RUSSIA WANTS NEW ICBM

Oh, super. Just super. Not only is a dic­ta­tor now in charge of Russia. But the guy wants to develop new, nuclear-​​capable bal­lis­tic mis­siles, accord­ing to the AP.

Speaking at a meet­ing of the Armed Forces’ lead­er­ship, Putin report­edly said that Russia is research­ing and suc­cess­fully test­ing new nuclear mis­sile sys­tems.
“I am sure that … they will be put in ser­vice within the next few years and, what is more, they will be devel­op­ments of the kind that other nuclear pow­ers do not and will not have,” Putin was quoted as say­ing by the ITAR-​​Tass news agency.
Putin report­edly said: “International ter­ror­ism is one of the major threats for Russia. We under­stand as soon as we ignore such com­po­nents of our defense as a nuclear and mis­sile shield, other threats may occur.”
No details were imme­di­ately avail­able, but Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said ear­lier this month that Russia expected to test-​​fire a mobile ver­sion of its Topol-​​M bal­lis­tic mis­sile this year and that pro­duc­tion of the new weapon could be com­mis­sioned in 2005.
News reports have also said Russia is believed to be devel­op­ing a next-​​generation heavy nuclear mis­sile that could carry up to 10 nuclear war­heads weigh­ing a total of 4.4 tons, com­pared with the Topol-M’s 1.32-ton com­bat pay­load.
Topol-​​Ms have been deployed in silos since 1998. The mis­siles have a range of about 6,000 miles and report­edly can maneu­ver in ways that are dif­fi­cult to detect.

Anybody wanna bet how long it’ll take for the White House or the Pentagon to say this proves the need for its mis­sile defense array — even though the sys­tem is so lame, it can’t be tested?
THERE’S MORE: “This is not some­thing that we look at as new,” White House press sec­re­tary Scott McCllelan now says. “We are very well aware of their long-​​standing mod­ern­iza­tion efforts for their mil­i­tary. … We are allies now in the global war on ter­ror­ism.“
AND MORE: The Russian mil­i­tary has been work­ing for a num­ber of years, now, on mis­siles that can juke American inter­cep­tors, Jeffrey Lewis notes. In December 2003, “a source on the Russian General Staff told Interfax that every Topol-​​M [mis­sile] will be out­fit­ted with… the capa­bil­ity of launch­ing decoys.“
Last February, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists observes, the Russians suc­cess­fully tested “a new hyper­sonic ‘Crazy Ivan’ war­head that fol­lows a non­clas­si­cal sce­nario, chang­ing flight alti­tude and course repeat­edly, mak­ing it nearly impos­si­ble to track and tar­get. Putin declared Russia able to pen­e­trate any mis­sile defense sys­tem with ease.“
AND MORE: Putin refers to his new mis­sile as some sort of anti-​​terrorist weapon. That’s like call­ing TNT a cock­roach fighter. As “Retired SSBN” men­tions in the Defense Tech forum, ICBMs don’t have a damn thing to do with fight­ing Al-​​Qaeda & Co.
AND MORE: “If you can’t think of novel uses for ICBMs, you’re not try­ing very hard,” TM Lutas says over in the Defense Tech forum.

Steven Den Beste once noted that we could win 10 simul­ta­ne­ous wars with today’s mil­i­tary. It’s just that 8 of those wars would have to be nuclear. For exam­ple, An ICBM at Tora Bora would have set­tled mat­ters quickly, removed a rel­a­tively remote bit of land from pro­duc­tive use and ensured that no urban area would tol­er­ate ter­ror­ists active against the launch­ing power, whether it’s the US or Russia. 

Apparently, some in the Pentagon agree — sort of. About a year ago, Defense Department plan­ners handed out con­tracts to 10 firms to start design­ing a hyper­sonic mis­sile that can out­run the now-​​retired Concorde, and can hit a ter­ror­ist nest in Europe from the East Coast.

November 17th, 2004 | Missiles | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.