Boeing is prepared to respond to a US Air Force request for proposal to design the next-generation nuclear intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), known as the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD), the company's Strategic Missile and Defense Systems spokesperson Queena Jones told Sputnik.

On July 29, the US Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center, ICBM Systems Directorate, GBSD Division, issued a request for proposals at FedBizOpps.Gov to the defense industry for the development and maintenance of the GBSD.

Boeing will respond [and] given Boeing's proven capabilities in ICBM design, development, production, deployment, and sustainment, we are confident the US Air Force can rely on Boeing to develop a low-risk GBSD weapon system," Jones said on Tuesday.

In 1958 Boeing developed and produced the Minuteman ICBM and it is still in operation in 2016. Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman are expected to submit proposals.

The GBSD will be the cornerstone of the land based portion of the US Nuclear Triad.

Russia Not to Be Pulled Into an Arms Race Amid US Nuclear Arsenal Modernization
Washington will not succeed in pulling Moscow back into an arms race through the modernization of the US nuclear arsenal, a senior Russian lawmaker said Tuesday.

On Monday, the US Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) authorized the engineering phase of the B61-12 nuclear warhead life extension program.

"Any violation of the established parity, balance in the nuclear sphere will fuel an arms race. Our country will of course react appropriately.

As Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly affirmed, they will not manage to pull us into a full scale arms race, which significantly contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union," Dmitry Gorovtsov, the deputy chairman of the lower chamber of the Russian parliament's Committee on National Security, told RIA Novosti.

Russia has new technologies that could be used to counter the modernized US nuclear bomb, Gorovtsov stressed.

The lawmaker suggested that the United States should focus on joint international efforts to defeat terrorism that poses the biggest threat to global security.

Source: Sputnik News