By Hans M. Kristensen The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has published its long-awaited Stockpile Stewardship and Management Plan (SSMP) for Fiscal Year 2018. The SSMP is NNSA’s 25-year strategic program of record. I’ll leave it to others to analyze the infrastructure and fissile material portions and focus on the nuclear weapons life-extension programs (LEPs) […]
The President’s authority to use nuclear weapons — which is the subject of a congressional hearing today before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee — was addressed in several recent publications of the Congressional Research Service. A new CRS Legal Sidebar addresses the unresolved question: Can Congress Limit the President’s Power to Launch Nuclear Weapons? A detailed new […]
Two USAF B-1B Lancer bombers fly alongside a JASDF F-2 over the East China Sea, October 21, 2017. Photo: PACAF, http://www.pacaf.af.mil/News/Photos/igphoto/2001830673/ By Adam Mount As the Trump administration has prioritized North Korea, it has expanded military exercises around the peninsula to attempt to coerce the regime and assure US allies in Seoul and Tokyo. Perhaps […]
A new report by the U.S. Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that the current plan to sustain and modernize US nuclear forces will cost $1.2 trillion over the next 30 years – or $41.4 billion per year. A study by the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in 2014 projected the cost would be “over $1 […]
By Hans M. Kristensen NATO reportedly has quietly started its annual Steadfast Noon nuclear strike exercise in Europe. This is the exercise that practices NATO’s nuclear strike mission with dual-capable aircraft (DCA) and the B61 tactical nuclear bombs the US deploys in Europe. In addition to nuclear-capable aircraft from Belgium, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands, local […]
By Hans M. Kristensen According to an NBC News report, President Donald Trump said during a meeting at the Pentagon on July 20 that “he wanted what amounted to a nearly tenfold increase in the U.S. nuclear arsenal,” according to three officials who were in the room. Trump’s statement came in response to a chart […]
By Hans M. Kristensen The United States has now reached the limits for all three weapons categories under the New START treaty. The latest data published by the State Department shows that the United States for the first time since the treaty entered into force in 2011 has reached the limit of 800 deployed and […]
The goal of this Task Force report is to offer findings and make recommendations regarding nonproliferation monitoring and verification in general; our observations are grounded in large part on the Task Force’s continued attention to nonproliferation developments such as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) between the P5+1 and Iran, nuclear developments in North […]
A so-called loophole might allow a non-nuclear weapon state (NNWS) to use a naval reactor program to acquire nuclear weapons by taking nuclear material outside of safeguards and then potentially diverting some of that material. Additionally, nuclear-armed states with nuclear-powered warships might use their naval reactor programs to justify keeping a substantial inventory of highly […]
By Hans M. Kristensen The U.S. Air Force National Air and Space Intelligence Center (NASIC) has quietly published a corrected report on the world’s Ballistic and Cruise Missile Threats that deletes a previously identified Russian ground-launched cruise missile. The earlier version, published on June 26, 2017, identified a “ground” version of the 3M-14 land-attack cruise […]
This report examines the nuclear dynamics and implications for strategic relations in a world where four nuclear-armed states are developing strategic ballistic missile defenses (BMD). These states are the United States, Russia, China, and India. Each state appears to have the common rationale of wanting at least limited protection against ballistic missile attacks, and all […]
By Hans M. Kristensen While defense hawks try to block funding for implementing the US-Russian New START treaty, the US military is making rapid process toward meeting the treaty limits by February 2018. The latest full declassified aggregate data for the US force structure under New START shows that both the ICBMs and bombers appear […]