“A bill to reduce and eliminate threats posed by nuclear weapons to the United States, and for other purposes.”
No CRS summary available for this bill.
This section states 13 congressional findings concerning nuclear weapons risks and arms control, including historical reductions in the U.S. stockpile by more than 90% from its 1967 Cold War peak of 31,255 warheads; advancements in verification technologies and stockpile stewardship obviating nuclear testing needs; obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty; and the feasibility of reducing deployed U.S. nuclear weapons by up to one-third from New START levels while maintaining deterrence.
This section declares it the policy of the United States to lead international negotiations on specific arms-reduction measures as part of a 21st century global nuclear freeze movement, building on bipartisan efforts and the 2021 extension of the New START Treaty. It states that the United States should engage all nuclear-armed countries to negotiate multilateral arms control, disarmament, and risk-reduction agreements that include some or all of the following: (1) resumption of New START on-site inspections and a follow-on treaty potentially lowering central limits or covering new strategic delivery vehicles or non-strategic nuclear weapons; (2) a verifiable freeze on testing, production, and deployment of nuclear weapons and delivery vehicles; (3) verifiable numerical ceilings on deployed shorter-range, intermediate-range, and strategic delivery systems (as defined in the INF Treaty and New START Treaty) and associated warheads for P5 countries (and others if possible) at August 2, 2019, levels; (4) adoption of no-first-use policies or transparency on nuclear declaratory policy; (5) a UN Security Council resolution expanding IAEA access to NPT-noncompliant countries; (6) refraining from launch-on-warning or launch-under-warning postures; (7) non-interference with other countries' nuclear command, control, and communications (NC3) infrastructure; (8) transparency or limits on hypersonic cruise missiles and glide vehicles; and (9) baseline and continuous exchanges of aggregate nuclear weapons data. The section further declares it U.S. policy to (1) rejuvenate negotiations on a verifiable Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty in the UN Conference on Disarmament or another forum such as a P5 meeting; (2) convene head-of-state summits on nuclear disarmament modeled on the Nuclear Security Summits (which eliminated the equivalent of 3,000 nuclear weapons); (3) seek Senate ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) and mobilize Annex 2 states for entry into force, activating its on-site inspection regime; and (4) refrain from developing new nuclear warhead or bomb designs (especially those risking resumed explosive testing) while seeking reciprocal commitments from other nuclear-armed countries.
This section prohibits the obligation or expenditure of funds authorized or made available for FY2026 or any subsequent fiscal year—or authorized for prior fiscal years and available for obligation on the date of enactment—for conducting or preparing for any explosive nuclear weapons test that produces any yield until (1) the President submits to Congress an addendum to the prior year's annual nuclear weapons stockpile assessment report required under current law (50 U.S.C. 2525)—detailing any changes in stockpile condition—and (2) Congress enacts a joint resolution approving the test. Subsection (b) clarifies that the prohibition does not limit nuclear stockpile stewardship activities consistent with the zero-yield standard and other legal requirements. (As background, the annual stockpile assessment report, due by December 1 each year, compiles required assessments of each stockpile weapon type's safety, reliability, performance, and military effectiveness by national security laboratory heads and the Commander of U.S. Strategic Command.)