NEW START TREATY WITH RUSSIA TURNS 1

The New START Treaty celebrated its first birthday yesterday, and the State Department said this weekend that both the United States and Russia conducted the maximum 18 inspections of each other’s nuclear arsenals during the treaty’s first year. The State Department also said that the U.S. and Russia conducted 1,800 data exchanges during the treaty’s first year, and carried out three exhibitions required by the treaty, including Russia’s exhibition of the RS-24 mobile ICBM and its launcher in March which represented the first time the U.S. had a chance to see the ICBM. The U.S. exhibited the B-2A heavy bomber and demonstrated that the B-1B heavy bomber was no longer used for nuclear missions. The treaty will cap the strategic deployed nuclear arsenals of each country at 1,550 warheads; as of Sept. 1, 1,566 deployed nuclear weapons were attributed to Russia and 1,790 were attributed to the United States.