Beginning in March 1985, Soviet Communist Party General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev initiated major changes in Soviet-American relations. The Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in December 1987 eliminated short-range nuclear missiles in Europe, including Air Force ground-launched cruise missiles stationed in the United Kingdom. Gorbachev's announcement in May 1988 that the Soviet Union, after nine years of inconclusive combat, would begin withdrawing from the war in Afghanistan, indicated a major reduction in Cold War tensions, but it provided only a hint of the rapid changes to come. Relatively free and open Russian elections in March 1989 and a coal miners strike in July shook the foundations of Communist rule. East Germany opened the Berlin Wall in November, which led to German reunification in October 1990. A coup against Gorbachev in August 1991 by Boris Yeltsin, led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union and its replacement by the Commonwealth of Independent States on December 25, 1991.
This chain of events brought major changes to American nuclear strategy. Under START I, the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty signed by the United States and the Soviet Union in July 1991, the Air Force will be involved in reducing to a level of 6,000 total warheads on deployed ICBMs, SLBMs, and heavy bombers. START II, signed in January 1993, will reduce (upon entry into force) total deployed warheads to a range of 3,000 to 3,500. The resulting force structure (determined during the Nuclear Posture Review process overseen within his department by then Secretary of Defense Les Aspin), will ultimately lead to the deployment of five hundred single warhead Minuteman III ICBMs, 66 B-52H and 20 B-2 heavy bombers. Ninety-four B-1 heavy bombers will be reoriented to a conventional role by 2003, in addition to all Peacekeeper ICBMs being removed from active inventory through the elimination of their associated silo launchers. The Air Force, by Presidential direction in September 1991, notified SAC to remove heavy bombers from alert status. SAC was subsequently inactivated several months later in June 1992. U.S. Strategic Command replaced Strategic Air Command, controlling all remaining Air Force and Navy strategic nuclear forces.
Rebuilding the conventional Air Force after Vietnam began with personnel changes. The Vietnam-era Air Force included many officers and airmen who had entered its ranks in World War II. President Nixon ended the draft in 1973 in favor of an "all volunteer" American military. The Air Force attracted recruits as best it could, but encountered problems with the racial friction and alcohol and drug abuse that reflected America's social problems. Enough Vietnam career veterans remained, however, to direct the new service and institute changes, one of the most
