The programme has evoked opposition within the US, particularly among the arms control community. The Congress has been funding the design effort since 2004 and it is not clear whether the Democratic majority in the Congress will make any difference in the funding of the future programme. Ironically enough, this new proposal comes at a time when four veterans of the Cold War, former Secretary of State George Schultz, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, both Republicans, former Defence Secretary William Perry and former Chairman of Senate Armed Services Committee Sam Nunn, both Democrats, have urged in an article in The Wall Street Journal on January 4, 2007 “that a major effort should be launched by the US to produce a positive answer through concrete stages. First and foremost is intensive work with leaders of the countries in possession of nuclear weapons to make the goal of a world without nuclear weapons into a joint enterprise. Such a joint enterprise, by involving changes in the disposition of the states possessing nuclear weapons, should lend additional weight to efforts already underway to avoid the emergence of a nuclear armed North Korea and Iran”. US legislative leaders have promised Congressional hearings on the issue of reliability replacement warheads programme. This issue provides a unique opportunity to urge the US to take it up with other states possessing nuclear weapons, to discuss the reliability of all nuclear arsenals, and whether there is any merit in the US enhancing the reliability of its arsenal ahead of all other countries.

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