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News > U.S.

US Builds $1B Missile Arsenal Since Oct 2018, Post Nuclear Treaty Collapse

  • Representational photo of missile testing

    Representational photo of missile testing | Photo: army.mil

Published 2 May 2019
Opinion

"We see the US and other states planning for a nuclear-armed century"

Arms companies have cashed in since United States President Donald Trump pulled out of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF). Since October 2018 the U.S. has built an arsenal worth over US$1 billion of new missiles that were previously banned.

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A new report titled “Producing Mass Destruction” from campaign group Pax for Peace and the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons,’ revealed that the U.S. has not remained within the boundaries of the treaty as promised when they withdrew from the INF in Feburary 2019.

Arms company Raytheon has received 44 new state contracts in that period, worth US$537 million. Lockhead Martin has worked on US$268 million worth of new missiles. Lastly, Boeing has procured US$245 million dollars of new contracts. 

The same month the U.S. left the INF, they also announced several new missile projects that would have been banned in the INF. This includes a cruise missile system with a range of 600 miles, and an intermediate-range ballistic missile with a range of between 1,800 and 2,500 miles.

The report ended with the conclusion that, "We see the U.S. and other states planning for a nuclear-armed century, with contracts to maintain weapons through at least 2075, despite growing domestic and global calls to reverse course," Susi Snyder, PAX nuclear disarmament program manager and the lead author of the report, told AFP. "President Trump is heralding the need for global denuclearization, but US deeds, and those of nuclear-armed allies, do not match those words."

The original INF treaty was signed in 1987 to descalate the arms race between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, it banned missile with ranges of 310-620 miles and 620-3,420 miles.

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