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U.S. Considers Keeping Multiple Warheads on ICBMs
The U.S. Defense Department is considering preserving up to 800 nuclear warheads on the U.S. arsenal of 500 Minuteman 3 ICBMs, the Oakland Tribune reported this week (see GSN, Sept. 26, 2003). In a never-ratified strategic arms control treaty signed in 1993, the United States and Russia agreed to eliminate all multiple-warhead, land-based strategic missiles, in part by converting some to carry single warheads, according to the Tribune. However, Russia declared the document void after the United States pulled out from the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty in 2002 (see GSN, June 14, 2002). That freed Moscow to preserve its own multiple-warhead, land-based ICBMs, most of which are aimed at the United States. Similarly, the U.S. Minuteman missiles are largely aimed over the North Pole at Russian ICBM facilities, the Tribune reported. Pentagon officials confirmed that maintaining multiple warheads on Minuteman 3s is being considered as part of a large review of U.S. strategic forces, the Tribune reported. “According to the war we’re looking at that, we’re looking at eventually ... 500 missiles that could be uploaded to as many as 800 warheads,” Gen. Robert Smolen, Air Force director of nuclear and counterproliferation, told Air Force Magazine last July. “So somewhere in that mix of 500 is 800. And it could be one on some, two one another, three on another,” he said. The plan to preserve the 800 warheads on the 500 Minuteman 3s could be affected by the U.S.-Russian Strategic Offensive Reduction Treaty, which calls for both the United States and Russia to reduce their “operationally deployed” nuclear weapons to no more than 2,200 by the end of 2012, according to the Tribune. To meet the treaty requirements, the United States could choose to maintain one weapon per each Minuteman 3 and keep the remaining 300 in reserve. Otherwise, the United States would have to eliminate 300 other nuclear weapons, the Tribune reported (Ian Hoffman, Oakland Tribune, March 22).
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