FY23 enacted levels come from FY24 President’s Budget documents and the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation’s Final Summary: Fiscal Year 2023 Omnibus Appropriations Bill Table numbers in parentheses are increases or decreases from the FY23 Enacted Level unless otherwise specified. Numbers may not add up due to rounding Total National Defense Discretionary Spending Request […]
Fact Sheet: Thermonuclear Weapons
Thermonuclear weapons, sometimes referred to as Hydrogen, or “H-bombs,” utilize both atomic fission and nuclear fusion to create an explosion. The combination of these two processes releases massive amounts of energy, hundreds to thousands of times more powerful than an atomic bomb. Origins Development of the hydrogen bomb dates to the 1940s during The Manhattan […]
Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I)
The Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I), signed in 1991, was a bilateral arms control treaty between the United States and the Soviet Union. The result of the agreement was the first significant reduction in the number of strategic nuclear weapons in both the U.S. and the Soviet stockpiles. It entered into force in 1994, […]
2022 Nuclear Posture Review
On October 27, 2022, the Biden administration released the unclassified version of its 2022 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR). The document states that nuclear weapons provide a unique deterrent that no other element of U.S. military power can replace and that a safe, secure, and effective nuclear deterrent undergirds all U.S. national defense priorities. The NPR […]
LANL remains key part of U.S. nuclear weapons plan
Policy Analyst Monica Montgomery spoke with the Santa Fe New Mexican about what the new Biden Nuclear Posture Review means for plutonium pit production and the future of a nuclear complex site in New Mexico. “Biden administration officials have recognized the infeasibility of reaching 80 pits per year by 2030 and have not yet set […]
