The US Air Force announced on Wednesday that it will retire the most modern cruise missile in the US nuclear arsenal, a "stealth" weapon developed in the 1980s with the ability to evade detection by Soviet radars.
Known as the Advanced Cruise Missile, the weapon is carried by the B-52 bomber and was designed to attack heavily defended sites. It is the most capable among a variety of air-launched nuclear weapons built during the Cold War that remain in the US inventory even as the Pentagon is reducing its overall nuclear arms stockpile.
The Air Force had said as recently as February last year that it expected to keep the missile active until 2030.
If the retirement is carried out as planned, the Advanced Cruise Missile will be the first group of US nuclear weapons to be scrapped since the last of the Air Force's 50 MX Peacekeeper land-based missiles was retired in September 2005.
The decision to retire the fleet has not been announced. It was brought to light by Hans Kristensen, director of the nuclear information project at the Federation of American Scientists.
He noticed that money for the program was cut in the Air Force budget request for next year, and no money is budgeted for it beyond next year; when he inquired, the Air Force acknowledged the retirement decision.
An Air Force spokeswoman, Major Morshe Araujo, confirmed it on Wednesday. She and other Air Force public affairs officials were unable to provide additional details, including the rationale for the decision.
Araujo indicated that the retirement was part of a "balanced force reduction" being carried out to reduce the number of US strategic nuclear weapons to between 1,700 and 2,200 by Dec. 31, 2012, as required under a US-Russian arms reduction deal signed in Moscow in May 2002.
The treaty does not require that any specific group of nuclear weapons be retired, only that the total number in the US and Russian arsenals be cut to the prescribed range of 1,700-2,200. The Russians still have a nuclear-tipped cruise missile in active service, according to Robert Norris, an expert in American, Soviet and Chinese nuclear weapons.
The Defense Department does not confirm the location of nuclear weapons, but private nuclear experts said the fleet of more than 400 Advanced Cruise Missiles is at the nation's two B-52 bomber bases.
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