The U.S. military says America’s nuclear arsenal is outdated and unable to keep up with our adversaries’ modern weapons.

To replace it, the country is in the midst of a once-in-a-generation overhaul across 23 states that could exceed $1.7 trillion.

But what future are we buying ourselves? And at what cost?

To understand how America is preparing for its nuclear future, follow Melissa Durkee’s fifth-grade students as they shuffle into Room 38 at Preston Veterans’ Memorial School in Preston, Conn. One by one, the children settle in for a six-week course taught by an atypical educator, the defense contractor General Dynamics.

“Does anyone know why we’re here?” a company representative asks. Adalie, 10, shoots her hand into the air. “Um, because you’re building submarines and you, like, need people, and you’re teaching us about it in case we’re interested in working there when we get older,” she ventures.

This article is part of the Opinion series At the Brink,
about the threat of nuclear weapons in an unstable world. Read the opening piece here.

This article is part of
the Opinion series At the Brink,
about the threat of nuclear
weapons in an unstable world.
Read the opening piece here.

Adalie is correct. The U.S. 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. The industry is struggling to find the tens of thousands of new workers it needs. For the past 18 months, the company has traveled to elementary schools across New England to educate children in the basics of submarine manufacturing and perhaps inspire a student or two to consider one day joining its shipyards.

A fifth-grade class at Preston Veterans’ Memorial School designs and builds mini-submarines as part of a curriculum created by the defense contractor General Dynamics.

The coursework — on this particular day, welding crackers together with Easy Cheese to create mini-submarines — is one small facet of the much bigger preparations America is making for a historic struggle with its nuclear rivals. With Russia at war, China escalating regional disputes and nations like North Korea and Iran expanding their nuclear programs, the United States is set to spend an estimated $1.7 trillion over 30 years to revamp its own arsenal.

The spending spree, which the government began planning in 2010, is underway in at least 23 states — nearly 50 if you include subcontractors. It follows a decades-long freeze on designing, building or testing new nuclear weapons. Along with the subs, the military is paying for a new fleet of bomber jets, land-based missiles and thermonuclear warheads. Tally all that spending, and the bill comes to almost $57 billion a year, or $108,000 per minute for three decades.

Nuclear modernization site

Site visited by The Times

Naval Base
Kitsap

Lawrence
Livermore
National
Laboratory

Northrop
Grumman

Nevada
National
Security
Site

Hill Air
Force Base

Malmstrom
Air Force Base

Sandia National
Laboratories

Los Alamos
National
Laboratory

F.E. Warren
Air Force Base Missiles

Ellsworth Air
Force Base

Pantex
Plant

Minot Air
Force Base

Dyess
Air Force
Base

Lockheed
Martin

Tinker Air
Force Base

Offutt Air
Force Base

Kansas City National
Security Campus

Fort
Chaffee

Barksdale
Air Force
Base

Whiteman
Air Force Base

Y-12 National
Security Complex

Savannah River
National Laboratory

Naval Submarine
Base Kings Bay

Northrop
Grumman

HII Newport
News Shipbuilding

General Dynamics
Electric Boat

Times Opinion spent six months traveling to cities and towns around the nation to discover how this modern Manhattan Project is coming together, interviewing more than 100 residents, workers, community leaders and federal officials. The portrait that emerged is a country that is being transformed — physically, financially and philosophically — by an unprecedented wave of nuclear revitalization. The effort is as flush with cash as it is rife with problems and delays: At least 20 major projects are already years behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget.

If you don’t live where the submarines are welded or the missile silos are dug, there’s a good chance you wouldn’t know it’s happening. The federal government has said little about the plan in public, outside of congressional hearings and strategy papers, or the vast amount being spent. There has been no significant debate. The billion-dollar programs move under the radar. At a time when funding for politicized issues such as climate change, foreign military aid and border security are under a microscope, this issue miraculously appears to have sidestepped the crossfire.

But each day, more than 110,000 scientists, military personnel and private contractors with high-level security clearances are scanning into facilities, putting on safety gear and piecing together a modern arsenal for a volatile new nuclear age.

We should talk about why Washington is making America nuclear again and what we hope to achieve with one of the most ambitious, far-reaching construction projects in the country’s history. The money is already flowing, assembling weapons everyone hopes will never be used.

are being built over

involving

at a cost of

$130 billion $130 billion The Submarines

General Dynamics Electric Boat plans to build more submarines by tonnage in the next 30 years than over the course of the Cold War.

The company hired over 5,000 people last year and plans to hire close to another 5,000 this year but still anticipates work force shortages.

General Dynamics Electric Boat may face a labor shortage, but you wouldn’t know it standing inside one of the company’s football-field-size warehouses along Narragansett Bay in Rhode Island.

On a morning in September, roughly 2,000 employees were at work across the sprawling complex, moving among mammoth machinery and the hulls of several submarines sliced into segments like giant sushi rolls. “What you’re seeing is the future of American naval power,” Rear Adm. Todd Weeks, who oversees strategic submarine construction for the U.S. Navy, shouted above the din.

At 560 feet long and 43 feet in diameter, the Columbia-class submarines under construction at the site will be the largest America has ever built when the first boat enters service this decade. They are also the most expensive, at an average of $11 billion per boat. Engineering a nuclear submarine is widely considered to be more challenging than building a spacecraft: The sub needs to carry more than 100 people to crushing ocean depths, along with the nuclear reactor that powers it, and be capable of launching its nuclear-tipped missiles to any location on the planet. Every cut, every weld, every rivet matters.

Submarines are constructed in sections at Quonset Point, R.I., then placed on barges and floated down the Atlantic coast for final assembly in Groton, Conn.

On the factory floor, it is plain to see the dream of nuclear disarmament, once shared by Republican and Democratic presidents alike, is dead. Or, at the very least, on life support. Not so long ago, the consensus among global........

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