The Pentagon's top policy official tells AP that the U.S. military has deployed a new addition to its nuclear arsenal: a long-range missile armed with a nuclear warhead of reduced destructive power.
FILE - In this Jan. 9, 2008 photo released by the U.S. Navy, The Ohio-class ballistic-missile submarine USS Wyoming approaches Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay, Ga. The Pentagon's top policy official tells The Associated Press that the United States for the first time has deployed the newest addition to its nuclear arsenal — a submarine-launched weapon that the Trump administration says will make nuclear war less likely.
In confirming the missile deployment to The Associated Press, the Pentagon’s top policy official asserted that the weapon makes Americans safer by making nuclear war less likely. Critics, including some Democrats in Congress, call it a dangerous excess that increases the risk of war. Adding the W76-2 fits President Donald Trump’s stated interest in beefing up the nuclear arsenal, although he has not commented on this specific weapon. His administration is committed to a broader, costly modernization of the nuclear force.
The yield, or destructive power, of the W76-2 is classified. Experts say it may be about 5 kilotons, or roughly one-third the destructive power of the “Little Boy” nuclear bomb the United States dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, in the final days of World War II, killing tens of thousands of people. By comparison, the missile that has been deploying aboard strategic submarines for decades has carried the 90-kiloton W76 warhead and the 475-kiloton W88 warhead.
Rood noted that deploying the new lower-yield missiles has not increased the total number of American weapons under the New START limits because each of the warheads replaces one of the more powerful versions that had been exclusively deployed aboard the subs.
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