A couple of weeks ago came news that Electric Boat has completed the first phase of its new construction facility at Quonset Point in Rhode Island that will produce the missile sections of the next generation of submarine “boomers.”

The world hopes that it will never hear the “boom” these submarines would produce. The original Ohio-class Trident submarines date to 1980 when the USS Ohio began its sea trials. It was a Cold War doomsday machine. With 24 missiles, each equipped with multiple warheads, the Tridents were the sea-based component of the nuclear weapon triad that also included land-based missiles and Air Force bombers.

They comprised the aptly named MAD strategy — Mutually Assured Destruction — that discouraged both the United States and its ideological nemesis, the Soviet Union, from considering a first-strike nuclear attack. There was no way to knock out all the enemy’s nuclear weapons, assuring any attack would invite a devastating nuclear response.

While the Cold War is over, the triad lives on. Stealthily navigating the oceans, military planners consider the Tridents a particularly important leg because of their invulnerability. EB built 14 of them.

They are now reaching their functional age limits. The Navy wants to build 12 new generation ballistic missile submarines to replace them. Congress having approved about $1.2 billion for design work, EB engineers are going full-speed ahead with planning. It would cost about 100 times that number to build the submarines.

Post-Cold War, when the nation’s primary concern is terrorist networks and Islamic State warriors traveling across deserts in modified pick-up trucks, the question is whether the United States needs 12 new ballistic missile submarines? Can the nation afford them?

The answer around these parts and from the state’s politicians in Washington is, of course, “Yes!” EB, with its Groton shipyard and New London engineering offices, is the driving force in the region’s otherwise moribund economy. The Ohio-replacement program assures growth for EB, and for the contractors feeding into it, for a very long time.

However, if the nation is going to undertake construction of a dozen of the most expensive marine vessels ever built, it should do so because it makes military and fiscal sense, not because it is a jobs’ program.

There is little debate in military circles about whether the nation needs a new generation of ballistic missile submarines. Russia still has a vast nuclear arsenal and has been acting more like the old Soviet Union lately. The expansion of China’s military continues. And the number of nuclear-armed nations is growing.

Having ballistic missile submarines capable of launching a devastating nuclear response is good insurance to discourage any sane leaders from attacking us, or our allies, with nuclear weapons. They should become the dominant leg of the triad.

The question is how many.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates building 12 new boomers will cost more than $100 billion, crowding out other Navy programs. At the current cost of doing business, you could run Connecticut for five years on $100 billion. Planners estimate the first such submarine will cost $12 billion.

U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney, though a Democrat serving in the Republican-controlled House, has done a great job as a member of the House Armed Services Committee fighting for EB programs. He recognizes a budget-buster when he sees one, however, and with other members of the Connecticut delegation has pushed to fund the Ohio-replacement plan as a special program, separate from the Navy budget.

The political calculation is that senators and congressmen who support Navy programs in their districts will be more likely to support the Ohio-replacement effort if it is not taking a bigger slice from the Navy-budget pie. Practically speaking, it is a shell game. No matter how the pie is sliced, there is only so much that can be spent on military priorities.

Whether to build fewer new boomers is a decision that should be made early in the construction process. Would six doomsday submarines offer sufficient deterrence? Or perhaps would eight, as suggested by the Congressional Budget Office to reduce costs.

Adm. Cecil D. Haney, Commander of U.S. Strategic Command, insists 12 is the number, providing enough flexibility to keep a deterrent fleet in the world’s oceans even when submarines are down for maintenance, visiting port or otherwise unavailable.

That may be the case. Perhaps the country will have to figure out how to afford this. But here in southeastern Connecticut we should recognize that there will be a debate and, more importantly, there should be a debate.