These warheads make Washington state host to the globe’s third-largest arsenal of deployed nuclear weapons — an estimated 1,120 — behind only Russia and the United States as a whole, whose stockpiles still number in the thousands, despite decades of reductions, according to the Federation of American Scientists.
One weapon in particular on those subs is at the apex of relevance in its short life: The W76-2, a reduced-payload nuclear warhead designed to counter Russia. It was rushed into production by the Trump administration and greenlighted by Congress in anticipation of a moment precisely like this one — a Russian invasion of a friendly nation, where President Vladimir Putin’s “escalate to de-escalate” doctrine could inch the world’s nuclear superpowers closer and closer to an exchange.
Video below describes the “guaranteed retaliation” principle to have adversaries think long and hard before they launch a preemptive strike
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