Assessing strategic risks after the expiration of New START
By Rakotoarimanga Tinah | 16 February 2026
Summary
The expiration of New START on 5 February 2026 removes the last legally binding transparency mechanism governing US–Russian nuclear forces, reinforcing a shift from verification based assessment towards worst case planning in an already fragile deterrence landscape.
Emerging technologies, including hypersonic delivery systems, AI-enabled early warning architectures and cyber operations, are compressing decision making timelines, complicating attribution and making the signalling assumptions that have traditionally underpinned nuclear risk reduction mechanisms weaker.
As deterrence stability becomes increasingly dependent on vulnerable technical and informational systems rather than observable force postures alone, technological acceleration is emerging as a central stress factor shaping post New START deterrence dynamics in a tripolar nuclear order.
Context
For more than a decade, strategic stability between the United States and Russia rested on a limited but consequential set of assumptions: Mutual visibility into deployed forces, sufficient decision time during crises, and shared interpretative frameworks to distinguish routine military activity from preparation for use. New START institutionalised these assumptions through on-site inspections, data exchanges, and consultative mechanisms that reduced uncertainty even during periods of political confrontation.
The expiration of the treaty on 5 February 2026 removes this transparency layer at a moment when the informational environment underpinning deterrence is already under strain. In the absence of inspections and telemetry exchanges, force posture becomes opaque. It is no longer possible to reliably assess the number of warheads deployed on individual delivery systems, nor to distinguish between routine maintenance, force modernisation and latent force expansion through warhead "uploading", this expansion is technically seamless: US Minuteman III ICBMs, currently limited to a single warhead, were designed to carry up to three. Similarly, Trident II D5 SLBMs can be « uploaded » from their treaty-compliant loads to a maximum of 8 or even 14 warheads. On the Russian side, the RS-28 Sarmat possesses a massive throw-weight capable of deploying 10 to 15 MIRVs. This allows for a massive, non-observable increase in deployed warheads within months, not years. Strategic planning, therefore, shifts away from verification based assessment towards inference under uncertainty, which will reinforce worst case assumptions.
This loss of visibility intersects with a broader transformation in how military power is generated and managed. Contemporary strategic systems increasingly rely on dense sensor networks, automated data processing, and decision support tools designed to accelerate detection and response. Hypersonic delivery systems further compress reaction windows by reducing flight times and undermining predictable ballistic trajectories rather than extending deterrence stability. These developments narrow the margin for political deliberation during a crisis.
The domains in which escalation signals are generated have expanded beyond the physical movement of forces. Cyber operations and information enabled interference introduce ambiguity around attribution, intent and timing, complicating established signalling practices. Actions that would previously have been legible within arms control frameworks now unfold in environments where effects may be delayed, deniable or distributed across multiple actors.
New START was not designed to manage these dynamics. Its stabilising effect depended on the assumption that transparency could compensate for technological change by anchoring expectations and slowing escalation, and with its expiration, that compensatory layer disappears.
Implications
The post New START exposes a growing structural mismatch between the pace of technological change and the institutional mechanisms intended to reduce nuclear risk. Emerging capabilities act as destabilising tools by compressing decision time, eroding interpretability and shifting the foundations of strategic stability away from observable force postures towards fragile technical systems.
Compression of decision time is the first major destabilising tools because hypersonic delivery systems such as Russia’s Avangard or China’s DF-17 reduce warning and response windows by combining high speed with manoeuvrability, undermining assumptions embedded in ballistic early warning models and in parallel AI enabled data fusion within early warning and C3I architectures is designed to prioritise speed over contextual judgement which lead us to new vulnerabilities: in a crisis, an adversary could employ cyber or cyber-kinetic means to inject subtle anomalies into sensor data streams. A compromised or « poisoned » AI system might then misclassify these anomalies as indicators of an incoming strike, presenting political leadership with a stark decision under extreme time pressure.
Notification regimes and hotlines, which assume hours or days to clarify intent during exercises or force movements, become misaligned with operational realities where leaders may face decision windows measured in minutes. The result is not the disappearance of risk-reduction mechanisms, but their gradual operational hollowing as institutional tempo lags behind technological speed.
