BREMERTON – The United States and Russia have pointed to the option of maintaining a treaty that limits their long-range nuclear forces, but many main points remain to be resolved until the end of the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty before its february expiration date. .
Without the new START, as we know, there are no limits to the strategic or far-range nuclear weapons that the United States and Russia can simply deploy, an end to decades of agreements in countries with maximum nuclear weapons.
The possible agreement calls for a one-year extension of the treaty signed through Presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev in 2010, but would charge a “freeze” on the progression of new strategic nuclear warheads, a “good step,” according to Daniel. Gerstein, senior policy researcher at RAND Corporation, added that there were other main points to be resolved.
“It’s hard to say what was agreed and it’s not transparent that a lot of paper has been published,” he said.
In the United States, many of the deployed nuclear cannons are rolling under the waves on submarines founded at kitsap-Bangor naval base. The 14 Ohio-class submarines, 8 of which are taken to Bangor, can attack when the country’s leaders request it. They have a payload of 20 missiles containing warheads with an explosive power of one hundred and 475 kilotons, more than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, at the end of World War II, which had a power of 15 kilotons.
The country’s nuclear-armed submarines are known as the maritime arm of the country’s “Strategic Nuclear Deterrence Triad,” which also includes ground-launched missiles and air force nuclear bombers across the country.
But the maritime stretch has the maximum of missiles and is “the maximum resistant”. Approximately 70% of the nuclear weapons deployed in the country are with submarines, and Bangor is the center of the country’s largest reserve.
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The new START not only limited Ohio-class ships to 20 of the 24 missiles they are capable of bringing, however, these non-proliferation treaties have also helped bring 4 Ohio-class submarines to life, adding the USS Michigan and Kings Bay. based in USS Ohio — to be changed in the 2000s to bring non-nuclear weaponry.
The two sides are cooperating with New START, and there have been no on-site inspections due to COVID-19 since April, knowledge exchanges and notifications continue between the two countries, according to Hans M. Kristensen, director of nuclear data allocation for the Federation of American Scientists.
Kristensen expects the treaty to expire.
“We can accept it as true for an extension of one year,” he said in an email in which he was sure that country verification measures would continue to work.
The new START caps applies to no more than 800 strategic nuclear weapons launchers, whether able to attack from ground sites, submarines or bombers, within this limit, no more than 700 strategic launchers can be deployed at any given time, with a maximum of 1,550 strategic warheads deployed on launchers at once.
Where the United States failed, Gerstein said, seeking to come up with other objectives in expansion: the ability to climb China to the new START and restrict tactical and smaller nuclear weapons under the agreement.
There is a growing fear that Russia has resorted to discussions in years about the use of nuclear weapons in combat, a view shared through the Trump administration, he noted.
“Now we treat them as a utility of war,” Gerstein said.
For example, following the Russian progression of “low-performance” warheads capable of an explosion of five to seven kiloton conflicts, the Ministry of Energy has developed its own, and is now deployed in the ballistic submarine fleet. the 1987 Intermediate Scope Nuclear Forces Treaty between the United States and Russia has also expired in recent years.
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Over the past decade, america’s nuclear arsenal has been in the middle of a nuclear weapon. But it’s not the first time It has undergone a major renovation. Under Obama’s leadership, a plan to modernize the country’s nuclear weapons was expected to charge about $1 trillion in 30 years, but the Congressional Budget Office estimated in 2019 that Trump’s management had increased that number by nearly a trillion over the next decade.
The Trump administration budgeted $15. 6 billion in 2021 for the Nuclear Security Administration’s nuclear weapons business, a 25% increase.
Gerstein believes there is something to maintain the country’s nuclear weapons arsenal.
“In general, other people think we’re going to have nuclear weapons in the foreseeable long term and we want to spend enough to keep them viable,” he said.
But he also believes that the new START was a success, as it held both sides at 1,550 deployed or long-range strategic warheads.
This is a much smaller number of nuclear weapons than at the height of the Cold War, when the United States and the Soviet Union had tens of thousands of weapons between them, including rear bombs that may have been used by paratroopers on enemy territory to blow infrastructure as bridges. But Gerstein points out that today’s weapons, less, are much more complex and precise.
Meanwhile, while negotiating the extension of the New START, Honduras on Saturday has become the 50th country to ratify the United Nations treaty “on the prohibition of nuclear weapons”. While this is unlikely to have an immediate effect on states with such weapons, it will mean that on 21 January 2021, nuclear weapons will be officially illegal in the eyes of the UN.
“Access to the validity of the Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty is the culmination of a global motion to draw attention to the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons,” Stephane Dujarric, spokesman for UN Secretary-General Guterres, said in a statement. It represents a significant commitment to the overall elimination of nuclear weapons, which remains the priority of United Nations disarmament.
The Ground Zero Centre for Nonviolent Action, founded in Poulsbo, a long-time activist organization that advocates for the abolition of nuclear weapons, said Monday that the UN treaty is a “great achievement. “
“There can be no winner in a nuclear war; faster or later, as long as nuclear weapons exist, they will be used, either by a twist of fate or intentionally, resulting in a humanitarian catastrophe,” Floor Zero spokesman Glen Milner said. It is time for the few nuclear-armed countries to join the vast majority of nations in detecting that nuclear weapons are illegitimate and unacceptable and adhere to the Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty. “
Josh Farley is a journalist for Kitsap Sun and can be reached at 360-792-9227, josh. farley@kitsapsun. com or on Twitter at @joshfarley.
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