I think even eight years sounds optimistic considering Iran’s known state of development but even that would be considerably longer than Obering’s 2015. And a more realistic estimate might be sometime beyond 2020 and that assumes that Iran has made the strategic decision to develop an ICBM capability; something that is not a logical consequence of the Safir space launch vehicle development.

There's more good discussion of the technical and cost difficulties here: http://www.fas.org/nuke/intro/missile/icbm.htm

Regards, Steve

Donald Rumsfield's notorious Missile Commission which in 1998 said Iran was only five years away from a nuclear missile - the same gap as many analysts believe still exists today.

Er, not exactly:

"The Commission judges that Iran now has the technical capability and resources to demonstrate an ICBM-range ballistic missile, similar to the
TD-2 (based on scaled-up Scud technology), within five years of a decision to proceed--whether that decision has already been made or is yet to be
made."

Iran did a Shahab 3 (rng:1000-1300 km)launch in 2004 and successfully launched a satellite earlier this year; an ICBM capability could quickly follow.

Right now I'm inclined to favor some level of nuclear arms reduction but I'm not prepared to endorse any number. I agree with my friend Mark Safranski that President Obama's stated objective of complete abolition of nuclear weapons by the major powers hasn't been thought through completely and would probably lead to more war rather than less.

As to "giving credence", the op-ed was published in the WSJ and the Perry-Schlesinger Commission of which he is a member is a prestigious group. I neither endorse nor reject his views.

According to NPR this morning, they did indeed have the reset button on public display. I believe they said it was on display in a park in Moscow, but my memory for minutia has been faulty before.

But Payne, the leader of the neoconservative National Institute for Public Policy which has been a staunch cheerleader for Bush's missile defense plans and replacement warhead program, is more interested in might makes right than in the safety of humanity. He argued in 1980 that the "United States must possess the ability to wage nuclear war rationally" and that "the West needs to devise ways in which it can employ strategic nuclear forces coercively, while minimizing the potentially paralyzing impact of self-deterrence." Payne also served on Donald Rumsfield's notorious Missile Commission which in 1998 said Iran was only five years away from a nuclear missile - the same gap as many analysts believe still exists today.

Why is anyone giving any credence to someone with these views?

Regards, Steve

Further to Boyd's comment, the different platforms (ground, air, sea) for deployment mean there has to be some level of redundancy in addition to rotation and "sparing". As I recall, the warheards themselves must be refurbished periodically.

Perhaps now is a good time as any to remind our young president of Ronald Reagan's maxim, "Trust, but verify."

I mean, reverse the situation. We have 273 cities with populations of over 100,000. How would the Russians feel if they could only destroy our 273 largest cities and 727 military targets? We'd be sitting here laughing!

Well, not here. But if we lived in Johnson City, TN, we'd be like, "That's all you got?"

Strategic requirements should drive force numbers; arms-control numbers should not dictate strategy.

Arms control and strategy aren't completely separate things. It may be, for example, that we want less nuclear material floating around in unstable portions of the world. Of course, Russia is a bit more stable these days than during the breakup of the USSR.

As it is, we both could pretty much destroy the world several times over, right? This may be a dumb question, but what strategic requirement is needed to destroy the world more than once? (Yes, I realize that some presumably small fraction of the arsenal could be destroyed in an attack before we were able to launch it.)