Byron Dorgan: “this is a piece of metal that comes from the wing strut of a Russian TU-160 Backfire bomber. This bomber carried nuclear…”

“this is a piece of metal that comes from the wing strut of a Russian TU-160 Backfire bomber. This bomber carried nuclear weapons during the height of the cold war. This bomber was a threat to the United States of America. How is it that I stand on the floor of the Senate holding a piece of a wing strut from a Russian bomber? Did we shoot it down? No. It was actually sawed off the wing. Giant, rotating metal saws cut the wings off this bomber. Why? Because we negotiated an agreement with the Russians to reduce the number of bombers and missiles and nuclear warheads in Russia. We reduced our stockpile and our delivery mechanisms, and they reduced theirs. So without shooting down a bomber that carried nuclear bombs that threatened America, I now have in my hand a piece of a wing from a Russian bomber--because arms control works. We know it works. This chart shows what arms control has done in recent years. In the 1980s we ratified the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, and in the 1990s we ratified the first Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or START I. When we started the process in the mid-1980s, the Russians--or then the Soviet Union--had about 11,000 nuclear weapons on long range missiles. Today Russia has about 5,000. That means that 6,000 warheads are now gone. Many of those warheads were probably carried in the Russian Backfire bomber this piece comes from. So 6,000 warheads no longer threaten the United States of America.”