"Despite President [Barack] Obama’s best efforts, we now have an unguided nuclear policy," Cirincione said. "It is being driven by contracts, not strategic thinking."
In its 2017 budget request, the US National Nuclear Security Administration could receive $9.2 billion in funding for the nuclear weapons enterprise.
"The drivers of nuclear policy in the United States right now is the nuclear industrial complex. It is those people with the financial or political interest in maintaining the existing nuclear forces," Cirincione noted.
The majority of the US nuclear triad is aging, with numerous elements exceeding their expected lifespan.
Cirincione argued that the level of proposed modernization of US nuclear forces would be "locking in the Cold War arsenal for another 30 to 50 years."
The last major overhaul of US nuclear forces occurred in the 1980s, at the height of the Cold War.
The Ploughshares Fund is a nuclear disarmament group, which has called for the reduction and eventual elimination of what it sees as the unacceptably high level of nuclear weapons worldwide.