U.K. Discreetly Trimming to 180 or Fewer Nuclear Warheads
The United Kingdom has been decommissioning and breaking down Trident nuclear warheads at a rate of three per year, with a goal of reducing domestic stocks to "no more than 180" by the mid-2020s, the London Guardian reported.
Great Britain currently has a nuclear weapons stockpile of approximately 225 warheads, according to the newspaper. The U.K. government in June 2011 announced that the cache of warheads would be reduced by 45 to meet the intent stated in Britain's 2010 Defense Review.
The quiet and gradual disassembly program has resulted in the modification of a number of warheads "to render them unusable while others identified as no longer being required for service are currently stored and have not yet been disabled or modified," Sue Ford, a Defense Ministry equipment and support policy official, told the Guardian.
The report comes almost a week after the United Kingdom's Liberal Democrats announced they would hold a party vote next month on a proposal to disarm some of the nation's nuclear-missile equipped submarines.
Clarification: This article was altered after initial publication to eliminate faulty characterizations of the U.K. Defense Review and the military items being modified.
