The Atomic Dossier: Inside the Nuclear Vault of the United States of America (USA)

America, as the world's first & pioneering nuclear power, continues to maintain the world's second-largest and one of the most diversified nuclear weapons arsenal globally, with the extension of the American nuclear umbrella over European and other allies forming the bedrock of global security architecture traditionally. However, the deterioration of global security architecture with the whittling down of traditional, rules-based world order coupled with a radical technological generational shift driven by the 3As, namely, AI, Autonomy & Asymmetric Capabilities; is driving an unprecedented wave of nuclear modernization globally which is being led by America, Russia & China under a new, 3-way nuclear arms race with America leading the global spending on nuclear weapons for 2025 with a spending outlay of $69.2 billion, which registered a 22% year-on-year growth and alone accounted for almost 60% of the global spending on nuclear weapons for 2025, pegged at $119 billion (for P5+4). The U.S. is currently in the middle of an over 3-decades long, comprehensive nuclear modernization phase, which started in 2008 and is scheduled to be completed only in the late 2030s, at a projected cost of around $1.8 Trillion with a comprehensive modernization of America's nuclear industrial complex currently underway in an almost overdrive mode, including, the renewal & recapitalization of its nuclear triad. The B-21 Raider strategic bomber is being developed rapidly as the new spearhead of the aerial leg while the LGM-135A Sentinel ICBM is under development as the replacement of the ageing, Cold War-era Minuteman III missiles while the Columbia-class SSBNs & Virginia-class SSNs are being produced rapidly as part of the modernization of the sea leg of the triad. Further, Plutonium pit production and fissile material production, too, are being ramped-up at an unprecedented scale since the end of Cold War. Also, America's nuclear doctrine too has been revised to counter a twin nuclear threat from Russia and China. This effort, intended as a nuclear compendium, takes a longitudinal perspective and real deep dive inside America's nuclear industrial complex as well as nuclear vault and traces the composition of its nuclear warheads portfolio based on applications and delivery systems besides zooming on to the underlying nuclear doctrine & command structure while also uncovering the modernization of the American nuclear triad in the 21st century with a detailed & comprehensive analysis...