The New START Treaty

• The New START Treaty’s robust and extensive verification provisions provide mutual confidence that both sides are living up to their obligations. As of April 2015, the United States and Russia have conducted more than 150 on-site inspections—18 short-notice on-site inspections each year of both deployed and non-deployed nuclear ICBMs, SLBMs, and heavy bombers. Both sides notify each other of changes, such as movements, flight tests, and deployments – 8,300 notifications to date.

The International Partnership for Nuclear Disarmament Verification

• The United States launched a new initiative – the International Partnership for Nuclear Disarmament Verification – to bring together nuclear-weapon and non-nuclear-weapon states to address future nuclear disarmament verification challenges.
• Partnership goals are to assess and develop approaches addressing verification challenges across the nuclear weapons lifecycle – including material production and control, warhead production, deployment, storage, dismantlement, and disposition.

Verification Research and Development

• The United States conducts significant verification research to develop capabilities addressing major technical challenges, such as monitoring of warheads, including non-deployed warheads in storage, and distinguishing warheads by type.
• The United States is also conducting evaluations of nuclear warhead lifecycle “end-to-end” monitoring capabilities. These technologies are needed to provide assurance that nuclear warheads are accounted for and tracked throughout their lifecycle, including during long-term storage and dismantlement.
• In 2014, the U.S. NNSA and DTRA funded more than $191 million for research, development, test and evaluation of arms control verification technology.