The July 2005 START Treaty exchange data released in October 2005 show that Russia continues reductions of its strategic forces. Russia currently has 815 strategic delivery platforms, which can carry up to 3479 nuclear warheads.
Russia continues to cut its missile force – the division at Yurya is being disbanded and now has only 12 missiles. In addition to that, the Rocket Forces completed elimination of all SS-24 rail-mobile missiles and the SS-18 missile division in Kartaly. There have been no changes in the strategic fleet and the strategic aviation since the last data exchange. A summary of the current status of the Russian strategic forces can be found here.
The July 2005 data exchange for the first time includes technical data on the Bulava sea-launched missile, which began its flight tests on September 27, 2005. The missile, which was designated RSM-56 for the purposes of the treaty, is quite compact – its launch weight is about 37 tonnes, its length is about 12 meters.
The book
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I have a question, the only deployed versions of the SS-18 Russian ICBMS are the R-36M UTTH and R-36M2. The R-36 M UTTH variant 3 could carry a single warhead with a yield of 24-25 mt, but the variant 4 could carry 10 warheads with a yield of 550 kiltons. What variant is deployed? I seem to understand the variant 3 was completely replaced by the variant 4 here:
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/russia/r-36m.htm
Also, what R-36M2 has two variants 5 and 6. Variant 5 can carry 10 warheads with a yield of 550-700 kt or a single warhead with a yield of 20 mt. Which of these two is deployed?
Oh, does the book include Russian strategic policy? I once heard that their policy is disconsiderate and they plan to nuke everywhere not only to the attacker, although by the numbers of nukes they can deliver, that may not be possible.
The "variants" or "modifications" classification that was used by the U.S. DoD does not exactly match the Soviet/Russian classification of missiles. If I remember correctly, some R-36M and some R-36M2 missiles were deployed with single warheads. We don't know if any of the currently deployed R-36M2 missiles are single-warhead modifications (I would doubt it, though).
As for "disconsiderate" Russian strategic policy, I'm not sure what do you mean by it (or by "nuking everywhere"). I seriously doubt a plan like this ever existed.
Have the Russians provided the telemetry data on the Bulava and Topol-M?
The START treaty requires it to (Article X). However, Russia can encrypt the telemetry - it is allowed to do so in up to eleven tests (no more that four tests of one type of a missile) a year.