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.
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
CONFIDENT ON DEAL: ‘Ukraine wants a seat at the table, but wouldn’t the people of Ukraine have a say? It’s been a long time since an election, the US president said US President Donald Trump on Tuesday criticized Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and added that he was more confident of a deal to end the war after US-Russia talks. Trump increased pressure on Zelenskiy to hold elections and chided him for complaining about being frozen out of talks in Saudi Arabia. The US president also suggested that he could meet Russian President Vladimir Putin before the end of the month as Washington overhauls its stance toward Russia. “I’m very disappointed, I hear that they’re upset about not having a seat,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida when asked about the Ukrainian
RSS