Global Security Newswire

The U.S. Cooperative Threat Reduction program since August has deactivated 48 strategic nuclear warheads, Senator Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) announced Friday (see GSN, Sept. 14).

The Nunn-Lugar effort in that period also eliminated four ICBMs and 16 submarine-launched ballistic missiles, safeguarded three nuclear arms train shipments and supported disposal of nearly 70 metric tons of chemical warfare agents.

Since being established in 1991 to secure and destroy weapons of mass destruction in former Soviet states, the CTR program has deactivated 7,599 strategic nuclear warheads and destroyed 791 ICBMs, 498 ICBM silos, 180 mobile ICBM launchers, 651 submarine-launched ballistic missiles, 492 SLBM launchers, 32 ballistic missile-capable submarines, 155 strategic bombers, 906 nuclear air-to-surface missiles and 194 nuclear test tunnels.

The effort has also provided for safeguards of 493 nuclear-weapon train shipments, boosted security at 24 nuclear weapons storage facilities and constructed 20 biological agent monitoring stations. It aided the removal of all nuclear weapons from Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus, nations that once respectively held the world's third-, fourth- and eighth-largest nuclear arsenals

The Nunn-Lugar program financially supported the elimination of Albania's small stockpile of chemical warfare materials, its first effort outside the former Soviet Union. The initiative has neutralized 1,569.5 metric tons of Russian and Albanian chemical agents (U.S. Senator Richard Lugar release, Oct. 22).