Russian Nuclear Weapons: Past, Present, and Future

taken place or are in the process of occurring as Russia
and the United States continue their decades’ long
practice of fielding fewer but more capable and versatile
nuclear systems. The new 1,550 limit for deployed
nuclear warheads on no more than 700 deployed
strategic nuclear delivery vehicles is lower than any
previous treaty, but each side possesses thousands of
additional warheads in storage, undergoing maintenance,
or in the form of shorter-range nuclear systems.
The 7-year implementation timeline gives Russia and
the United States ample time to gradually continue reducing
their totals while modernizing their remaining
arsenals. Furthermore, the provisions give Russia and
the United States considerable flexibility to determine
how to structure their nuclear arsenals within these
aggregate limits. Both sides can continue to keep a
strategic triad of ICBMs, SLBMs, and strategic bombers,
distributing the warheads among these three legs
as they prefer. The United States and Russia are even
allowed to keep an additional 100 non-deployed ICBM
and SLBM launchers and heavy bombers equipped
for nuclear armaments, a provision designed to deal
with the problem of the U.S. “phantom” systems—
those missile launchers and strategic bombers that are
no longer usable but still counted under the original
START, because they had not been eliminated according
to its procedures.
The treaty’s proposed verification regime would
be less intrusive and costly than the elaborate requirements
of the 1991 START Treaty, yet it still includes
on-site inspections of nuclear weapons facilities, mandated
exhibitions of delivery vehicles, obligatory exchanges
of data, and advanced notifications of some
activities related to Russian and American nuclear
weapons policies. Other provisions would facilitate
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