Earlier this week, US Department of Defense (DoD) officials announced that the department will start building and testing two new types of missiles that used to be banned under the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty, which collapsed last month when the US government announced that it will pull out of the agreement, a move that was copied by Russia last week. If both countries don’t change course, the agreement will be officially defunct by August of this year.
While DoD officials did not elaborate on the purpose of the new missiles, they emphasized that the INF treaty may still survive and that the announced plans will not undermine this possibility. Some experts fear that the collapse of the INF treaty may result in a new arms race similar to the one that brought the world to the brink of nuclear war during the Cold War.
Read more: U.S. Begins Work on New Missiles as Trump Scraps Treaty With Russia
