The Defense Department’s Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) program announced this week it successfully completed the elimination of final SS-24 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) and supporting system components in Perm, Russia.

Delegations from the Russian Federal Space Agency (FSA) and the United States Embassy and Department of Defense commemorated the event today by witnessing the final CTR cuts to the last SS-24 ICBM elements.

Initiated by U.S. Senators Sam Nunn and Richard Lugar in 1992, and implemented by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), the CTR program’s SS-24 elimination efforts in cooperation with the FSA began in September 2000.

All the SS-24 eliminations occurred in accordance with the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) and contributed to Russia’s obligation to meet the Moscow Treaty’s deployed nuclear warhead limits by 2012.

The SS-24 ICBM system consisted of 56 missiles; 14 silo launched variants and 42 rail-mobile launched missiles. Each SS-24 ICBM carried 10 independently targeted nuclear warheads.

DTRA and FSA jointly renovated, equipped, and operated facilities to disassemble, store and eliminate SS-24 ICBMs, rail-mobile launchers, their START-accountable elements, and to render launch-associated railcars inoperable. DTRA and FSA also worked together to renovate facilities to unload ICBMs from rail-mobile launchers and to remove liquid fuels from the nuclear warhead self-contained dispensing mechanisms.

In addition, DTRA and FSA renovated the infrastructure and provided equipment to support the solid propellant rocket motor burn facilities.

The CTR program prevents the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and related materials, technologies, and expertise from former Soviet Union states. Other Strategic Offensive Arms Elimination programs that are on-going in Russia.