Strategic Arms Control After START: Issues and Options

The United States and Soviet Union signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty in 1991 it entered into force in December 1994 and expired on December 5, 2009. The United States and Russia have held several meetings to discuss options for continuing their arms control relationship. They are currently negotiating a new Treaty that would replace START. START counts each deployed ICBM, SLBM, bomber as a single delivery vehicle under the Treaty limit of 1,600 delivery vehicles and attributes an agreed number of warheads to each deployed delivery vehicle. This attribution rule provides the total number of warheads that count under the 6,000 warhead limit in the Treaty. To verify compliance with START, each side monitors the numbers and locations of ballistic missiles, launchers and heavy bombers deployed by the other country. The parties use a wide variety of means to collect information-or monitor-these forces and activities. Some of these monitoring systems, such as overhead satellites, operate outside the territories of the treaty parties. They also have also been required to exchange copious amounts of data on locations, operations, and technical characteristics of the treaty-limited items. This verification regime has allowed the parties to remain confident in each others compliance with the Treaty. The United States and Russia began to discuss their options for arms control after START in mid- 2006. During the Bush Administration, they were unable to agree on a path forward. Neither side wanted to extend START in its current form, as some of the Treatys provisions have begun to interfere with some military programs on both sides. Russia wants to replace START with a new Treaty that would further reduce deployed forces while using many of the same definitions and counting rules in START.