The U.S. Cooperative Threat Reduction program eliminated 10 submarine-launched ballistic missiles and secured four nuclear-weapon train shipments in April, U.S. Senator Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) announced Friday (see GSN, April 16).
(May. 26) -
U.S. Senator Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) displays a chemical munition at Russia's Shchuchye site in 2000. He is set to visit the site again this week to mark the opening of its chemical-weapon disposal facility (U.S. Senator Richard Lugar photo).
Since its inception in 1991 to secure and eliminate weapons of mass destruction in one-time Soviet states, the Nunn-Lugar program has deactivated 7,514 strategic nuclear warheads and destroyed 752 ICBMs, 498 ICBM silos, 143 mobile ICBM launchers, 643 submarine-launched ballistic missiles, 476 SLBM launchers, 31 ballistic missile-capable submarines, 155 strategic bombers, 906 nuclear air-to-surface missiles and 194 nuclear test tunnels.
In addition, the program has safeguarded 438 nuclear-weapon train shipments, boosted security at 24 nuclear weapons storage facilities and constructed 18 biological agent monitoring stations. It removed all nuclear weapons from Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus, nations that once respectively held the world's third-, fourth- and eighth-largest nuclear arsenals.
Lugar on Friday plans to attend the formal opening of Russia's Shchuchye chemical weapons disposal facility, which received significant financial assistance from the CTR program (see GSN, March 6). Russia is expected to drain roughly 2 million munitions containing warfare materials such as VX nerve agent, destroy the weapons and neutralize their chemical contents (U.S. Senator Richard Lugar release, May 22).