It’s tempting to write up a piece on the one year anniversary of Russia launching its illegal war of territorial aggression against Ukraine, but the situation right now is largely a static cycle of “Russia grinds out gains near Bakhmut and Vuhledar, followed some time later by Ukraine mostly erasing those gains and inflicting heavy losses on Russian troops.
So let’s talk about Putin’s announcement that Russia is suspending the New START treaty.
Feb 21 (Reuters) – President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday that Russia was suspending participation in the New START nuclear arms reduction treaty with the United States, after accusing the West of being directly involved in attempts to strike its strategic air bases.
“I am forced to announce today that Russia is suspending its participation in the strategic offensive arms treaty,” he said.
New START is the successor to START I, signed by Bush41 and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991, limiting strategic weapons to 6,000 nuclear warheads and 1,600 ICBMs and nuclear bombers. New START, signed by Obama and Putin, lowered that to 1,550 nuclear warheads and 700 deployed missiles and bombers (800 total for non-deployed). It placed no limits on tactical nuclear weapons.
Should we worry that Putin is about to launch a new nuclear arms race?
I wouldn’t.
One repeated lesson of the Russo-Ukrainian War is that Russian equipment is ill-kept and ill-maintained. If Russia can’t even properly maintain it’s current military infrastructure, how is it going to launch a new nuclear arms race?
The United States is going to spend some $634 billion this decade maintaining its nuclear deterrent. The U.S. spends more money maintaining nuclear weapons in a given year than Russia spends annually on its entire military. Thermonuclear weapons (not fission-only tactical nuclear weapons) require regular Tritium refresh. Fission weapons still require battery and explosive refresh. Where is Russia going to find money to expand it’s nuclear arsenal when it’s going into it’s second year fighting a full-fledged conventional war, for which it’s already expended most of it’s high precision munitions?
Could Russia build more nuclear weapons? Sure. They have a lot of the old Soviet infrastructure left over, known Uranium deposits, and probably some remaining personnel from the Soviet era with the know-how to do so. But what they don’t have is an overabundance of money, with the Russian economy contracting under sanctions, dwindling hard currency reserves and difficulty obtaining high tech components.
The real reason that Putin withdrew from START is that it allows America to carry out regular inspections of Russian infrastructure, and I’m sure they feared America relaying any actionable intelligence from such inspections to Ukraine.
Aside from that, it’s likely this is simple brinkmanship designed to make the world back down from supporting Ukraine, but if Russia does want to expand it’s nuclear arsenal, expect the process to be slow, difficult and underfunded.
Tags: Bakhmut, George H. W. Bush, Military, New START, nuclear weapons, Russia, Russo-Ukrainian War, Soviet Union, Vladimir Putin, Vuhledar
The one thing you can count on about anything Putin does… It won’t work out for Russia’s benefit. Not in the long-term, for sure, and generally not in the medium term, either. He’s constantly making short-term optimal choices that inevitably bite him in the ass.
The man is either cursed, or he’s working for Russia’s enemies. That’s about all you can conclude from the effect of what he does.
I’ve often wondered if there is a way of ascertaining how many functioning nuclear warheads Russia has (with emphasis on “functioning”). In the event of a nuclear exchange, how many missiles would sit in their silos because the Russian mafia sold the propellant on the black market, how many missiles would crash harmlessly in the ocean because the gyroscope was jammed or wouldn’t detonate because the uranium was contaminated or any of a 1,000 other things that could go wrong with improperly maintained weaponry.
While you’re at it, you might want to ask the question of just how many of our own warheads and missiles are actually going to be able launch and then go off when and if they reach the end of their flight paths.
There’s a certain degree of chicanery going on with regards to the whole “nuclear armageddon industry” in that there are a lot of things they don’t bother to tell the politicians or us.
Case in point: US test launches. It’s not as bad as it was back when everything was purely inertial, but even with GPS running it’s not as easy as they want you to believe. First, (and, this is all open-source, nothing at all classified) you have to realize that all of the US testing is done on an east-to-west test range running from California out over the Pacific, across the equator and into the Kwajalein test range. This is done by taking a missile out of a silo somewhere in the midwest, trucking it to California, and virtually rebuilding the damn thing before launch. I’ve heard that sometimes about the only thing that may make it to the test launch is the data plate. Then, during that overhaul, they switch out the standard guidance package with something that’s been heavily modified for the Pacific test range, add telemetry up the wazoo, and launch it. Back when inertial nav was the only thing going, they had perfectly surveyed gravity maps all the way to Kwajalein, which make a huge difference in accuracy. Even with all that, they have a failure rate that ranges into the 20%-40% range (from what can be made out from open source), despite the most careful monitoring and control from the ground in California.
Now, consider how things would actually work in a “come-as-you-are” nuclear war: Missiles in their silos, on normal maintenance schedules, fired en masse by tired guys who’ve got what amounts to a turn-key affair (no correctives sent after telemetry indicating flight problems…) over the North Pole where they’ll have to get through the Van Allen belts twice.
