Pits, it turns out, last for a very long time; the rest of the weapon, not so much. In fact, the facility at Y-12 that is charged with maintaining the W78s is apparently having horrible problems with the exotic materials inside of the physics package, and as a result isn’t actually having much success keeping the things in working order. Krank Munger has written several interesting blog posts and articles about it.

As for the point about non-strategic weapons, I completely agree and have to say even I was confused there. I wonder if it was a typo and they meant to say “strategic”. Strategic weapons clearly need to be eliminated.

I have a huge issue with this. Tactical nuclear weapons are by definition designed to be deployed against military targets, and a such offer the least expensive way to deter military action.

The big problem with a purely strategic nuclear weapons is that it leads to situations where a response may not be worth the risk of a full nuclear exchange. Recall that de Gaul felt that France needed nuclear weapons because he correctly pointed out France could not depend on the Americans to sacrifice New York to save Paris.

In fact if any class of nuclear weapons need to be retired it is the strategic arsenal, which has become worthless to all sides except to maintain a balance with other such arsenal; the only excuse to have them is to target the other side nuclear assets. The idea that any political or military objective can be met by breaking up the other sides cities is a holdover from the days when cities were the smallest target ICBMs and aircraft could reliably acquire over the distances involved. A staged multilateral reduction in land-base ICBMs is the most practical course of action this time.

I’m also not sure if canceling the RRW is necessarily such a great idea. Given the political realities surrounding the management of the US nuclear arsenal, it could play a useful role in gaining stockpile reductions–this is why the AAAS gave an open-ended assessment of the RRW program. At the same time, such a program should not go forward until a new strategic posture review has been made. Personally, I think that US arsenal reductions are more important than the loss of credibility that would be associated with new US weapons construction–no one seems to care that the Russians have never stopped warhead manufacture, or even really notice.

To be honest, I’m a pessimist. I think that a bilateral agreement to reduce US-Russian strategic arsenals to 1,000 warheads apiece is very achievable. But I don’t think that much real progress to the elimination of nuclear weapons is likely, especially given the extent to which the Russians have come to emphasize nuclear weapons in their defense posture. I have given the question of what it would take to convince the Russians to abandon nuclear weapons considerable thought, and I see no realistic solution. Until one is found, it makes more sense to concentrate on concrete, achievable goals, like bilateral arms limitations treaties, rather than on “visions of a nuclear weapons-free world” that have little bearing on political and strategic reality, either at home or abroad.