Brian Bradley
NS&D Monitor
3/13/2015
The U.S. currently possesses about 7,100 total nuclear warheads, including 2,340 retired and under Department of Energy custody, about 2,080 deployed and about 2,680 in storage, according to a report recently released by the Federation of American Scientists (FAS). “At the beginning of 2015, the U.S. Defense Department maintained a stockpile of an estimated 4,760 nuclear warheads for delivery by more than 800 ballistic missiles and aircraft,” the report states. “The stockpile did not shrink significantly over the last year, but has shrunk by roughly 350 warheads compared with September 2009 when the United States announced that the nuclear arsenal contained 5,113 warheads.” The Administration last declassified the size of the stockpile in April of last year, announcing it had 4,804 warheads. That figure does not include retired warheads.
Authored by the Director of FAS’ Nuclear Information Project Hans Kristensen and Dr. Robert Norris, the report also notes that the Ohio-class Replacement will weigh 2,000 tons more than the current Ohio-class. The U.S. ballistic missile submarine fleet celebrated its 4,000th deterrent patrol since first deployed with nuclear missiles in 1960, and the report states the yearly number of SSBN patrols has dropped by more than 56 percent in 15 years, from 64 patrols in 1999 to fewer than 30 in 2014. More than 60 percent of the patrols occur in the Pacific Ocean, which reflects nuclear war planning against Russia, China and North Korea, according to the report.
