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Air Force Scraps Stealth Missile Fleet NewsMax.com Wires WASHINGTON -- The Air Force said Wednesday it will retire the most modern cruise missile in the U.S. nuclear arsenal, a "stealth" weapon developed in the 1980s with the ability to evade detection by Soviet radars. Known as the Advanced Cruise Missile, the weapon is carried by the B-52 bomber and was designed to attack heavily defended sites. It is the most capable among a variety of air-launched nuclear weapons built during the Cold War that remain in the U.S. inventory even as the Pentagon is reducing its overall nuclear arms stockpile. The Air Force had said as recently as February 2006 that it expected to keep the missile active until 2030. If the retirement is carried out as planned, the Advanced Cruise Missile will be the first group of U.S. nuclear weapons to be scrapped since the last of the Air Force's 50 MX Peacekeeper land-based missiles was retired in September 2005. The decision to retire the Advanced Cruise Missile fleet has not been publicly announced. It was brought to light by Hans M. Kristensen, director of the nuclear information project at the Federation of American Scientists. He noticed that funds for the program were cut in the Air Force budget request for 2008, and that no money is budgeted for it beyond 2008; when he inquired, the Air Force acknowledged the retirement decision. An Air Force spokeswoman, Maj. Morshe Araujo, confirmed it on Wednesday. She and other Air Force public affairs officials were unable to provide additional details, including the rationale for the decision. Araujo indicated that the retirement was part of a "balanced force reduction" being carried out to reduce the number of U.S. strategic nuclear weapons to between 1,700 and 2,200 by Dec. 31, 2012, as required under a U.S.-Russia arms reduction deal signed in Moscow in May 2002. Story Continues Below
The treaty does not require that any specific group of nuclear weapons be retired, only that the total number in the U.S. and Russian arsenals be cut to the prescribed range of 1,700-2,200. The Russians still have a nuclear-tipped cruise missile in active service, according to Robert S. Norris, an expert in American, Soviet and Chinese nuclear weapons. The decision to get rid of the Advanced Cruise Missile comes amid U.S. efforts to modernize what remains of the nuclear arsenal, even as it presses Iran and North Korea to abandon their nuclear programs. Last week the Bush administration took a major step toward building a new generation of nuclear warheads, selecting a design that is being touted as safer, more secure and more easily maintained than today's arsenal. A team of scientists from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory will proceed with the weapons design with an anticipation that the first warheads may be ready by 2012 as a replacement for Trident missiles on submarines. As a matter of policy the Defense Department does not confirm the location of nuclear weapons, but Kristensen and other private nuclear experts said the fleet of more than 400 Advanced Cruise Missiles is located at the only two B-52 bomber bases: Minot Air Force Base, N.D., and Barksdale Air Force Base, La. The Air Force originally planned to field 1,500 of the missiles, which were put on the drawing board in 1982 after U.S. officials determined that its predecessor, known as the AGM-86 air-launched cruise missile, which has no stealth capabilities, would soon be too easy to detect by air- and ground-based defenses. Kristensen said there are about 1,300 of the older air-launched nuclear cruise missiles still in the Air Force inventory. Norris, a nuclear weapons expert at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said it appears likely the Air Force will further shrink its inventory of air-launched nuclear weapons in the years ahead. He estimates that there are about 3,000 air-launched gravity bombs in the nuclear arsenal, based mostly in the United States. The other main element of the U.S. nuclear arsenal is the Navy's fleet of nuclear-armed Trident submarines. Norris estimates that the United States now has about 5,000 strategic nuclear weapons, including the Advance Cruise Missiles, so it will take further reductions to get down to the 1,700-2,200 level set by the 2002 treaty.
© 2007 Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Editor's note: Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
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