Longy - read the proper news:
http://edition.cnn.com/2017/10/11/politics/nuclear-arsenal-trump/index.htmlTrump says he wants nuclear arsenal in 'tip-top shape,' denies desire to increase stockpile
(CNN)President Donald Trump said that he just wants to have the US nuclear arsenal in "tip-top shape," pushing back on a report that he wanted to increase the stockpile tenfold.
"I want modernization and total rehabilitation," Trump told reporters Wednesday during an appearance with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. He called an increase in the stockpile "totally unnecessary."
Secretary of Defense James Mattis also denied the NBC report, saying,
"Recent reports that the President called for an increase in the US nuclear arsenal are absolutely false. This kind of erroneous reporting is irresponsible."
Indeed, attempting to substantially grow the United States' nuclear weapon arsenal would be "absurd" and "inconceivable," several nuclear experts say.
"This is a little bit like saying, 'I'd like a moon base, please," said Jeffrey Lewis, the publisher of the blog "Arms Control Wonk" and the director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies.
Lewis told CNN that there are a number of reasons that the US has decreased its nuclear stockpile from the approximately 30,000 warheads it possessed during the peak of the Cold War.
"One factor is that a lot of those warheads existed for things we now do with conventional weapons," Lewis said, adding that there are "a whole bunch of missions" that the US no longer does.
"Then on top of that, as the Soviet Union numbers came down and the Soviet Union collapsed, there were fewer strategic targets for us to hit. So it became a very expensive legacy system," he said.
"Not like you can just go to the store and buy 30,000 nuclear weapons"
If Trump really did want the US to increase its nuclear arsenal, he would have to ask Congress for a massive increase in funding.
"He'd have to get a whole ton of money authorized and appropriated to do it," said Barry Blechman, a distinguished fellow at the Stimson Center, a nonpartisan policy research center.
"To expand that number by more than tenfold is absolutely unaffordable," Daryl Kimball, the executive director of the Arms Control Association, told CNN.
In addition, that there would be a number of "little practicalities," as Lewis put it, that would have to be considered.
"It's not like you can just go to the store and buy 30,000 nuclear weapons," Lewis said. "You'd have to build an entire infrastructure to produce and sustain that stockpile. So that's not a one-year decision by Congress, that's a multi-year, multi-trillion dollar commitment that has to be made every year by the Congress."
"They'd have to build new reactors, new plutonium handling facilities ... that'd certainly be over $100 billion dollars," Blechman estimated.
Beyond the logistical and monetary limitations, there would also be diplomatic implications.
Did you even listen to the video? of course not. Maddis chose his words carefully. He didnt deny that Trump WANTED a 10fold increase. He denied that Trump had CALLED FOR (ie ordered) the increase. This was all explained in the video that you didnt watch. its a bit how Tillerson didnt deny calling trump a moron.
You need to read between the lines a bit better which would help if you actually WATCHED THE VIDEO
Forum
Pages: 