We don’t have good gravity maps into Russian territory. Before GPS (and, this was one of the main reasons we wanted it…), the Circular Error Probable for our nukes was a hell of a lot larger for Soviet targets than they were telling the politicians.
Now, that’s us. Based on what we’ve seen of Russian military competence and corruption, do you want to make any bets that their nuclear forces are any better? Did you note the amazing inaccuracy of all those nuclear-capable cruise missiles that they’ve been launching? Does that tell you anything?
Friend of mine who was familiar with all the issues inherent to this stuff once made a joke to me that it was his opinion that the smartest thing that the guy carrying the so-called “nuclear football” could do, upon orders from the National Command Authority to launch, would be to reach into that briefcase, pull out a handgun, and shoot whoever gave him the order. Any other course of action would result in the revelation that all the trillions of dollars lavished on the nuclear armageddon industry were wasted, and the game would be up for the Air Force and all the contractors involved.
We joke about that here, but that might actually be true in Russia. I don’t know what the actual “working warhead” rate might be, and I don’t want to find out, but if the whole thing fizzles out into a bunch of shamed faces and tribunals of all involved, I would not be one damn bit surprised. These are extremely complex systems, untested in real war, and the idea that we’d get even a 90% “success” (questionable term, that… I’d rather the damn things stayed in their silos…) rate out of trying to use them at the spur of the moment is simply ludicrous.
Up until the advent of GPS, the guidance issues were really just that bad. If the Chinese are looking to upgrade their strategic systems, one thing that balloon might have been doing was making gravimetric maps for their inertial guidance systems. Its path would have been perfect for that, if I remember rightly what I was told. Knowing what instrumentation was on that balloon would be highly educational, but I doubt us plebs will ever find out.
Tangent:
A little while back for various reasons I did a search on US ICBMs and GPS. I could not find a single, seemingly reputable open source that confirms that US ICBM use GPS. Heck, I couldn’t even find it unreputable source, or anyone that even thought that ICBMs use GPS except for a YouTube video.
The current guidance package on the LGM-30 G ICBM is the NS-50. It was created via a 5 year EMD program in the mid-90s, Actually finished early, and the first installation was in 1999, and finished deployment.
(Accidentally on my previous comment before I finished)
…in about 2007. I have not come across any description of the NS 50 that references GPS — everything points to an inertial guidance system.
It may use targeting data and coordinates derived from GPS systems, but it doesn’t seem to directly use GPS for guidance. For that matter, it doesn’t seem the Navy SLBMs use GPS either, at least as referenced in open sources.
I worked in the GPS joint program office overlapping the timeframe that the NS 50 was being developed. The JPO was the main source for GPS receivers for the entire department of defense, along with developing the GPS itself. I never heard word one about it being applied to ICBMs. Now there were other program offices that separately incorporated GPS into various systems, for example, military airlift command had civilian GPS units, put into the C141, And the joint direct attack munition program office also directly contracted for GPS systems to be put into the JDAM package.
But I heard nothing about the ICBMs. It’s possible they did it in secret, but that doesn’t really seem logical, because they publish general information about the make-up of guidance package, including bragging about the Gyro unit that it uses, so there really wouldn’t be any reason to not mention GPS if it was used.
If anyone has a source that indicates how GPS is used with ICBMs I would be interested to know, but I don’t believe GPS is used for the guidance of an ICBM in flight.
OK now I’m really confused. I accidentally published my original comment before I was ready, and I got a message that it was awaiting moderation.
so I continued with the comment above and But when I hit the publish button and it went straight to internet without the moderation phase. So it makes no sense whatsoever without the first comment. I’m going to publish that again here and hope whoever reads this understands to read this comment first, then go back to the other one.
Sorry for all the confusion.
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Tangent: A little while back for various reasons I did a search on US ICBMs and GPS. I could not find a single, seemingly reputable open source that confirms that US ICBM use GPS. Heck, I couldn’t even find it unreputable source, or anyone that even thought that ICBMs use GPS except for a YouTube video. The current guidance package on the LGM-30 G ICBM is the NS-50. It was created via a 5 year EMD program in the mid-90s, Actually finished early, and the first installation was in 1999, and finished deployment
I have to bow to your more recent and detailed knowledge of the issue. I was told, by one of the guys who was working on GPS back in the early 1990s, that the original intent had been for it to be used to tighten up all the CEP for all the nuclear weapons, cruise missiles to ICBMs. I had thought he knew whereof he spoke, but I’ve never really looked into it in detail.
I don’t doubt but that the whole “how to guide nukes” issue is highly classified. If we had our CEP down to mere meters…? Yeah; big deal. If the Russians don’t? Hmmmm… Makes a counterforce strike all the more possible.
The guy that told me about them using it to guide MIRV warheads in wasn’t a missileer; he was someone who worked on the ground stations for the whole system, right when they were being set up. His information was what it was, and I may be wrong to pass that on. Thanks for the corrective…
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