The U.S. State Department released new figures on compliance with the New START Treaty on Oct. 1. The numbers of U.S. and Russian warheads and delivery systems have continued to decline, undermining earlier speculation that Russia may fail to meet the treaty’s central requirements by Feb. 5, 2018, deadline. We remain confident that Russia will meet the requirements on time. To do so, it must simply retire some more Soviet-era MIRV’ed ICBMs. As noted by Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, Russia “is now only 11 warheads above the New START treaty limit of 1,550 warheads … [and] is already below the treaty limit on deployed launchers as well as deployed and non-deployed launchers.” The latest data on systems covered by the treaty can be found in our Facts section, while Dr. Kristensen’s detailed explainer on Russia’s nuclear modernization can be found at this link.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.