[Paul Ross]

I never said our forces are not great. But they are also not the best we have ever had.

I'm sorry, but the 'modernization' excuse is just that. And Kennedy's book is pathetic. The U.S. has NEVER spent enough on defense. As a percentage of GDP, even at the $400 billion level, after adjusting for inflation we are well under what we were down to during the mid 30's prior to being attacked at Pearl Harbor. And btw, we are NOT AN EMPIRE. So none of your prognostications about our falling due to excess military spending apply. And as for economizing, We always fight the next war with last year's or older, technology. That is the ONLY economical way. The next stage of technology being developed will then be in the NEXT war. So keeping the not-so-old, 'old stuff' in fighting trim is actually the only truly economical way to go, while continuing to do the R&D for future warfighting technologies, and deploying if appropriate.

As for Rummy kicking ass, well, I am waiting for it to result in actual improvements in airframes. The ABM is NOT going up that Reagan promised. We are being given a Clinton-designed bogus 'imitation' ABM. And he keeps stonewalling on giving the go-ahead for the seabased Aegis system which could be done for under $6 billion. And guess what, he is also turning a blind eye on a number of other golden opportunities to save the service money: i.e., he could at a stroke triple the services troop-airlift by picking up for a song the Boeing airliners sitting idle in the desert in California. Which would simultaneously rejuvenate the airline manufacturer and restore jobs to the country. Rummy, who I love like my favorite uncle, unfortunately caved to the Prez on the Moscow missile treaty. He bucked it a good while, but then got unequivocal orders to cease.

Your concerns about military over-spending are warped. Just maintaining our previous deterrent only cost $4 billion a year. The Dismantling that has been ordered will cost over $20 billion! And that $20 billion comes from the DOD budget! Money that could have gone to giving us real capability, not robbing us of what we already have. Granted, the treaty says 2,200, not 1,700...but GWB has ORDERED the reduction to 1,700...lamely hoping the Russkies will do likewise. They have already announced they are in no hurry at all. And in fact, they think their First Strike weapons, the SS-18s are just peachy, and will keep them for another 17 years.

As for why we need 2,200...in fact we really need 6,000 or more to be able to plausibly survive a number of first strike scenarios from the Russians and in combination with the Chinese Axis...or at the very minimun 3,500. A surviving fraction that could deliver a sufficiently devastating response to prevent these people from being tempted by thoughts of 'winning'. Donald Rumsfeld actually agreed with the Joint Chiefs of Staff on that number. So you and GWB are the ones out in left field. GWB has perpetuated the Clinton-ordered 'stand-down' non-alert posture that conceivably could catch us badly off guard. 'Looking-Glass' continues to languish.

More reason to seriously question the President's true seriousness about national security.

As for RPV's replacing the F-14, it is not going to happen. They are perhaps 15 years away. What you don't realize is that the F-14, in many ways is way ahead of the F-18 or the F-35 JSF for the mission of interception. And the future, hypothetical, RPVs will be limited to reconnaissance and air support. But as for interception...they are non-starters...they are not supersonic, nor are they immune from jamming or weather issues. And the lack of the visual information only a cockpit can give makes for a real loss of pilot situational awareness for combat. And as for ships, the Admirals have concurred that we have too few for the missions already committed. We need to deploy more than we are per year. We have a shortfall, based on all the commitments we have...if push comes to shove of 200 ships. We can't currently fight two wars let alone three simultaneously...Rummy's brave talk notwithstanding. We are fully occupied with Iraq. North Korea & Taiwan is a powder keg...and we are just bluffing. If it goes. Hence the talk of sizing the force to handle only one war at a time...tells you what is really happening. And Hence GWB's ignominous kow-towing to the PRC Chairman...doing effectively, his own version of the "Three-NOs." GWB's gambles with our security are gambles no honest conservative would take. Period.

Oh, btw, we are NOT increasing our RV warhead yields at all. We are not producing ANY nuclear warheads at all. In fact, we are going the other way. When Clinton 'modernized' the Minuteman-III he lowered its accuracy and shortened its range. We have a subtantial reduction in counterforce capability thanks to Clinton and now GWB retiring the MX missiles. We are researching...repeat...researching only bunker busters in the small sub-kiloton range. Nothing else. And the ABM going up is comrade Xlinton's design. I am so reassured. Not.

[Southack]

"We can't currently fight two wars let alone three simultaneously...Rummy's brave talk notwithstanding. We are fully occupied with Iraq."

