Geodeziya, Russia – It would have taken less than 30 minutes for a Soviet SS-25 “sickle” missile, launched from a truck, to strike and destroy a major American city. Today U.S. Sen. Dick Lugar and former Sen. Sam Nunn witnessed the destruction of the rocket motor that who have propelled the nuclear weapon. That motor burn took less than a minute.

 

“Under the Nunn-Lugar program, the United States is assisting Russian in eliminating the SS-25 missile systems and launch vehicles, in compliance with the START Treaty. Train and truck launching systems were extremely destabilizing strategic threats. They were easily hidden, difficult to track and even more difficult to take out,” Lugar said. “Destroying these nuclear weapons has been an important step toward a safer world.”

 

To date, the Nunn-Lugar program has destroyed 101 road and rail missile systems. The program plans to eliminate 251 missile systems by the year 2012.

 

Nunn-Lugar will decommission 28 SS-25 missile regiments (9 missiles in each regiment) at up to 9 different military bases, this will include the elimination of 402 SS-25 missiles and 361 mobile launch systems. The Geodeziya Motor Burn Facility is also responsible for eliminating rocket motors on the SS-24 mobile intercontinental ballistic missiles. The SS-24, also known as the “Scalpel” carried 10 independently-targeted warheads capable of destroying ten different American cities. The missile could be launched from both a silo and from railroad cars. The Nunn-Lugar program is scheduled to eliminate 56 SS-24 missiles, including 14 silo-based and 42 rail-mobile systems. In addition, 34 railcar missile launchers and 69 launch assist railcars will be destroyed.

 

In November 1991, Lugar (R-IN) and former Sen. Sam Nunn (D-GA) authored the Nunn-Lugar Act, which established the Cooperative Threat Reduction program. This program has provided U.S. funding and expertise to help the former Soviet Union safeguard and dismantle its enormous stockpiles of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, related materials, and delivery systems. In 2003, Congress adopted the Nunn-Lugar Expansion Act, which authorized the Nunn-Lugar program to operate outside the former Soviet Union to address proliferation threats. In 2004, Nunn-Lugar funds were committed for the first time outside of the former Soviet Union to destroy chemical weapons in Albania, under a Lugar-led expansion of the program.

 

The Nunn-Lugar scorecard now totals 6,982 strategic nuclear warheads deactivated, 653 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) destroyed, 485 ICBM silos eliminated, 101 ICBM mobile launchers destroyed, 613 submarine launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) eliminated, 436 SLBM launchers eliminated, 30 nuclear submarines capable of launching ballistic missiles destroyed, 155 bombers eliminated, 906 nuclear air-to-surface missiles (ASMs) destroyed, 194 nuclear test tunnels eliminated, 355 nuclear weapons transport train shipments, 12 nuclear weapons storage site security upgrades, and 9 biological monitoring stations built and equipped.  Perhaps most importantly, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan are nuclear weapons free as a result of cooperative efforts under the Nunn-Lugar program.  Those countries were the third, fourth and eighth largest nuclear weapons powers in the world.

 

Beyond nuclear elimination, the Nunn-Lugar program secures and destroys chemical weapons and biological weapons, and has worked to reemploy scientists and facilities related to weapons of mass destruction in peaceful research initiatives. The International Science and Technology Centers, of which the United States is the leading sponsor, engaged 58,000 former weapons scientists in peaceful work. The International Proliferation Prevention Program has funded 750 projects involving 14,000 former weapons scientists and created some 580 new peaceful high-tech jobs.  

 

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