Defense: Breaking yet another promise, this one to Congress, the administration jeopardizes our national security with plans to eliminate an entire squadron of intercontinental ballistic missiles and destroy its silos.
Yet another example of what President Obama meant in 2012 when he promised Russian President Dmitry Medvedev at the Nuclear Security Summit in Seoul, South Korea, that after his re-election he would have more "flexibility" on defense issues, comes on the news that an ICBM squadron would be scrapped to comply with the New START Treaty — even as both the Russians and Chinese deploy new ballistic missiles.
A document prepared by the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) and obtained by the Washington Free Beacon maps out a strategy to eliminate an ICBM squadron — and destroy its missile silos — by Dec. 5, 2017.
The military would begin removing ICBMs next October, after an environmental assessment is complete, and the silo elimination would begin in May 2016.
The fact is, as the Heritage Foundation notes, the U.S. does not need to eliminate an ICBM squadron to meet New START's limits. The State Department's Oct. 1 fact sheet says the U.S. must dismantle 109 of its deployed ICBMs, deployed submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) and deployed heavy bombers, and remove another 138 warheads.
Heritage notes the U.S. has already reduced its deployed warheads by 112 and that destroying an ICBM squadron to comply with New START is unnecessary.
Further cuts, if needed, could be made by removing the missiles and placing the silos in reserve status.
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Comments
Placing empty silos in reserve status? How stupid. Oops here comes and incoming ICBM we should put an ICMB in one of those reserve silos.
Truth about making them reserve silos translates to now we really do not have to clean them up.