarines.1 It cooperates closely with the United States to produce its Trident II D-5 nuclear-capable missiles. The United Kingdom does not release official detailed costs for its nuclear weapons programme, although analysts have produced estimates based on what data is available. A 2016 Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament report calculated that the overall cost to replace the UK nuclear submarine programme will be £205 billion ($284).2 A Nuclear Information Service report calculated the average cost per year of the overall program would be £3.4 billion ($4.7 billion).3
In a 2018 National Audit Office report, the costs of the defence nuclear enterprise from 2019-2020 were projected as £4.869 billion ($6.7 billion), which includes £2.022 billion ($2.8 billion) for submarines, £1.307 billion ($1.8 billion) for the missiles and warheads, £785 million ($1.09 billion) for propulsion systems and another £755 million ($1.05 billion) in support programs and other costs.4 The £2.022 billion ($2.8 billion) in reported submarine costs include the nuclear-capable Dreadnought-class submarines, the Astute-class, the Marine Underwater Future Capability (MUFC)-class submarines and “other submarines.” Since ICAN does not include non-nuclear-capable delivery system costs in this report’s estimates, the £2.022 billion ($2.8 billion) reported for submarines was revised to only include the costs for the nuclear-capable Dreadnought-class.5 The annual cost for the Dreadnought programme was reported as £1.613 billion ($2.2 billion) in the 2020 annual Ministry of Defence Major Project Portfolio data.6 With this revision, the total estimated cost of the UK nuclear program for 2019-2020 comes to £4.460 billion, or $6.2 billion.7
$6.2 billion is about 10.5 per cent of 2020 UK defence spending, estimated at $59.2 billion.8 This means the United Kingdom spent £8,467 ($11,769) every minute on nuclear weapons in 2020.
Based on this methodology, and accounting for inflation, the United Kingdom spent about $6.4 billion in 2019 on nuclear weapons.9
- Hans M. Kristensen and Matt Korda, ‘United Kingdom nuclear weapons, 2021’, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, May 2021 – https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/00963402.2021.1912309
- Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, ‘£205 billion: the cost of Trident -’. https://cnduk.org/resources/205-billion-cost-trident
- David Cullen, ‘Trouble Ahead: Risks and Rising Costs in the UK Nuclear Weapons Programme’, Apr. 29, 2019. https://www.nuclearinfo.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Trouble-Ahead-low-resolution-version.pdf
- National Audit Office, ‘The Defence Nuclear Enterprise: a landscape review – National Audit Office (NAO) Report’, National Audit Office, May 22, 2018. https://www.nao.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/The-Defence-Nuclear-Enterprise-a-landscape-review.pdf. NOTE: The NAO report does not disaggregate the costs for missiles and warheads. It does note that the UK contributes £12 million annually to maintain the missile storage facility.
- The Astute- and MUFC- class submarines are not nuclear-capable delivery systems, although they play a supporting role for nuclear-capable submarines. See: Cullen, Trouble Ahead.
- Ministry of Defence, ‘MoD Government Major Projects Portfolio data, 2019’, GOV.UK, Jul. 18, 2019. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/mod-government-major-projects-portfolio-data-2019
- All currency conversions to USD were conducted on 6 May 2021 when 1 pound = 1.39 USD.
- Diego Lopes da Silva, Nan Tian and Alexandra Marksteiner, ‘Trends in World Military Expenditure, 2020’, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Apr. 2021. https://www.sipri.org/sites/default/files/2021-04/fs_2104_milex_0.pdf
- The 2019 edition of this ICAN report incorrectly stated that the UK planned to spend £2 billion in operating costs in addition to the amount spent building its nuclear weapon programs in 2019. In fact, the £2 billion was already included in the overall nuclear cost estimate. Therefore, this year’s calculation is lower than the one that appeared in the report last year, but the 2019 estimate that appears in this report has been corrected accordingly to follow the same methodology as the updated calculation.
