Russia to quadruple nuclear missile output

[Loki]

Russia to quadruple nuclear missile output
GUARDIAN NEWS SERVICE

Russia has thrown down a new gauntlet to Barack Obama with an announcement that it will sharply increase production of strategic nuclear missiles.

In the latest of a series of combative moves by the Kremlin, a senior government official in Moscow said the Russian military would commission 70 strategic missiles over the next three years, as part of a massive rearmament programme which will also include short-range missiles, 300 tanks, 14 warships and 50 planes.

Military experts said the planned new arsenal was presumed to consist of land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) rather than submarine-launched missiles. If this is the case, the plans represent a fourfold increase in the rate of ICBM deployment. The arsenal will include a new-generation, multiple-warhead ICBM called the RS-24 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RS-24). It was first test-fired in 2007, with first deputy prime minister Sergei Ivanov boasting it was "capable of overcoming any existing or future missile defence systems".

The new missiles will be part of a GBP95bn defence procurement package for 2009-2011, a 28% increase in arms spending, according to Vladislav Putilin of the cabinet's military-industrial commission. There will be further increases in spending in the following two years.

The new military procurements follow the war in Georgia in August. Russian forces easily routed Georgian troops, but the conflict exposed weaknesses in the Russian army, including outdated equipment and poorly co-ordinated command structures. The defence ministry said it would carry out drastic reforms, turning the army into a more modern force.

Vladimir Putin on Monday urged cabinet officials quickly to allocate funds for new weapons and closely control the quality and pace of their production. Military experts said the construction of 70 long-range nuclear missiles in the next three years represented a Russian attempt to strengthen its bargaining position with Washington, in talks aimed at agreeing new nuclear weapons cuts when the current treaty in force, Start I, expires next December.

Moscow's strategy appears to be to challenge Obama's new administration as soon as it takes office on 20 January. On the day Obama was elected the Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, announced plans to station short-range Iskander missiles in Russia's Kaliningrad exclave as a counter to American installation of its missile defence system in eastern Europe.

Ruben Sergeev, an expert on disarmament issues, said Moscow was afraid of falling behind in a new arms race.

"Russia is decommissioning its old liquid-fuel missiles from the Soviet era at a rate of several dozen every year," he said. "The Kremlin knows that if it doesn't increase production of ICBMs rapidly now then it will have no chance of getting a new arms reduction treaty out of the US, which has much greater quantities of missiles." Negotiations on a successor to Start I have been bogged down in detail, and hamstrung by the Bush administration's lame duck status.

The chief US negotiator, John Rood, said last week that the latest sticking point was Russian insistence that the new treaty cover long-range delivery systems, such as bombers and missiles, intended for conventional arms as well as nuclear warheads. The US wants the treaty to focus solely on nuclear warheads.

Moscow has also signalled that it would supply Tehran with new surface-to-air missiles in defiance of US opposition. Washington has asked for more information on the sales, fearing the weapons being sold include long-range S-300 missiles, which have a 120km range. They could threaten US planes in Iraq, and could also protect Iranian nuclear sites from aerial attack.

The US has set aside its own plans for military action against Iran for now, but US officials hoped that fear of an Israeli strike would make Iran more amenable to suspending its enrichment of uranium.

source (http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/003200812241001.htm)

[Loki]

From Wikipedia:



The RS-24 is a Russian MIRV-equipped, thermonuclear intercontinental ballistic missile first tested on May 29, 2007 after a secret military R&D project, to replace the older SS-18 and SS-19 until 2050. RS-24 is a missile that is heavier than SS-27 Topol M, created in response to the missile shield that the United States wants to deploy in Europe, which can carry up to 10 independently targetable warheads. Purported by the Russian government as being designed to defeat present and future anti-missile systems


Regarding MIRV warheads:



A multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle (MIRV) is a collection of nuclear weapons carried on a single intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) or a submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM). Using a MIRV warhead, a single launched missile can strike several targets, or fewer targets redundantly. By contrast a unitary warhead is a single warhead on a single missile.
The military purpose of a MIRV is fourfold:


Provides greater target damage for a given missile payload. Radiation (including radiated heat) from a nuclear warhead diminishes as the square of the distance (called the inverse-square law), and blast pressure diminishes as the cube of the distance. For example at a distance of 4 km from ground zero, the blast pressure is only 1/64th that of 1 km. Due to these effects several small warheads cause much more target damage area than a single large one. This in turn reduces the number of missiles and launch facilities required for a given destruction level.

With single warhead missiles, one missile must be launched for each target. By contrast with a MIRV warhead, the post-boost (or bus) stage can dispense the warheads against multiple targets across a broad area.

Reduces the impact of SALT treaty limitations. The treaty initially limited number of missiles, not number of warheads. Adding multiple warheads per missile provided more target destruction for a given number of missiles.
Reduces the effectiveness of an anti-ballistic missile system that relies on intercepting individual warheads. While a MIRVed attacking missile can have multiple (3–12 on various United States missiles) warheads, interceptors can only have one warhead per missile. Thus, in both a military and economic sense, MIRVs render ABM systems less effective, as the costs of maintaining a workable defense against MIRVs would greatly increase, requiring multiple defensive missiles for each offensive one.

Decoy reentry vehicles can be used alongside actual warheads to minimise the chances of the actual warheads being intercepted before they reach their targets. A system that destroys the missile earlier in its trajectory (before MIRV separation) is not affected by this, and therefore is more effective and safer in terms of radiactive pollution, etc. Also, it is good practice to launch missiles redundantly, as interception or malfunction means a loss of all MIRV's onboard (all eggs in one basket, if you will). Of course, early inteception is more difficult, and thus more expensive to implement.



MIRVed land-based ICBMs were considered destabilizing because they tended to put a premium on striking first. MIRVs threatened to rapidly increase the US's deployable nuclear arsenal and thus the possibility that it would have enough bombs to destroy virtually all of the Soviet Union's nuclear weapons and negate any significant retaliation. Later on the US feared the Soviet's MIRVs because Soviet missiles had a greater throw-weight and could thus put more warheads on each missile than the US could. For example the US MIRVs might have increased their warhead per missile count by a factor of 6 while the Soviets increased theirs by a factor of 10. Furthermore, the US had a much smaller proportion of its nuclear arsenal in ICBMs than the Soviets. Bombers could not be outfitted with MIRVs so their capacity would not be multiplied. Thus the US did not seem to have as much potential for MIRV usage as the Soviets. However, the US had a larger number of SLBMs, which could be outfitted with MIRVs, and helped offset the ICBM disadvantage. It is because of this that this type of weapon was banned under the START II agreement. However, START II was never ratified by the Russian Duma due to disagreements about the ABM Treaty.

The Russian government claimed to have developed the most advanced MIRV system as of 2006 for use in the Bulava missile.


http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/ff/Minuteman_III_MIRV_path.svg/600px-Minuteman_III_MIRV_path.svg.png

[Atlas]

Pretty much all of the country in the word welcomed the victory of Obama with open arms... beside Russia with almost a cold war speech from Putin and his puppet president.

[TheGreatest]

Star Wars might be able to shoot a few rockets down, but what can it do against tens of thousands of MIRVs?

[Loki]

Star Wars might be able to shoot a few rockets down, but what can it do against tens of thousands of MIRVs?

Nothing. The only thing the US could do is a simultaneous retaliatory strike, and both countries would be wiped out. This concept of guaranteed mutual destruction was what prevented the Cold War from becoming a Hot War. It's a balance between superpowers and necessary for world peace.