by Gabrielle Tarini Background The Ohio-Class Replacement program, also known as the SSBN(X), is a program to design and build a new class of 12 ballistic missile submarines to replace the U.S. Navy’s current force of 14 Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines. Ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs) form “the most survivable leg” of the U.S. nuclear […]
Los Angeles Times Story on Missile Defense Test Quotes Phil Coyle
$40-billion missile defense system proves unreliable By: David Willman June 15, 2014 With a convulsive rumble, followed by billowing flames and exhaust, a sleek 60-foot rocket emerged from its silo at California’s Vandenberg Air Force Base. It was a test of the backbone of the nation’s missile defense system. If North Korea or Iran ever […]
Associated Press Story on Missile Defense Quotes Phil Coyle
US missile defense system unreliable in tests. June 15, 2014 The U.S. missile defense system can’t be relied on to hit its targets even in scripted tests a decade after it was declared operational and despite $40 billion spent, according to a newspaper’s investigation. The Los Angeles Times found that officials overstated the reliability of […]
B61s in Europe: Sharing is Caring
One of the more glaring head-scratchers about U.S. nuclear policy is that we continue to forward deploy roughly 180 tactical B61s in Europe despite the fact that the military mission for which these weapons was originally intended – stopping a Soviet invasion of Western Europe because of inferior US/NATO conventional forces – no longer exists.
The promise of the Syrian chemical weapons plan
The Russia-US deal to eliminate Damascus’ stockpile has achieved a great deal—far more than the alternative would have accomplished, writes Kingston Reif in his June Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Column.