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1st question:why would he bee decreasing our arsenal when other countries are building up
Currently, the United States nuclear arsenal is deployed in three areas:
Land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles, or ICBMs;
Sea-based, nuclear submarine-launched ballistic missiles, or SLBMs; and
Air-based nuclear weapons of the U.S. Air Force's heavy bomber group
The exact number of nuclear weapons possessed by the United States is difficult to determine. Different treaties and organizations have different criteria for reporting nuclear weapons, especially those held in reserve, and those being dismantled or rebuilt:
As of 1999, the U.S. was said to have 12,000 nuclear weapons of all types stockpiled.[4]
In its Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) declaration for 2003, the U.S. listed 5968 deployed warheads as defined by START rules.[5]
For 2007, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists listed the U.S. with about 5,400 total nuclear warheads: around 3,575 strategic and 500 nonstrategic warheads; and about 1,260 additional warheads held in the inactive stockpile. Other warheads are in some step of the disassembly process.[6]
The exact number as of Sept. 30, 2009, was 5,113 warheads, according to a U.S. fact sheet released May 3, 2010.[7]
In 2002, the United States and Russia agreed in the SORT treaty to reduce their deployed stockpiles to not more than 2,200 warheads each. In 2003, the US rejected Russian proposals to further reduce both nation's nuclear stockpiles to 1,500 each.[8] In 2007, for the first time in 15 years, the United States built some new warheads. These were to replace some older warheads as part of the Minuteman III upgrade program.[9] 2007 also saw the first Minuteman III missiles removed from service as part of the drawdown. Overall, stockpile numbers and deployment systems continued to decline as the U.S. approaches the levels prescribed in the SORT treaty which must be achieved by 2012.
In 2010, the Pentagon disclosed that the current size of its nuclear arsenal is a total of 5,113 warheads operationally deployed, kept in active reserve and held in inactive storage. The figure does not include the estimated 4,600 warheads that have been retired and scheduled for dismantlement. The number of operationally deployed strategic warheads stands at 1,968.[10]
2nd question:how do you keep a budget and project that size under wraps
3rd question:what would it be