The US spends nearly $10 billion to upgrade B61 nuclear bombs
On October 22, the military news site Defense News cited sources from the Pentagon and reported that after calculating the necessary resources, the total cost of the large-scale upgrade program for the B61-12 nuclear bomb is estimated at about 9.5 billion USD.
According to information from the US Federal Nuclear Safety Commission, the total cost of upgrading the B61 bomb was calculated based on the price in the summer of 2016, when the upgraded B61 bomb completed the testing phase. Specifically, the cost for the technology development process was 7.6 billion USD; preparing the infrastructure for the upgrade process cost 648 million USD and 1.3 billion USD for purchasing equipment and spare parts for the upgrade process.
It should be noted that in 2013 the B61 bomb upgrade process was only estimated to cost more than 7.3 billion USD. Military experts predict that 9.5 billion USD may not be the final cost of upgrading the B61 nuclear bomb.
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| B61 nuclear bomb. |
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| The B61-12 version is capable of high-precision attacks on enemy tactical-strategic targets. |
The B61-12 bomb is the most modernized version of this 50-year-old nuclear bomb line. Specifically, the B61-12 has been "transformed" into a high-precision weapon with a control system and tail fins that allow it to attack targets with an error of only about 10m. The B61-12 will replace the current B61 3, 4, 7 and 10 versions of the US Air Force.
The US plans to deploy the B61-12 nuclear bomb generation in Europe as a tactical nuclear weapon.
According to QĐND
