#1 - JRL 8070
Moscow Times
February 17, 2004
Old ICBMs, Old Thinking
By Pavel Felgenhauer

The Russian military has begun a strategic exercise heralded as the biggest since Soviet times. Nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles will be fired from land and from a nuclear submarine in the Barents Sea; strategic bombers will fly simulated combat missions and fire long-range cruise missiles; Army, Air Force, Navy and airborne conventional forces will also be involved.

It is expected that President Vladimir Putin will travel the several hundred meters from the Kremlin to the General Staff and Defense Ministry building on Arbatskaya Ploshchad. There, from the crisis room of the armed forces' central command post, Putin will personally authorize the launch of one or more nuclear ICBMs at Russia's potential "enemies." The exercises will end in a resounding victory that will repel the "aggressors." Footage of Putin at the helm as commander-in-chief may well be used as electioneering fodder.

The war game is very Soviet in style and content, acting out a possible confrontation with the United States and its allies. Putin constantly states that Russia has chosen the path of democracy and market economic reforms, so why spend money preparing to fight a nuclear war with Western democracies and why suddenly this year? Does it reflect a sudden deterioration in relations with the West?

In fact, similar strategic exercises have been held year after year. The need to test-fire ICBMs is technical and does not in itself reflect anything.

The nuclear forces are armed with very old ICBMs: Some have been in service in underground silos for over 27 years. Russia officially has 728 land-based and 472 sea-based ICBMs. New land-based SS-27 (Topol-M) ICBMs are produced at a rate of approximately six per year. An undisclosed number of older-version SS-25 (Topol) and sea-based ICBMs has also been produced recently, but informed sources say no more than 10 to 20 per year.

The number of ICBM replacements is inadequate. Each year the ICBM inventory is getting older and older. The life span of most Russian ICBMs, as guaranteed by their producers, has long expired.

To ensure that the nuclear strategic deterrent is still credible, each year some of the oldest ICBMs need to be test-fired to show the world that they can still fly and hit their target. Last year, an 18-year-old land-mobile SS-25 was successfully launched from the Mirny launch pad in the north, near Plesetsk. The dummy warhead successfully hit its target at the Kamchatka missile-receiving facility.

A 27-year-old SS-18 and an SS-19 were extracted from silos, transported to Kazakhstan and launched in the direction of Kamchatka from silos at the Baikonur space center. (Russia does not launch liquid-fuel ICBMs from silos on its territory because debris containing highly poisonous "geptil" fuel may fall on populated areas.)

If a test firing of an aging ICBM is successful, the warranted life span of all the other ICBMs of the same class is extended by a year. Typically, one of the oldest ICBMs of a class is launched each year. If the launch fails or there are serious problems, it is repeated. Every year, the test should be repeated in any case.

The current test-firing routine began in the 1990s. In Soviet times, aging ICBMs were simply replaced by new ones, and the test pads at Mirny and Baikonur were busy testing new missiles. Sometime in 1994, a military chief told me that since they had to fire the ICBMs anyway and spend the money, they decided to organize a strategic exercise with a simulated nuclear war, in which they would test submarine ICBMs and cruise missiles.

That is how it has been now for a decade. In 1996, an election year, Boris Yeltsin used the occasion to pose as commander-in-chief in the crisis room at Arbatskaya Ploshchad. This year Putin may do the same thing. This year's exercise will also have the staffs of conventional forces simulating war activities, but not many real soldiers will be involved.

The main point of the exercise is to test aging ICBMs and bombers and the war-game scenario is also antiquated, involving the West (the United States) as the potential foe.

The military is caught in a time warp: Its hardware is old, its strategic ideas are outdated, it does not want to change nor does it seem able to -- irrespective of what happens politically in Russia or the world.

Now Putin has announced that some SS-19s will be in operation until 2030 and that they will be test-firing them each year. It's not a good omen.

Pavel Felgenhauer is an independent defense analyst.