by Kingston Reif and Usha Sahay Outside of Congress, there is a strong consensus among security experts of both parties that the U.S. arsenal of approximately 5,000 nuclear weapons, deployed and in storage, greatly exceeds American security requirements. Inside of Congress, however, nuclear weapons have been subject to the same grinding partisanship as most important policy […]
Pentagon pushes for billions to refurbish nuclear bombs
by Kingston Reif Published in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists Online on October 25, 2013. Article summary below; read the full text here. At an estimated cost of more than $11 billion, the life-extension program for the B61 bomb would be the most ambitious and expensive nuclear warhead refurbishment in history. Concerned by this massive […]
Navy Tries a Budget Sleight-of-Hand to Pay for Ballistic Missile Submarines
by Kingston Reif The budget busting Ohio class submarine replacement program is fast becoming a roaring migraine headache for the US Navy. In an attempt to skirt the pain caused by the program’s enormous price tag, estimated to be over $100 billion, the Navy and its supporters in Congress are insisting that the program be […]
Fact Sheet: U.S. Border Security and WMD TERRORISM PREVENTION PROJECT
In late August ABC news successfully shipped a 15 pound cylinder of depleted uranium from Jakarta, Indonesia to the United States through the Port of Los Angeles. The shipment has raised serious questions about the ability of customs officials to secure U.S. borders against weapons of mass destruction. Below are questions and answers on U.S. […]
Fact Sheet: The History of Global Nuclear Stockpiles
By Lesley McNiesh *When the Soviet Union dissolved, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine inherited the nuclear weapons that had been stored on their territory. However, all three states agreed to return these weapons to Russia, with Ukraine being the last to do so in 1994. **South Africa had an extremely secretive nuclear program in the 1980’s. […]
