U.S. to Reduce Nuclear Stockpile

By Elaine M. Grossman
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — The White House announced yesterday that President George W. Bush has decided to reduce the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile by an additional 15 percent by 2012 (see GSN, June 7).

The new retirements come on top of those already undertaken over the past three years.  In 2004, Bush said the United States would cut its arsenal — which includes a vast number of warheads in storage — in half by 2012 (see GSN, June 4, 2004).

However, the nuclear agency has retired weapons much more swiftly than anticipated and now expects to achieve the 50 percent reduction before the end of this year, Thomas D’Agostino, head of the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration, said at a press conference earlier in the day.

Having achieved that milestone five years early, Bush has approved a plan to trim roughly another one-sixth off the total arsenal, the NNSA administrator explained.

“This means the U.S. nuclear stockpile will be less than one-quarter of its size from the end of the Cold War,” D’Agostino said.  “That’s quite significant.”

The baseline dates back to 2001, when the arsenal numbered approximately 10,500 warheads, according to Hans Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists.  In 2012, if all the reductions are made, the United States would have roughly 4,600 warheads left in the arsenal, he said.

The U.S. government has not disclosed nuclear weapons stockpile figures, which remain classified.

Kristensen estimates that today’s nuclear arsenal includes approximately 9,900 weapons.  Of the total, roughly 4,600 are operationally deployed on delivery systems including land-based ICBMs, submarine-based missiles and aircraft-delivered bombs, Kristensen said.

The new 15 percent reduction translates to about 800 more warheads taken out of the fleet, according to nuclear experts.  It remains unclear if any of the retired warheads would come from weapon systems that are operationally deployed today.

The cuts reflect a shift in administrative control over selected warheads from the Defense Department to the Energy Department’s semiautonomous nuclear agency, an NNSA official told Global Security Newswire following the announcement.

“The 15-percent reduction describes a reduction in the total number of warheads in the stockpile that will be retired and scheduled for transfer from the Department of Defense to the National Nuclear Security Administration,” said John Broehm, an NNSA spokesman.

However, there may be little or no physical movement of the transferred weapons for years to come, Kristensen said.  Many of the reduced weapons would remain in storage at military bases across the United States beyond 2012 because the nuclear agency lacks sufficient space for them at its own facilities, he said.

By the same token, only a small fraction of retired warheads are likely to actually be dismantled by 2012, said Kristensen, who directs his organization’s Nuclear Information Project. 

“What this [reduction announcement] means is they’ve opened the lock to the DOD stockpile and they’ve transferred ownership of those ‘cut’ weapons to the Department of Energy,” he told GSN.  “This is housecleaning.  We’re cleaning up our organizational custody of these weapons and transferring them from one sheet of paper to the next.”

By contrast, under the warhead dismantlement project, just “a few hundred” weapons have been destroyed to date at the Pantex plant near Amarillo, where U.S. nuclear weapons are assembled and disassembled, he said.

However, the NNSA warhead disassembly effort will be performed at “a significantly faster pace” in the coming years, the agency said in a statement posted online yesterday.  Broehm, the agency spokesman, would not confirm how many warheads are being dismantled each year, saying the figures remain secret.

He did say, though, that it could take another 16 years to complete destruction of those warheads retired under the 50 percent reduction project.  It remains uncertain how much longer it might take to dismantle the warheads comprising the additional 15 percent cut, Broehm said.

His agency has told Congress that, subject to available funds, it “would complete dismantlement of those warheads planned for retirement as of the beginning of [fiscal] 2007 before [fiscal] 2023,” Broehm said in a written response to questions. 

“The planning for the dismantlement of additional quantities has not been finalized,” he added.  “Our ability to accomplish some dismantlements, or to accelerate our dismantlement plans, is related to our plans for revitalization of the facilities needed for our uranium and plutonium operations.”

“It’s great that they’re speeding up the formal transition,” Kristensen said during a Tuesday phone interview.  “But we’re not talking about these weapons having been destroyed.”

At the press conference, D’Agostino said Bush decided to make the cuts unilaterally, without seeking comparable warhead retirements from Russia.

“This is not a quid pro quo.  We’re not expecting the Russians or demanding or asking the Russians to take a similar stand,” D’Agostino said.  The United States wants to “make sure that it’s clear to the world from a leadership perspective that we are interested in reducing the global nuclear danger,” he said.

At the same time, D’Agostino noted that leaders in Moscow “have been watching” as the U.S. nuclear force posture evolves “and they will take their actions, as needed.”

Jeffrey Lewis, an arms control expert at the New America Foundation, called the additional reductions a “welcome” development.  However, he added, “it doesn't change the fundamental debate about the purpose of the U.S. nuclear arsenal … and whether we need thousands or hundreds of warheads or how large our weapons complex should be.”

The new warhead reductions were announced as D’Agostino outlined his plans for a broad “transformation” of the nation’s nuclear weapons infrastructure (see GSN, Dec. 3).

The agency described “Complex Transformation” as its “vision for a smaller, safer, more secure and less expensive nuclear weapons complex that leverages the scientific and technical capabilities of our work force and meets national security requirements.”

Over the next decade, the agency proposes to consolidate its facilities, reducing the square footage of its nuclear weapons infrastructure by 30 percent.  The complex currently includes eight major facilities, including laboratories, weapons assembly plants and test sites.

The nuclear agency would also cut its work force by 20 to 30 percent, mostly through retirements.  A detailed version of the draft plan is to be released in January.

D’Agostino made a point of noting that neither the warhead reductions nor his draft proposal for consolidating the weapons complex depend on whether plans for the controversial Reliable Replacement Warhead go forward (see GSN, Aug. 1).

The Bush administration would like to see a variety of replacement warheads eventually renovate the entire nuclear stockpile, officials have said.  However, the warhead has encountered heavy resistance in Congress, which this week zeroed funding for the project in an omnibus appropriations bill (see GSN, Dec. 18).

“There [is a] very important role for RRW to play in potentially a future stockpile, particularly [given] the safety and security features and capabilities that it brings.  However, this is not about RRW,” said D’Agostino, referring to the weapons complex plan.  “This is about transforming and making sure that our nuclear weapons infrastructure is actually sized and more geared towards future, sustainable missions.”

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