Can anyone honestly explain to me how a nation that plans to defend its capital by firing nuclear warheads into the upper atmosphere to hopefully destroy the incoming warheads has any right to complain about any other nation’s means of protecting itself? How can Russia even keep a straight face when it complains about the planned US ABM system given the lunacy of their (actually deployed!) system? One side is using a precision system that actually has a much lower chance of working but has few if any side effects, the other side is lobbing nuclear warheads into the sky above its own country, which side do you think is more reasonable?

Much more likely that Moscow would be attacked in saturation strike by hypersonic cruise missiles,then bombed by hypersoar-type bombers -not BMs.

What was 53T6 intercept ?

Keith: The thing is that the Russian systems is/was in agreement with the ABM treaty, which the US left. This treaty allowed the two countries 100 ABM missiles with one battle management radar each to defend a specific area, either the capital or an ICBM field.
The system the US is developing now has multiple battle management radars and tries to defend whole CONUS. As discussed here before, I don't think that it will impact the strategic balance between Russia and the US and will have only limited value, but anyway, those are totally different approaches.

Cheer.

Keith, Russian system is on Russian soil, defending against a real threat of US/UK missiles. US system is not on US soil, defending against a bogus threat of non-existent Iranian missiles.

If NMD was limited to Fort Greely and Vandenberg or North Dakota, not many in Russia would complain.

Martin, I slightly disagree. I think the Russian “1972 ABM Treaty compliant” nuclear anti-ballistic missile defense system is only an anachronism. It exist only because it’s there.
The technology makes just about as much sense today if someone in North Dakota decided to “turn back on” the old Safeguard system.

Politically, Russia seems to constantly demonstrate the United States is its only threat. Politically, the United States seem to constantly demonstrate that Russia isn’t a threat at all. Interesting, isn’t it?

Frank Shuler
USA

Hello
The fact that the US has begun to dismantle its ABM Treaty compliant system some six months after it was completed back in 1976 and Russians keep theirs by 2011 and on is a perfect illustration of Frank's thesis above
Yours
m

Frank: I agree with you that the Russian A-135 system is outdated. But that's exactly the point, from the Russian view it doesn't interfere with the "strategic balance". I guess Russia would have no issues if there would be a Safeguard 2.0 compliant to the ABM treaty, because they know it's worth nothing.

Martin

Again, we’re back to the historical argument. Russia only fears an attack by the United States. Therefore, retaining the old A-135 system makes some political sense if not military. However, the world has changed greatly from 1972. The US is far more worried about the future military capabilities of several other nations outside of Russia; say, 20 years from now. The Soviet Union is gone; Russia is not an enemy. Think of it this way, the US and Russia have little geo-political differences; little common areas of interest for competition. Nuclear weapons are the only thing Russia and the United States find themselves at odds on and this is really just a legacy of the Cold War. What we agree on is that maintaining a vast inventory of nuclear weapons is both costly and not needed. Both Moscow and Washington are trying to figure out exactly how many nuclear weapons and how many and what types of delivery systems are actually needed to ensure deterrence; the only real value of nuclear weapons today. Does the United States really need 5000 nuclear warheads today? Of course not.

Ballistic missile defense is here to stay. How to move forward is the question.

Frank Shuler
USA

Why is it even relevant if Russia likes the US or US likes Russia, or whether either of them sees the other as enemy.

Defense planning is not based on INTENTIONS, it is based on POTENTIALS. Does the United States have an intention of attacking Russia? No. Does it have a credible potential to deal serious damage to Russia if it does decide to attack. Most assuredly yes. Which means Russia has to prepare for such an eventuality.

It is wholly irrelevant what American plans are with regards to SM-3 block IIA/B. Whether they are made with Iran in mind, or not, whether US considers Iranian threat credible, or not. The only thing that matters to Russia is: does it have potential to deal damage to Russian defensed? And if "yes", how do they counter that. That can be done either in cooperation with US, or in confrontation to it. The choices are on the table.

artjomh

I must admit, I see no "choices". I also don’t see cooperation or confrontation; only rhetoric. What I do see is the United States building the best military systems possible to defend our country against a changing world and I see Russia taking all necessary precautions to make sure those military systems are not used to Russia’s harm.

Frank Shuler
USA

There is a bigger problem here, that of a pan-European BMD. Russian elites, at the end of the day, desperately want to be accepted as legitimate players at the same table as France, Britain, Germany, the US, etc. They don't want to sit at the "special" table with China, Iran, etc. To that end they see the BMD as something pointed at Russia not militarily, from the perspective that it will in the near future destroy Russian deterrent, but politically. The Euro-BMD is a way of showing who's in the cool-kids club, and who's out. And that is Russia's greater concern here. Quite naturally they realize that if in the long-term nuclear arsenals continue to shrink and multiple countries step forward to fund this BMD, it will also become a credible obstacle to nuclear deterrence. So that is also a concern, albeit a manageable one. The political aspect of this is not.

Are the A-135 interceptors even nuclear armed anymore?

They probably are - I doubt they have the capability to hit an incoming missile with a non-nuclear warhead.

This is getting off topic, but I find the above to be somewhat of a misreading of Russia's (well, Putin's anyway) global vision. I think people often take his pragmatism for granted and fail to simply listen to what he says. He often reiterates his desire for a multipolar world, where countries like Russia, China, and India are independent poles acting in their own interest to help counteract the global hegemony of the US and European pandering to it.

