NATO announced Monday that it had started its annual nuclear exercise code-named Steadfast Noon. The week-long exercise is taking place over Southern Europe and involves aircraft and personnel from 14 NATO countries. According to the NATO statement, “Steadfast Noon involves training flights with dual-capable fighter jets, as well as conventional jets, backed by surveillance and […]
The Biden administration yesterday afternoon declassified the number of nuclear weapons the United States possesses. The act reverses the secrecy of the Trump administration, which denied release of the number for three years, and restores the nuclear transparency of the Obama administration.
For more than a decade, Washington has struggled to prioritize what it calls great power competition with China — a contest for military and political dominance. President Biden has been working hard to make the pivot to Asia that his two predecessors never quite managed. The landmark defense pact with Australia and Britain, AUKUS, that […]
Read the full report PDF here. Summary Depending on how it is defined, sole purpose could have transformational effects on nearly every aspect of nuclear weapons policy or relatively modest effects. It could accommodate or incorporate a range of related policy options, like a deterrence-only posture or no first use. In January 2021, President Biden […]
How can US officials assure allies that Biden’s sole purpose policy will increase their security, not decrease it?
The Chinese missile silo program constitutes the most extensive silo construction since the US and Soviet missile silo construction during the Cold War.
One of the stranger features of nuclear weapons secrecy is the government’s ability to reach out and classify nuclear weapons-related information that has been privately generated without government involvement. This happened most recently in 2001. The roots of this constitutionally questionable policy are investigated in Restricted Data, a book by science historian Alex Wellerstein that sheds new light […]
The first public release of New START aggregate numbers since the United States and Russia in February extended the agreement for five years shows the treaty continues to limit the two nuclear powers strategic offensive nuclear forces. Continued adherence to the New START limits is one of the few positive signs in the otherwise frosty […]
The Pentagon is currently planning to replace its current arsenal of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) with a brand-new missile force, known as the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent.
[Article updated May 11, 2021] The United Kingdom announced yesterday that it has decided to abandon a previous plan to reduce it nuclear weapons stockpile to 180 by the mid-2020s and instead “move to an overall nuclear weapon stockpile of no more than 260 warheads.” The decision makes Britain the first Western nuclear-armed state to […]
The Pentagon’s case for the ICBM replacement program, known as the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD) needs to be reevaluated in light of cost escalation and surrounding budgetary pressures.
Updated below For the past three years, the Trump Administration refused to provide an annual tally of the number of nuclear weapons in the U.S. nuclear stockpile or the number of weapons that had been dismantled each year, though that had been the practice under the Obama Administration and through 2017. The Federation of American Scientists […]