While it is no secret that the United States has an impressive stockpile of nuclear weapons, many people have wondered why exactly such a large stockpile still exists. Now, they may finally have an answer. Based on a recent report from the Huffington Post UK, it seems that the United States is halting the destruction of old nukes in order to protect the planet from asteroids. Yes, asteroids.

As The Atlantic reports, this threat does not come from one, large asteroid, but rather many smaller ones. While it seems that the threat of an asteroid similar to the one that wiped out the dinosaurs wouldn’t be a possibility within even the next hundred years, after the asteroid explosion over Chelyabinsk, Russia scientists are more concerned with the damage that smaller impacts could cause. The destruction in Russia injured over a thousand people, and there is worry that another explosion of that size could injure even more.

This project, which has been filed under “planetary defense” is headed by the NNSA, or the “National Nuclear Security Administration.” The organization was planning to dismantle the nukes in question during the beginning of 2015. Yet, now that the concern of asteroids has come to the forefront, this dismantling has been cancelled in preparation of the future.

As of now, there are many questions surrounding whether or not a nuclear blast would be effective in destroying or deterring an asteroid that was headed on a collision course with earth. However, while many many people in the tech industry (including Eric Schmidt of Google) have expressed plans to try and find other ways to deter asteroid collisions, those solutions are at least a few years away, making this nuclear plan our best current option.