Although, to what extent Putin represents the "Russian elite" is another question.

Sorry for the short OT.

Great blog!

Do you have any data on the yields of nuclear warheads on Galosh and Gorgon ABMs?

By the way...if someone is interested...the launch site (site 35) is on high resolution satellite picture on yahoo maps

merry christmas

Anonymous:
According to globalsecurity.org, Galosh was 2-3Mt, Gorgon is 1Mt and Gazelle is 10kt. How accurate these numbers are, I don't know.
Cheers.

Coming back to this latest Gazelle test, I'd like to make some further comments :

1/ This blog doesn't (and didn't previously) report on another flight test of Gazelle that several other web sources mention to have taken place a year ago, on Oct 26, 2010 (including never seen zoomed pictures of silo output clearly showing the conical shape of the missile, for ex. see http://militaryrussia.ru/blog/topic-350.html) . Do you agree on this previous event?

2/ regarding the latest firing, the link above apparently (if Google translation is to be trusted...) says that production of solid rocket motor for Gazelle (ref 5S73) would have resumed at JSC "Avangard" plant (Safonovo, Smolensk region) and that it would be the first Gazelle flight test using newly produced booster motor (ref 5S73). This motor being probably very specific, and solid motors typically having a lifetime of 15 years, it would be logical to see its production resume indeed if 53T6M (life extension) is to be deployed.

3/ I read another interesting article published after this latest test at http://www.lenta.ru/articles/2011/12/21/interceptor/ that goes into some considerations on future russian ABM projects (referred to as "system A-235").
A highlight is the mention of a supposed new middle tier missile (referred to as 58R6, a reference I never heard about before and that seems unusual for a russian ABM/BMD weapon). What do you think of this?
Do you see a link between this supposed "new middle tier missile" development (or the supposed "future upper tier" ABM missile?), and the stunning modified-shroud Gorgon pictures (and related Sary Shagan test activity since 2007?) reported by bernd reuter in comments of your May 27, 2011 post on ASAT?

4/ regarding the possibility of an explosive non-nuclear fragmentation warhead having been adapted for 53T6, despite the official declarations on this matter, I agree with you that it is highly unrealistic considering
- the too high miss distance of this missile (reported as 50m, which seems likely to me and coherent with the low yield ER nuclear warhead) due to its lack of an autonomous radar seeker for terminal guidance (it uses remote radar guidance based on Don2N tracking of both targets and interceptors) is not compatible with the efficiency radius of a fragmentation warhead (typically 10 to 15m). And fitting a seeker into such a missile is just impossible.
- the hypersonic terminal speed of this missile (not suitable for the deployment of warhead fragments).
So I agree that, if currently deployed 53T6 missiles are to be of any credible military value, they are still (nuclear) armed. My opinion is that the story about removing the nuclear warheads was a lie made on purpose by the russian military to cut short the public debate that had begun to rise 10 years ago or so about the supposed danger of these weapons being stored close to Moscow.

Best regards.

Thank you. I somehow missed the October 2010 test. I updated the entry.

As for A-235, it's an old Soviet project that began in 1985. The idea was to upgrade the A-135 system, so it would be able to deal with 8-12 "complex ballistic targets," rather than with 1-2 in the A-135 case.

Pavel,

Do you mean that the A-135 system's design point was to be able to (surely) stop a rogue or unapproved first strike ("Dr Strangelove type") of only 1 or 2 modern (w/penaids) ICBMs, and that the A-235 project was aiming at stopping a first strike modern SLBMs salvo from a single submarine?

In both cases, do you associate this to the fear of a "decapitation" first strike on Moscow, typically from the US, (a limited strike meant do eliminate the soviet leaders with nuclear authority, even so limited that it may be disavowed by the US as an unapproved strike)?

Or rather to a lack of confidence in the western (& other... ) nuclear powers' fire control and order authentication systems (PALs and the like)? This reminds me of the fact that the UK revealed that their subs do not have the equivalent of PALs preventing the SLBMs from being fired without proper political authorization! The "be kind with me or I push the button" tactic may be efficient but that's pretty scary!

Maybe the first explanation was more true of the Cold War and the second is still a little bit true today - if any military rationale exists to keeping this ABM system, apart from the political rationale of a perceived strategic prestige (for domestic purposes?) and a balancing factor against the US strategic offensive & defensive arsenal?

Do you relate the withdrawal of the Gorgon exo layer from Moscow (whereas the Gazelle deployment remains) to an evolution in the operational performance goal of the ABM system, possibly in relation to the above mentioned ideas?? Or just to aging and problems with the Gorgon missile itself? Or otherwise to the poor operational added value of this layer for ABM efficiency, versus its "nice" HEMP effect on western Russia...

Best regards.

It's hard to tell what they had in mind when they were building those defense systems. I think I saw the argument somewhere that A-135 could have helped prevent a "decapitation strike," but I think it was just a rationalization. My understanding is that the process was very much "capability driven" - they built whatever was feasible at the time and did not worry too much about whether the system had any meaningful mission.

With A-235, the plan was that it will be able to intercept "8-12 complex ballistic targets" - a single SLBM would have easily overwhelmed the system.