nuclear-news

What the new Nuclear Arms Reduction Treaty says

What’s Inside the New Nuke Arms Treaty , Wired.com,  By Spencer Ackerman

• December 21, 2010 Back from the brink of annihilation, the Obama administration’s treaty with Russia on reducing nuclear weapons is looking like it’ll pass the Senate after all, possibly as early as Wednesday. The only thing that everyone’s overlooked in the past several months’ political theater over the treaty is what it actually does — and doesn’t do. So we’re here to help. The headlines first: New START caps strategic nuclear warheads as 1550 on each side. (According to the nuke wonks at the Ploughshares Fund, the Russians have 2600 strategic nuclear weapons and the U.S. has just under 2000.) The intercontinental ballistic missiles, subs and bombers that deliver them have to be capped at 800 deployed and non-deployed launchers. By most arms-control experts’ accounts, these are pretty modest cuts, still allowing each side to incinerate the earth several times over.

  Additionally, every year, each side will conduct 18 on-site inspections at places where those warheads and delivery vehicles are stored. That’s ten annual inspections fewer than under the old treaty, but more data is extracted from each inspection:

What’s Inside the New Nuke Arms Treaty | Danger Room | Wired.com

December 22, 2010 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Russia, USA, weapons and war