President Obama Cancels The Reliable Replacement Warhead Program

President Obama Cancels The Reliable Replacement Warhead Program
Obama Breaks With Gates, Cancels Nuke Program -- The New Republic

Obama's new budget plan includes a little-noted sea change in U.S. nuclear policy, and a step towards his vision of a denuclearized world. It provides no funding for the Reliable Replacement Warhead program, created to design a new generation of long-lasting nuclear weapons that don't need to be tested. (The military is worried that a nuclear test moratorium in effect since 1992 might endanger the reliability of an aging US arsenal.) But this spring Obama issued a bold call for a world free of nuclear weapons, and part of that vision entails leading by example. That means halting programs that expand the American nuclear stockpile. For the past two budget years the Democratic Congress has refused to fund the Bush-era program. But Obama's budget kills the National Nuclear Security Administration program once and for all.

Read more ....http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/05/12/obama-breaks-with-gates-cancels-nuke-program.aspx

Update: NNSA Seeks No Funds for Reliable Replacement Warhead -- Global Security Newswire http://www.globalsecuritynewswire.org/gsn/nw_20090511_8613.php

My Comment: This news has been completely under reported by the press. It also explains why the Russians are more focused on discussing missile defense rather than nuclear weapons .... they already see the U.S. disarming and reducing their nuclear weapons program.