ISSUE BRIEF
No. 5373 | MARCH 4, 2025
DOUGLAS AND SARAH ALLISON CENTER FOR NATIONAL SECURITY
This paper, in its entirety, can be found at https://report.heritage.org/ib5373
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A Road Map for Rebuilding
America’s Nuclear Arsenal
Robert Peters
The U.S. nuclear arsenal is aging, with
the newest nuclear weapon in the arse-
nal more than 35 years old, while major
adversaries are increasing their threats.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
The government must strengthen the
strategic triad and the non-strategic force,
and revive the U.S. defense industrial base,
including the nuclear enterprise.
Over the next four years, America must
build and field a credible deterrent that
can deter, and, if necessary, defeat, adver-
sary aggression and nuclear coercion.
T
he United States must rebuild and replace its
Cold War–era nuclear deterrent, given the
growing threats posed by the autocrats in
Beijing, Moscow, Pyongyang, and Tehran.
China is the fastest growing nuclear power on the
planet, building more than 100 new nuclear weapons
per year.
1
Russia has more than 10 times as many oper-
ationally deployed non-strategic nuclear weapons
than the United States.
2
North Korea regularly threat-
ens the United States and its allies in South Korea and
Japan with nuclear annihilation. And Tehran may be
literal weeks away from the bomb.
3
The U.S. nuclear arsenal is aging, with the newest
nuclear weapon in the arsenal more than 35 years old.
4
The Minuteman III (MMIII) intercontinental ballis-
tic missile’s (ICBM’s) original service life ended when
Ronald Reagan was President.
5
The MMIII, according
