I think throwing the "$100 billion over 50 years" number around is somewhat misleading without comparing to the cost of keeping Minuteman III alive for another

I think throwing the "$100 billion over 50 years" number around is somewhat misleading without comparing to the cost of keeping Minuteman III alive for another 50 years. Most of that cost is gonna be maintenance/sustainment/operations, which we're paying already for with the current squadrons. And it's possible (although I wouldn't count on it) that a new system would be more maintainable than the existing one. For example if keeping Minuteman III alive would've required the US to spend a billion dollars to build a new 5.5" floppy drive factory, that would give GBSD an opportunity to recoup some of the R&D costs