The United States has an estimated 4,650 nuclear warheads available for delivery by more than 800 ballistic missiles and aircraft. Approximately 2,700 retired but still intact warheads await dismantlement, for a total inventory of roughly 7,400 warheads. The stockpile includes an estimated 2,130 operational warheads, about 1,150 on submarine-launched ballistic missiles and 470 on intercontinental ballistic missiles. Roughly 300 strategic warheads are located at bomber bases in the United States, and nearly 200 nonstrategic warheads are deployed in Europe. Another 2,530 warheads are in storage. To comply with New START, the United States is expected to eliminate land-based missile silos, reduce the number of launch tubes on its missile submarines,

and limit its inventory of nuclear-capable bombers in coming years. Coinciding with a revised nuclear weapons strategy, the Obama administration is also planning an upgrade of all nuclear weapons systems. The three-decade-long plan would cost more than $200 billion in the first decade alone.

In their preview of their April 27, 2014 show CBS 60 Minutes worried that our ICBMs could not be recalled if launched and since they were deployed in known locations might better be eliminated. In so doing, they joined a long parade of efforts to diminish our nuclear deterrent, but they did so ironically just at a time when world geostrategic events, if anything, require a stronger and more effective American deterrent.

The world's five nuclear powers announced on Tuesday they had agreed to never use their atomic arms against five Central Asian countries.

"The early hours of July 21!" That was the recent prediction of a European diplomat involved in the multilateral, multi-stage talks with Iran over the country's nuclear programme. The target date for a deal is July 20. The little joke embedded in the diplomat's forecast was that past experience suggests that the talks will go right down to the wire and then a few hours beyond, as the sides jostle for last-gasp advantage, before concluding in the middle of the night.

Construction will continue this year at a nuclear reactor fuel project at the Savannah River Site, but plans to mothball the multibillion dollar program eventually are still in the works, federal authorities said Tuesday.

On 15 January, 2014, Acting Administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration, Bruce Held, requested Thom Mason, director of Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), to lead a "project peer review" of the Uranium Processing Facility. Twenty-five reviewers were recruited from across the US Department of Energy and National Nuclear Security Administration enterprise to conduct the study and this team was supported by subject matter experts from ORNL and informed by contractor and federal staff from the Y-12 National Security Complex. The linked report is the result of this endeavor.  

When the National Nuclear Security Administration's Uranium Processing Facility pricetag threatened to break the $20 billion barrier, NNSA Administrator Bruce Held set up a Hail Mary play-he appointed a "Red Team" to review the project and propose alternatives that would address the need to relocate weapon production activities from the deteriorating 9212 Complex at the Y12 Nuclear Weapons Complex sooner rather than later and rein in the runaway cost estimates.

As President Obama heads to Asia, strategic patience in Washington is stirring strategic impatience in Pyongyang. For over a year North Korea has waited for the United States to resume negotiations-but it will wait no longer. It has restarted its reactor to generate more plutonium, is close to completing a new reactor, and is expanding its uranium enrichment. It has test launched two medium-range missiles and has displayed new, untested longer-range missiles starting in 2010. Worst of all, indications are that it will very soon conduct a nuclear test that breaks with the past, both militarily and politically.

CRS report prepared for members and committees of the US Congress. 

House Armed Services Committee Republicans are pushing back against the Obama administration's plans to delay selected efforts to modernize the U.S. nuclear arsenal.