Why the world still needs nuclear weapons

[starcraft]

FaRmLaNd said:

starcraft said:

MontanaHatchet said:

I think it's pretty silly to disable nuclear weapons when the U.S. spent so much time and money building them in the first place. Why even get rid of them at all? It's a waste. Even if the U.S. gets rid of half its nukes, it will still have enough to bomb every country in the world about 10 times over. So why bother? Just keep them and don't use them.

Because it is incredibly expensive to maintain them. 

The USA could probably make do with a very well maintained 500 nuclear warheads, around a twentieth of the number it currently possesses (Note: Only half of the USA's arsenal is considered "Active").

Even with high spending on fantastic deliver systems, the cost would be a FRACTION of current nuclear weapons maintenance spending.

Edit: Current US spending on nuclear weapons and related programs is upwards of $50 billion per year.

Wow, thats over twice Australias entire budget for the military (which is 24 billion aussie according to wikipedia). Pretty crazy.

I think our budget has crept up higher than that once you account for long term procurement averaged over the procurement time-frame.

That said, given the flaky nature of our current Federal Government, those procurements could be dropped.