De-alerting

De-alerting introduces some reversible physical change(s) to nuclear weapons or weapon systems in order to lengthen the time required to use nuclear weapons in combat.^[1] Because thousands of strategic nuclear warheads mounted on ballistic missiles remain on high-alert, launch-ready status, capable of being launched in only a few minutes,^[2] de-alerting has been proposed as a means to reduce likelihood that these forces will be used deliberately or accidentally.^[3]

De-alerting can be used to rapidly implement existing nuclear arms control agreements ahead of schedule.^[4] Arms control agreements create a timetable to introduce irreversible changes to weapon systems (designed to reduce or eliminate the total numbers of these systems), but these changes generally occur incrementally over the course of a number of years. De-alerting can quickly implement the entire range of negotiated reductions in a reversible fashion (which over time are then made irreversible), thereby bringing the benefits of the negotiated reductions into being much more rapidly.

It has been proposed that de-alerted nuclear weapon systems be classified into at least two categories or stages.^[1] Stage I de-alerted weapons would require 24 hours to bring the weapon system back to high-alert status, and would preclude Launch-on-Warning capability and policy, thereby making impossible an accidental nuclear war caused by a false warning generated by early warning systems.^[5]