Soviets Reported Phasing Out Older Warheads

The Soviet Union possesses about 33,000 nuclear weapons, 40% more than the United States, but it is rapidly phasing out old warheads much as this nation did 20 years ago when its stockpile was that large, the private, pro-disarmament Natural Resources Defense Council reported Wednesday.

The two superpowers now have about equal numbers of warheads and bombs--some 13,000 each--on long-range weapons. The Soviets have twice as many shorter-range nuclear systems. However, some of these are being discontinued, or their nuclear explosives are being replaced with conventional explosives, the council said.

The data was presented in the council’s 433-page “Soviet Nuclear Weapon Databook,” which it described as the first comprehensive tally and analysis of the Soviet stockpile. The report declared that the Soviets have slowed efforts to modernize their nuclear arsenal and implicitly called on the United States to follow suit.

“Virtually every category of Soviet nuclear weapons has seen reductions over the last two years,” said William M. Arkin, one of the authors of the report. He complained that the Reagan and Bush administrations have been overly conservative in assessing the Soviet scale-down moves.

Two new Soviet intercontinental missiles, the SS-24 and SS-25, are being introduced only “sluggishly,” the council said.

Among the databook’s chief findings:

-- Of the Soviets’ 33,000 nuclear weapons, 4,100 are strategic defense weapons (mostly anti-aircraft missiles), 11,300 are short-range land-based weapons such as tactical bombs and artillery shells, and 3,500 are short-range naval weapons such as torpedoes. In comparison, the United States has essentially no nuclear air defense weapons, 7,000 land-based weapons and 3,000 naval weapons, according to Robert S. Norris, another co-author of the report.

-- The Soviets have many more types of nuclear weapons than the United States, including 18 kinds of ballistic missiles, compared to seven U.S. models, and 16 kinds of anti-ship missiles, compared to four U.S. models.

-- The Soviets have 2 1/2 times more explosive power in their nuclear weapons than the United States--some 12,000 megatons (one megaton equals 1 million tons of TNT), compared to 4,500 megatons for the United States.

-- Two Soviet long-range sea-launched cruise missiles are still not operationally deployed, despite U.S. intelligence estimates to the contrary.