Ever resume. given once again afloat11/25/2023 ![]() Similarly, the declassified documents show the number of afloat weapons in the Mediterranean suddenly dropping to zero in 1987, even though the U.S. Afloat weapons in the Indian and Arctic oceans, for example, are not listed even though nuclear-armed warships sailed in both oceans. The “Atlantic,” “Pacific,” and “Mediterranean” regions are not the only areas where the U.S. The declassification documents do not explain how the numbers are broken down. The just over 1,000 afloat warheads today may be less than during the Cold War, but it is roughly equivalent to the nuclear weapons stockpiles of Britain, China, France, India, Israel, Pakistan and North Korea combined. That corresponds to nearly 22 percent of the stockpile deployed at sea. Retirement of four SSBNs, changes to strategic war plans, and the effect of arms control agreements have since reduced the number of nuclear weapons deployed at sea to just over 1,000 in 2015. Those estimates show that afloat weapons increased during the 1990s as more Ohio-class SSBNs entered the fleet.īecause the total stockpile decreased significantly in the early 1990s, the percentage of it that was deployed at sea grew until it reached an all-time high of nearly 33 percent in 2000. In the table above we have incorporated our estimates for the number of nuclear warhead deployed on US ballistic missile submarines since 1991. After that only strategic missile submarines (SSBNs) have continued to deploy with nuclear weapons onboard. The declassified numbers end in 1991 with the offloading of non-strategic naval nuclear weapons from US Navy vessels. The number of weapons deployed in the Pacific peaked much later, in 1987, at 2,085 weapons. When adding the weapons in the Mediterranean, the Euro-centric nature of the US nuclear posture during the Cold War becomes even more striking. Except for three years (1962, 19), most weapons were always deployed in the Atlantic, a reflection of the focus on defending NATO against the Soviet Union. The declassified data provides detailed breakdowns for weapons in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Mediterranean for the 30-year period between 19. That’s more nuclear weapons than the size of the entire US nuclear stockpile today. The all-time high was in 1975 when 6,191 weapons were afloat, but even in 1990, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, there were 5,716 weapons at sea. The declassified documents show that the United States during much of the 1970s and the 1980s deployed about a quarter of its entire nuclear weapons stockpile at sea. ![]() In our latest FAS Nuclear Notebook published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists we review this unique new set of de-classified Cold War nuclear history. But now the Pentagon has declassified how many nuclear weapons they actually deployed in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Mediterranean. Sometimes the vessels they were on collided, ran aground, caught fire, or sank. ![]() The weapons were brought along on naval exercises, spy missions, freedom of navigation demonstrations and port visits. The weapons were onboard ballistic missile submarines, attack submarines, aircraft carriers, battleships, cruisers, destroyers, frigates and supply ships. Remember during the Cold War when US Navy warships and attack submarines sailed the World’s oceans bristling with nuclear weapons and routinely violated non-nuclear countries’ bans against nuclear weapons on their territories in peacetime?
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