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Article snippet: WASHINGTON — When President Barack Obama’s term ended in January, he left a momentous decision to the Trump administration: whether to continue a 30-year, $1 trillion program to remake America’s atomic weapons, as well as its bombers, submarines and land-based missiles. Mr. Trump has pledged to overhaul the arsenal, which he has called obsolete. But his challenge is growing: The first official government estimate of the project, prepared by the Congressional Budget Office and due to be published in the coming weeks, will put the cost at more than $1.2 trillion — 20 percent more than the figure envisioned by the Obama administration. The Trump White House’s proposed budget calls for big increases in research and development for new weapons, but it does not yet grapple with the ultimate budget-busting cost of producing a new fleet of delivery vehicles. The Obama administration left the hard budgetary choices for the next administration, and it is unclear whether Mr. Trump’s administration can stomach the rising cost. “This is why there is no real five-year plan for the defense budget,” said Representative Adam Smith, Democrat of Washington and a member of the House Armed Services Committee, who has asked whether the United States needs all of the 1,550 nuclear weapons it can deploy under a 2010 treaty with Russia. “No one wants to face these numbers.” The new estimate, which was obtained by The New York Times, offers a hard look at what it would take to remake an a... Link to the full article to read more