In March 2012 New START data exchange Russia reported 494 deployed launchers with 1492 nuclear warheads. The Strategic Rocket Forces
are estimated to have 332 operational missile systems of four types that carry 1092 warheads.
The strategic fleet includes 11 strategic missile
submarines. The operationally deployed 96 missiles can carry 336 nuclear warheads.
Strategic aviation bomber force consists
of 66 bombers that have about 200 weapons assigned to them.
In November 2012 the space-based tier of the early
warning system included three operational satellites on highly
elliptical orbits and one geostationary satellite.
On June 7, 2013 Russia launched a military satellite, designated Cosmos-2486. The satellite was delivered into orbit by a Soyuz-2.1b launcher, launched at 22:37:59 MSK (18:37:59 UTC) from the launch pad No. 4 of the launch complex No. 43 of...
Strategic Rocket Forces conducted a successful flight test of "a prototype of a new ICBM." The test took place at 21:45 MSK (17:45 UTC) on June 6, 2013 from a mobile launcher deployed at the Kapustin Yar test site. The...
According to the commander of the Space and Air Defense Forces, the new Voronezh-DM radar in Armavir has entered combat duty. Although it is not immediately clear if this applies to just one of the two radars in Armavir, most...
Russia began construction of a new Voronezh-DM early-warning radar near Barnaul. The radar is expected to be ready for service in 2016, although it could begin limited operations earlier. The radar in Barnaul will be the fourth Voronezh-DM radar in...
A Strategic Rocket Forces representative said today that the service is planning to conduct 16 ballistic missile launches this year - five more than it announced in December. The change is partially explained by the increase in the number of...
Russia appears to have made a final decision to eliminate two Project 941 Typhoon submarines - TK-17 Arkhangelsk and TK-20 Severstal. This decision has been expected for quite some time - the submarine division that included these submarines was disbanded...
Archival documents contain all kind of interesting information, especially when they are published in full. A while ago, someone discovered that the Russian Federal Archival Agency published a collection of documents on the early days of the Soviet nuclear weapon...
At 09:23:41 MSK on April 26, 2013 (03:23:41 UTC), the Space Forces conducted a successful launch of a Soyuz-2.1b launcher from the launch pad No. 4 of the launch complex No. 43 of the Plesetsk launch site. The launcher, equipped...
Later this week five nuclear weapon states will meet in Geneva for their now regular P5 meeting. The meeting is taking place right before the NPT PrepCom, which is also held in Geneva this year. One issue that will probably...
As I was reading a new report by Alexei Arbatov and Vladimir Dvorkin, The Great Strategic Triangle, published by the Carnegie Moscow Center in April 2013, I noticed a small footnote that tells something about how things have changed in...
The book