That's just silly.

We are *rotating* troops out of Iraq, for crying out loud! If we were stretched thin we wouldn't be able to have the luxury of rotating seasoned troops out of combat.

Nor do we even have to maintain our present force levels in Iraq. We could pull most or all of our troops out of Iraq to smash Syria or Iran or even North Korea. Re-taking any lost territory in Iraq would be child's play for our military, once we finished whatever hot spots had flared up elsewhere.

So we don't need more troops.

We control the entire world's oceans, so we don't need more ships, either.

We also control the world's skies, and while the F-14 is great, it is still just an aerial platform for launching anti-aircraft and anti-ground ordinance. We've got lots of such aerial platforms, some of them rather stealthy (unlike the F-14), and others don't even have a pilot to worry about losing.

[Poohbah]

When Clinton 'modernized' the Minuteman-III he lowered its accuracy and shortened its range.

False. MMIII is significantly more accurate now--it has received the W87 and Peacekeeper guidance package.

We have a subtantial reduction in counterforce capability thanks to Clinton and now GWB retiring the MX missiles.

Yeah, because we actually agreed to a treaty that required it.

Of course, we have a supreme advantage in counterforce systems that we know will actually work...bombers. Nobody's live-fired an ICBMunder anything approaching combat conditions. Today's ICBM "test launches" in the US, Russia, and China are done after the missiles are extensively checked out by very scarce factory technicians, and only score about as well as space boosters that receive a similar level of prelaunch maintenance and checkout prior to flight (75%-80% reliability across all phases of flight). Combat reliability is extremely questionable, and is probably under 50%. (I would personally put it at about 40%, tops, for US missiles, and 25% for Russian and Chinese missiles.)

Meanwhile, the US bomber force has demonstrated a remarkable ability to deliver the goods over the years. Even against fully-alerted defenses with minimal (read: nearly nonexistent) Iron hand support (Operation Linebacker II), it took 100 SAMs to generate one hit against a B-52. And the performance of Russian and Chinese air defenses has been nothing to write home about, as Matthias Rust and the SIGINT folks who monitored the KAL 007 shootdown can attest.

[Southack]

"in fact, they think their First Strike weapons, the SS-18s are just peachy, and will keep them for another 17 years."

Um, no. You should subscribe to Janes. Russia's Satans are being retired in 2007.

2 October 2000

Russia's strategic forces stumble

RUSSIA'S STRATEGIC nuclear forces have entered the millennium with a broad range of financial, technological, diplomatic and organisational problems. By the middle of this year future prospects were further clouded by the politicisation of the reform debate, linked to the succession struggle for the post of minister of defence. It seems unlikely that the Kremlin will be able to stabilise the operational capabilities of the force. The question is whether the force will continue to erode in a controlled or haphazard way.

Strategic nuclear forces

As with all combat branches of the Russian armed forces, the strategic nuclear forces face the future severely hamstrung by financial problems. This was demonstrated on 27 June when Strategic Rocket Forces (Raketnye voiska strategicheskogo naznacheniya - RVSN) troops from the base at Sibirskiy were forced to stage a commando raid on the neighbouring electric power company, which threatened to shut off power to the base due to a continuing failure to pay its bills. As in the rest of the armed forces, monthly pay for the missile troops has been erratic.

The RVSN remains the main element of the Russian strategic forces, being responsible for about 90% of the strategic missions even though it possesses only about 60% of the missiles and warheads. Funding for RVSN operations has been meagre, as has the maintenance budget.

Russia currently fields 780 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), of which about 60% are beyond their warranty life. Most Russian liquid-fuelled missiles of the fourth and fifth generation have a warranted life of seven to 10 years in operation. At the end of this period they must be removed from their silo and sent back to the plant for remanufacture as the corrosive oxidant can begin to leak, electronics deteriorate, and the warhead has to be serviced. This cannot be done in the silo due to the use of transport-launch containers that envelope the missile.

In the past, missiles have been rebuilt several times, extending their life to 25 years. The problem is that 226 of the missiles - Voevoda (SS-18 'Satan') and Molodets (SS-24 'Scalpel') - were built in Ukraine and so cannot be sent back to their original plant for rebuilding. A limited reserve of missiles can be substituted, but this is a finite resource that will be exhausted. The older UR-100NU (SS-19 'Stiletto'), built at the Khrunichev plant near Moscow, is being rebuilt to extend its useful life until about 2010. The 360 Topol (SS-25 'Sickle') mobile ICBMs that make up almost half the force are the newest missiles to enter service. Their manufacturing plant at Votkinsk is still in operation, and there is a reserve of about 50 missiles that can be substituted for time-expired missiles.

