The U.S. Cooperative Threat Reduction program dismantled a ballistic-missile submarine from the former Soviet Union in September, U.S. Senator Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) announced yesterday (see GSN, Sept. 29).
(Oct. 23) -
U.S. Senator Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) poses near a Soviet Typhoon-class submarine at Russia's Sevmash shipyard in 1999. The Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction program dismantled one of the ballistic-missile submarines last month (U.S. Senator Richard Lugar photo).
The vessel was the third Typhoon-class submarine and the 32nd nuclear weapon-capable submarine destroyed under the Nunn-Lugar initiative. Each Typhoon-class submarine, the largest built by any nation, was capable of launching as many as 200 independently targeted nuclear warheads on its ballistic missiles.
In addition, the CTR program eliminated 12 ICBMs last month and secured five nuclear-weapon transport trains.
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 767 ICBMs, 498 ICBM silos, 143 mobile ICBM launchers, 651 submarine-launched ballistic missiles, 476 SLBM launchers, 32 ballistic missile-capable submarines, 155 strategic bombers, 906 nuclear air-to-surface missiles and 194 nuclear test tunnels.
In addition, the program has safeguarded 463 nuclear-weapon train shipments, boosted security at 24 nuclear weapons storage facilities and constructed 18 biological agent monitoring stations. It helped to remove all nuclear weapons from Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus, nations that once respectively held the world's third-, fourth- and eighth-largest nuclear arsenals (U.S. Senator Richard Lugar release, Oct. 22).