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The following HTML text is provided to enhance online readability. Many aspects of typography translate only awkwardly to HTML. Please use the page image as the authoritative form to ensure accuracy. Page 50 (11) The reduced strategic forces envisaged should preserve the “triad” concept. About one-half of U.S. weapons could be on submarines. Some land-based systems should be retained even at the lowest force levels considered. U,S.-based intercontinental bombers might retain about 25 percent of the warheads at each of the lower levels considered. (12) If possible, the nuclear warheads should be destroyed whenever nuclear delivery systems are eliminated. This will require development of facilities and verifiable procedures for: dismantling warheads; destroying nonnuclear warhead components and placing the nuclear components in monitored storage; cutting off production of fissile materials for use in nuclear weapons; and placing the nuclear fuel cycles under “IAEA-like” safeguards, followed by transferring agreed amounts of fissionable materials from the military stockpile to the commercial fuel cycle. (13) The ability to keep controlled quantities of highly enriched uranium for naval propulsion and for research and the continued production of the amounts of tritium needed to support the reduced weapons stockpile should be retained. SPECIFICCONCLUSIONS ON NONSTRATEGIC NUCLEAR FORCES(1) NATO has decided unilaterally to remove ground-based nuclear systems from its territory. The planned future deployment of French short-range nuclear missiles is meeting some resistance. It is assumed that the Soviets will remove their short-range nuclear systems from Europe as their troops withdraw. (2) Fewer than 1,000 U.S. air-delivered nuclear weapons systems in Europe seems appropriate at present, and the level of any longer-term U.S. nuclear commitment there should be decided in cooperation with the European countries concerned. (3) U.S. dual-purpose aircraft, without nuclear weapons under normal peacetime conditions, are likely to remain in Europe and on U.S. aircraft carriers. (4) The unilateral U.S. withdrawal of many of the nuclear weapons on its surface ships as a result of changes in missions and threats is a stabilizing trend that should lead to agreements with the Soviet Union to eliminate them entirely.
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