Can the United States maintain modern, effective, and reliable nuclear forces under New START?
Yes. “The reductions in this treaty will not affect the strength of our nuclear triad,” Gates said March 26. The Pentagon announced May 13 that it plans to meet the treaty’s limits and still deploy up to 420 Minuteman III Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs, each with a single warhead), 240 Trident Submarine-Launched Ballistic Missiles (SLBMs, each with multiple warheads), and up to 60 heavy bombers. Moreover, the Obama administration is planning to invest $80 billion over the next ten years on modernizing the National Nuclear Security Administration’s nuclear weapons production complex and refurbishing the nuclear stockpile, and an additional $100 billion over ten years to maintain and modernize strategic delivery systems. The U.S. nuclear weapons laboratories have sufficient resources to maintain the reliability of all current warhead types through the ongoing Life Extension Program (LEP). New-design warheads and the renewal of nuclear testing are technically unnecessary and w
