By Hans M. Kristensen Remember during the Cold War when US Navy warships and attack submarines sailed the World’s oceans bristling with nuclear weapons and routinely violated non-nuclear countries’ bans against nuclear weapons on their territories in peacetime? The weapons were onboard ballistic missile submarines, attack submarines, aircraft carriers, battleships, cruisers, destroyers, frigates and supply […]
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Video Shows Earth-Penetrating Capability of B61-12 Nuclear Bomb
By Hans M. Kristensen and Matthew McKinzie* The capability of the new B61-12 nuclear bomb seems to continue to expand, from a simple life-extension of an existing bomb, to the first U.S. guided nuclear gravity bomb, to a nuclear earth-penetrator with increased accuracy. The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) previously published pictures of the drop […]
Read MoreNorth Korea’s Fourth Nuclear Test: What Does it Mean?
By Charles D. Ferguson North Korea’s boast on January 5 about having detonated a “hydrogen bomb,” the colloquial name for a thermonuclear explosive, seems highly hyperbolic due to the relatively low estimated explosive yield, as inferred from the reported seismic magnitude of about 4.8 (a small- to moderately-sized event). More important, I think the Korean Central […]
Read MoreForget LRSO; JASSM-ER Can Do The Job
By Hans M. Kristensen Early next year the Obama administration, with eager backing from hardliners in Congress, is expected to commit the U.S. taxpayers to a bill of $20 billion to $30 billion for a new nuclear weapon the United States doesn’t need: the Long-Range Standoff (LRSO) air-launched cruise missile. The new nuclear cruise missile […]
Read MoreKalibr: Savior of INF Treaty?
By Hans M. Kristensen With a series of highly advertised sea- and air-launched cruise missile attacks against targets in Syria, the Russian government has demonstrated that it doesn’t have a military need for the controversial ground-launched cruise missile that the United States has accused Russia of developing and test-launching in violation of the 1987 Intermediate-Range […]
Read MoreAdjusting NATO’s Nuclear Posture
By Hans M. Kristensen The new Polish government caused a stir last weekend when deputy defense minister Tomasz Szatkowski said during an interview with Polsat News 2 that Poland was taking “concrete steps” to consider joining NATO’s so-called nuclear sharing program. The program is a controversial arrangement where the United States makes nuclear weapons available […]
Read MoreGeneral Cartwright Confirms B61-12 Bomb “Could Be More Useable”
By Hans M. Kristensen General James Cartwright, the former commander of U.S. Strategic Command and former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, confirmed in an interview with PBS Newshour that the increased accuracy of the new guided B61-12 nuclear bomb could make the weapon “more useable” to the president or national-security making process. […]
Read MoreNew Nuclear Notebook: Pakistani Nuclear Forces, 2015
By Hans M. Kristensen and Robert S. Norris In our latest FAS Nuclear Notebook we estimate that Pakistan now has 110-130 warheads in its nuclear arsenal. This is an increase of about 20 warheads from the 90-110-warhead level we estimated in our previous Pakistani Notebook in 2011. The Notebook is published as Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz […]
Read MoreLRSO: The Nuclear Cruise Missile Mission
By Hans M. Kristensen [Updated January 26, 2016] In an op-ed in the Washington Post, William Perry and Andy Weber last week called for canceling the Air Force’s new nuclear air-launched cruise missile. The op-ed challenged what many see as an important component of the modernization of the U.S. nuclear triad of strategic weapons and […]
Read MoreUS Drops Below New START Warhead Limit For The First Time
By Hans M. Kristensen The number of U.S. strategic warheads counted as “deployed” under the New START Treaty has dropped below the treaty’s limit of 1,550 warheads for the first time since the treaty entered into force in February 2011 – a reduction of 263 warheads over four and a half years. Russia, by contrast, […]
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