What does this mean for the immediate future of the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile?
The number of weapons is going down. President Bush has cut the overall stockpile in half since he came into office 5 years ahead of schedule — with another 15% scheduled by 2012. In addition, as General Chilton mentioned earlier in the week, the Moscow Treaty levels of 1700-2200 operationally deployed weapons will be met 2 years early in 2010. Again, its my job to dismantle these weapons, and it has been a priority of mine to do this as quickly and safely as possible. NNSA increased its rate of dismantled weapons by 20% over last years level, which is on top of a 146% increase from the year before that. Over three times our goal! We plan to consolidate where we keep high-security special nuclear material. We have already removed quantities of material requiring high-level, and expensive, security from Sandia National Laboratories. And we have begun the process of removing this material from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. As most of you know, this has been one of my prioritie
