CIAO DATE: 08/2010
October 2009
Placing armed forces on some level of alert has been a basic tenet of military readiness for centuries, particularly in countries that have experienced surprise attacks. It is therefore no revelation that a significant part of the nuclear forces of the United States and the Soviet Union were on alert during the Cold War. But twenty years after the end of the Cold War, Russia and the United States continue to maintain most of their nuclear forces at the old levels of alert. It is time for a fundamental rethink about this practice, and for creative ideas about levels of operational readiness more suitable for the post-Cold War world and how they might be made operational.
Resource link: Reframing Nuclear De-Alert: Decreasing the Operational Readiness of U.S. and Russian Nuclear Arsenals [PDF] - 1.7M