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Recommendations to Prevent Catastrophic Threat
Only three days after the 2012 national election, FAS hosted a day-long symposium that featured distinguished speakers and provided recommendations to the Obama administration on how best to respond to catastrophic threats to national security at the National Press Club in Washington, DC.
These experts addressed the policy and technological aspects of conventional, nuclear, biological and chemical weapons; nuclear safety; electricity generation, distribution, and storage, and cyber security. These policy memoranda call for a coordinated national effort to prepare for, prevent and respond to catastrophic threats to the United States.
The SIPRI chapter describes the nuclear weapon modernization programs underway in each nuclear-armed state and provides estimates for how many nuclear warheads each country possesses.
FAS researchers Hans Kristensen and Matt Korda with the Nuclear Information Project write in the new SIPRI Yearbook 2024, released today.
The total number of U.S. nuclear warheads are now estimated to include 1,770 deployed warheads, 1,938 reserved for operational forces. An additional 1,336 retired warheads are awaiting dismantlement, for a total inventory of 5,044 warheads.
A military depot in central Belarus has recently been upgraded with additional security perimeters and an access point that indicate it could be intended for housing Russian nuclear warheads for Belarus’ Russia-supplied Iskander missile launchers.