China could have nuclear overmatch over the US...

 

The number of "deployed" US warheads per New START (which counts bombers, not their weapons, as one "warhead") is ~1,450. The last public Pentagon estimate of the total Chinese stockpile was "low 200s." https://t.co/WGjWEz6D4R

— Joseph Trevithick (@FranticGoat) March 9, 2021

Yeah the title is clickbait but this whole thing does raise an interesting point. Why do we have so many nukes? Is it possible that a form of savings could come from cutting our nuclear stockpile to a point where we could only destroy half the planet instead of the whole thing? I said that in jest but our numbers compared to those of our enemies (real or imagined) seems over the top. If we eliminated one or two legs of our retaliatory force then we would save billions. The weird thing is I don't even know if that includes weapons delivered by tactical aircraft! Add that to the mix and you're probably talking about enough money saved to fund our entire modernization efforts across ALL the services!