AFF/NUCLEAR: NUCLEAR STAND-DOWN

SPECIFIC PROPOSALS FOR NUCLEAR STAND-DOWN

SPECIFIC MECHANISMS FOR DE-ALERTING NUCLEAR WEAPONS

The solution to reducing the risks of accidental nuclear war is to remove nuclear weapons from hair-trigger alert. The United States and Russia should verifiably stand down all nuclear missiles. There are no particularly difficult technical challenges to standing down nuclear weapons and the military already performs many of the steps as part of customary arsenal management. Specific, feasible ways to stand down nuclear warheads include:

* pinning open the switches of missile motors so they cannot be started by remote electronic command;

* taking launch keys away from missile officers so they can't act independently;

* shutting off missile launch circuits;

* deploying submarines out of range of their targets;

* removing warheads from delivery systems, storing them and putting them under international monitoring;

* reducing the yields of all warheads by removing components known as tritium bottles and storing them separately.

ALL NUCLEAR FORCS NEED TO BE TAKEN OFF ALERT

Nuclear weapon states should take all nuclear forces off alert status and so reduce dramatically the chance of an accidental or unauthorised nuclear weapons launch. In the first instance, reductions in alert status could be adopted by the nuclear weapon states unilaterally.

PHYSICAL SEPARATION OF WARHEADS IS ALSO AN EXCELLENT POLICY FOR DE-ALERTING

The physical separation of warheads from delivery vehicles would strongly reinforce the gains achieved by taking nuclear forces off alert. This measure can be implemented to the extent that nuclear forces can be reconstituted to an alert posture only within known or agreed upon timeframes.