Nuclear Doctrine, Strategy and Policy Eight re-entry vehicles
(RVs) fly towards the ground after release from a single US
Peacekeeper missile over the Kwajalein Atoll in the Pacific. The
United States and Russia maintain thousands of nuclear weapon on
alert, and more than 95 percent of the world's total inventory
of nuclear weapons. Photo: US Army SMDC A decade and a half
after the end of the Cold War Russia and the United States keep
thousands of nuclear weapons, most with explosive force
equivalent to hundreds of thousands of tons of TNT, ready to
launch at a moment's notice. Yet we are near the end of a long
process of having some nuclear weapons displaced by advanced
conventional weapons. Missions for Nuclear Weapons After the
Cold War by Ivan Oelrich The Director of the FAS Strategic
Security Project analyzes 15 missions currently proposed for US
nuclear weapons and finds that conventional weapons are
preferred for almost all of them. The US can justify its vast
arsenal only if it intends a first strike