U.S. Nuclear Weapons

The Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) as envisioned by the Bush administration is effectively dead. This past fall, for the second year in a row, the Democratic Congress zeroed out funding for the RRW program despite Bush administration claims that extending the life of the current warhead types in the U.S. nuclear stockpile would, at some distant point in the future, lead to a sharp uptick in aging-related defects. (Continue)

In an October 28 speech to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace entitled "Nuclear Weapons and Deterrence in the 21st Century," Secretary of Defense Robert Gates noted the continued importance of U.S. nuclear weapons for deterring possible opponents and for reassuring allies that they do not need to develop their own weapons. He argued that, to carry out these responsibilities, a Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) as well as a modernized complex for nuclear weapons that would allow the building of new weapons without nuclear explosion testing are needed. (Continue)

As lawmakers rushed to leave Washington before November’s general elections, they passed two bills setting new Pentagon spending policies and totals for fiscal year 2009, which began Oct. 1. They also extended the previous fiscal year’s funding levels for the U.S. nuclear weapons complex. Those legislative moves shifted and reduced expenditures for anti-missile programs, cut spending for non-nuclear global strike weapons, and denied funding for a controversial program to research a new generation of nuclear warheads. Congress also ordered a series of reports on issues ranging from the status of Iran’s nuclear weapons capabilities to U.S. space policy. (Continue)

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in September that the Bush administration will leave the proliferation “situation…in far better shape than we found it.” If only this were true. Instead, Bush officials leave office like financiers fleeing busted Wall Street banks, with precious assets squandered on risky ventures, once-solid institutions crumbling, surpluses turned into gaping deficits, and a string of problems mismanaged into crises that threaten to bring down a decades-old global regime. (Continue)