As for informational ambiguity and the breakdown of signalling, traditional arms control tools reduced miscalculation by clarifying attribution between identifiable state actors operating in observable domains. In contrast, cyber operations targeting command-and-control networks, early warning sensors, or dual-use civilian infrastructure introduce effects that are difficult to attribute and even harder to interpret in real time. For example, a cyber intrusion affecting satellite communications or radar data flows during a crisis may be indistinguishable from a technical malfunction or deliberate preparation for escalation. AI-driven information operations further blur intent by amplifying false or misleading signals at scale. The strategic risk does not stem from cyber capabilities per se, but from their capacity to undermine shared interpretative frameworks that previously stabilised escalation dynamics.
Strategic stability is becoming spatialised and techno-systemic; nuclear deterrence increasingly relies on space-based assets for missile warning, secure communications, navigation, and targeting. These systems are dual-use and weakly governed yet assumed to be continuously available within stabilisation frameworks. Anti-satellite tests, reversible jamming, or cyber interference targeting space infrastructure can degrade C2 and ISR functions without crossing explicit nuclear thresholds, crucially, the degradation of space-based infrared sensors (like the US SBIRS or Russian EKS) via ASAT (anti-satellite) interference is no longer viewed as a peripheral space war event, actually if political leadership believes that their early warning « eyes » are being blinded, pressures to adopt launch on warning postures intensify, driven by fears of losing second strike capability. In this context, disruptions to satellite constellations can generate escalation pressures indirectly by undermining confidence in early warning and command resilience. Stability thus becomes contingent on the integrity of interconnected technical systems rather than solely on weapon counts or declared doctrines.
For Europe, these dynamics translate into heightened exposure rather than direct control. Reduced transparency between major nuclear powers increases reliance on extended deterrence at a moment when US strategic attention is increasingly divided. The persistence of unconstrained Russian non strategic nuclear forces further complicates escalation management in regional crises, while the erosion of arms control credibility raises longer-term proliferation pressures within the non-proliferation regime
Forecast
Short-term (Now - 3 months)
The lapse of New START verification mechanisms is likely to accelerate informational uncertainty, as military planners revert to worst-case assumptions in the absence of inspections and data exchanges like routine missile maintenance or force movements, previously contextualised through notifications or the Bilateral.
Compressed decision timelines increase the risk that technical anomalies are likely misread as hostile intent. False or ambiguous early warning data processed by automated systems may reach political leadership with limited time for human verification, narrowing opportunities for de-escalatory clarification.
Medium-term (3-12 months)
Strategic stability is highly likely to become increasingly dependent on the uninterrupted functioning of technical systems underpinning early warning, command, and communication. Cyber interference or electronic disruption affecting satellite communications during a regional crisis could degrade C2 confidence without crossing explicit nuclear thresholds, amplifying escalation risks indirectly.
In a tripolar environment, force posture adjustments aimed at one adversary are increasingly likely to be misinterpreted by another under conditions of reduced transparency. US alert level changes linked to a crisis in the Indo-Pacific may be perceived by Russia as a shift in the strategic balance, triggering precautionary mobilisation rather than signalling restraint.
Long-term (>1 year)
A growing dissociation is highly likely to emerge between the pace of strategic innovation and the capacity of existing risk-reduction mechanisms to absorb technological change, hypersonic systems and AI-enabled decision-support tools continue to compress response windows, while stabilisation practices remain anchored in slower, verification-based frameworks.
Strategic stability is likely to be shaped less by weapon numbers than by systemic vulnerability across interconnected technical domains. Sustained reliance on space based ISR and communications makes deterrence increasingly sensitive to disruptions below the nuclear threshold, where interference can generate strategic effects without overt escalation.
A structural diplomatic dissociation is highly likely as the pace of strategic innovation (measured in mach speed and milliseconds) has terminally outrun the pace of institutional diplomacy (measured in weeks and months). This « governance gap » suggests that future crises may escalate to a terminal stage before traditional diplomatic channels can even be convened.