To further complicate matters, the main manufacturer of inertial-guidance platforms, Khartron, is also in Ukraine. When missiles are left on active alert with the inertial guidance unit fully operating, the system has an expected life of about three years. Since spares on these guidance units are dwindling, the RVSN has to face the choice of removing a significant portion of the missile force from ready alert, or allowing the force to become non-functional due to worn out guidance platforms.

Although figures have not been published, it is assumed that a smaller portion of the current missile force is kept on ready alert than a decade ago, if only to conserve spares. As a result of these trends, the Voevoda force will have to be retired by 2007, when it will become unsupportable. This will drop the total RVSN missile force size to about 600 ICBMs and drop the warhead count from the current 3,540 to about 1,740. This is planned under the second Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START II) in any event.

At the moment, the only new missile entering the force is the Topol-M (SS-27), an evolved version of the Topol. In view of the current debate over procurement funding priorities, it is not certain that Topol-M production will continue at recent levels - barely 10 missiles a year. As a result, the RVSN ICBM force is likely to shrink regardless of treaty considerations.

The 1997 appointment of Igor Sergeyev, former commander of the RVSN, as defence minister helped to focus attention on the need for RVSN modernisation. Sergeyev is the first RVSN commander to have served as defence minister. He has argued forcefully that it is the strategic nuclear forces that make Russia a great power.

Sergeyev's procurement priority was the Topol-M ICBM effort, with the aim not only of halting the erosion of the force size but of firming up the defence industries on which the RVSN is so dependent. Priority or not, Topol-M funding has been barely adequate and, to date, only two regiments (20 silo launchers) have been deployed. Tests of a more survivable, but more expensive, road-mobile version were scheduled to begin in July 2000, only to be put off indefinitely due to a lack of funds and the current controversies over future Russian force structure.

Dead in the water

If the funding situation for the RVSN has been poor, it has been catastrophic for the navy. Funding has been so low that missile submarine patrols have become uncommon. Of the 62 strategic-missile submarines in operation in 1990, by 2000 only about 20 are still nominally functional, armed with 348 missiles. The state of the Project 941 Akula-class ('Typhoon') nuclear-powered ballistic-missile submarines is parlous. At least three are non-functional. Plans to rehabilitate the surviving three have been constantly delayed. The R-39 (SS-N-20 'Sturgeon') missiles on board will be age expired by 2003. This class may disappear over the next few years from neglect and lack of funding.

The Project 667BDRM Delfin ('Delta IV') is in slightly better shape. The lead boat of the class, Verkhoture, was supposed to go back to the Zvezdochka yard in 1993 for a major overhaul. Due to lack of funding it received only a medium-level overhaul seven years behind schedule, which was completed in July this year. These delayed overhauls will lead to a decline in reliability and premature retirement.

The missile situation for these submarines is not much better. The plant in Krasnoyarsk that manufactured the liquid-fuelled R-29RM (SS-N-23 'Skiff') closed in 1996 due to a lack of orders. The other submarine-launched ballistic-missile (SLBM) plant at Zlatoust that produced the solid fuel R-39 has also been idle due to a lack of orders.

Modernisation of the submarine force is dead in the water. Although the keel for the first submarine of the new Borey class has already been laid, the programme was halted by the cancellation of the troubled 3M91 Bark (SS-NX-28) missile in 1999. The missile development effort was 73% complete and the conversion of the first Akula-class submarine was 84% complete when this happened, throwing the entire submarine programme into turmoil.

Work has begun on a solid fuel follow-on missile called the Bulava, a co-operative effort between the Moscow Institute of Thermotechnology, which developed the Topol, and the Makeyev bureau in Miass, which has designed most Russian submarine ballistic missiles. The Makeyev design bureau, which has never been fond of solid-fuel propulsion, is pushing a liquid-fuelled alternative, the Sineva, derived from the earlier R-29RM. Either way, it is unlikely that a new submarine will be completed until near the end of the decade, if at all.

Unless funding patterns change it is possible that the submarine missile force could either disappear or shrink to insignificance by the end of the decade.