Status Check: Russia’s Nuclear Forces

The Russian Ground Forces’ flashy new armored fighting vehicles have galvanized military analysts. The brand new T-14 Armata main-battle tank is Russia’s first genuinely new tank construction since the collapse of the Soviet Union. But while the tank is interesting, surprisingly little attention has been paid to the prominent place of nuclear weaponry during the May 9 Victory Day Parade in Moscow’s Red Square.

For example, the parade featured a number of new RS-24 Yars (SS-27) rockets, Russia’s newest operational fifth-generation intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), which can carry multiple independently targetable nuclear warheads and was first introduced into service in July 2010.

“Along with the single-warhead RS-12M2 ICBM (Topol-M missile system), the RS-24 ICBM will form the backbone of the Russia’s Strategic Missile Forces (RSMF) main attack force,” according to a Russian official interviewed by Sputnik News.

The parade also featured a Tu-160M - the most advanced Russian strategic bomber capable of carrying up to 12 nuclear AS-15 A air-launched cruise missiles or nuclear gravity bombs – as well as formations of Tu-95 and Tupolev Tu-22M3 Backfire strategic bombers. All in all, Moscow can field between 50 to 60 such strategic bombers that could, in theory, carry more than 600 nuclear air-launched cruise missiles.

The May 9 parade illustrates that Russia still is, and also considers itself to be, a nuclear superpower second only to the United States. This begs the question: What is the status of Russia’s nuclear weapons arsenal in 2015?

Modernizing

Russia is in the middle of modernizing its strategic and nonstrategic nuclear warheads. According to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Moscow currently possesses 4,500 nuclear warheads, of which roughly 1,780 strategic warheads are deployed on missiles and at bomber bases. An additional 700 strategic warheads are kept in storage along with approximately 2,000 nonstrategic warheads. “Russia deploys an estimated 311 ICBMs that can carry approximately 1,050 warheads,” the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists further notes.

The website russianforces.org estimates that Russia has 499 strategic launchers and about 1,900 nuclear strategic warheads. The website also cites a September 2014 New START data exchange in which Russia reported 528 deployed launchers with 1,643 New START-accountable nuclear warheads. When it comes to ICMBs, russianforces.org only deviates slightly from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which cites 305 operational missile systems that can carry 1,166 warheads.

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists points out:

There are many uncertainties about the status and future of Russia’s nuclear arsenal. One is poor transparency, due to New START having discontinued public release of detailed aggregate numbers and the fact that Moscow does not publish comprehensive information about its nuclear forces. The increasing diversity of the Russian intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) force creates additional uncertainty.

In 2010, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a massive 20 trillion ruble military modernization project aimed to replace 70 percent of Soviet-era military hardware by 2020, including 50 new warships for the navy, hundreds of new fighter jets, thousands of new vehicles for the ground forces, and the complete modernization of Russia’s strategic nuclear forces.

According to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists:

In February 2012, then-Prime Minister (now President) Vladimir Putin stated that the military would receive more than 400 advanced ground and sea-based intercontinental ballistic missiles over the coming decade, or an average of 40 missiles per year. In his formal remarks to the Defense Ministry Board in late 2014, however, Putin declared that the strategic nuclear forces will receive more than 50 intercontinental ballistic missiles in 2015.

This number appears to be exaggerated. However, Russia is indeed in the process of retiring all Soviet-era ICBMs and replacing them with new weapon systems, a project that is about halfway complete, according to Western estimates. Also, the commander of Russia’s Strategic Rocket Forces, Lt. Gen. Sergei Karakayev, stated at the end of 2014 that modern missile systems accounted for 50 percent of the ICBM force already. The estimated completion date for the replacement of all Soviet legacy systems is 2022.

The Soviet-era ICBMs will be replaced by the “SS-27 Mod. 1 (Topol-M), the SS-27 Mod. 2, two follow-on versions of the SS-27 which are still in development, and a new liquid-fuel ‘heavy’ [Sarmat] ICBM,” according to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. This month, Lt. Gen. Karakayev announced that Russia’s Strategic Missile Forces will receive another 24 SS-27 Mod. 2 systems in 2015. By 2020, the Russian military is expected to receive 108 SS-27 ICBMs.

With the slow phasing out of older ICBMs and the largely unknown production capacity of the Russian nuclear arms industry, Russia’s arsenal is estimated to drop below 300 missiles in the early 2020s. Since the United States fields around 400 ICBMs, Moscow will try to compensate for this shortage by increasing the share of ICBMs equipped with multiple warheads from 43 percent at present to around 73 percent by 2024.

“Although Russia will deploy slightly fewer ICBM warheads by that time, roughly 90 percent of them will be MIRVs. That trend is unhealthy for U.S.-Russian strategic stability because 400 warheads on the US ICBM force can be used to threaten 1,000 warheads on the Russian ICBM force,” the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists explains.

Strategic Naval Forces

Yet the biggest recent change in Russia’s nuclear triad has been in its strategic naval forces, with a new addition to its maritime nuclear deterrence: the Borei-class (aka Dolgorukiy-class), Project 955, fourth generation SSBN (Ship, Submersible, Ballistic, Nuclear) submarine.

Next to the six third-generation Delta IVs SSBNs, the planned eight Borei-class SSBNs will constitute the bulk of Russia’s sea-based deterrence over the next decade. Borei-class strategic submarines carry between 12 to 16 Bulava (RSM-56) ballistic missiles – the naval variant of the SS-27 Mod.2, with 6-10 warheads per missile – each warhead yielding 100-150 kilotons, for a total of 72 to 196 warheads per submarine. The Bulava ballistic missile has a range of more than 8300 km. Analyzing the Bulava intercontinental missile, Lieutenant Commander Tom Spahn, a U.S. naval reserve officer, concludes:

Like its launch platform, the Bulava missile also represents a dramatic leap forward in technology. Similar to its land-based variant, the Topol-M SS-27, to thwart evolving Western ballistic-missile-defense shields, the Bulava can conduct evasive post-launch maneuvers and deploy a variety of countermeasures and decoys to defend against interception. Its ten hypersonic, independently maneuverable warheads are protected against both physical and electromagnetic-pulse damage to ensure that they can reach their targets intact.

With the new Borei-class SSBNs, “the capability of the Russian SSBN fleet will increase significantly. With eight, each with 16 SLBMs, the fleet would increase the warhead loading from 672 to approximately 800 by the early 2020s,” the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists notes.

However, the question remains: Can Russia afford the current build up?

“The modernization program is based on a defense plan that was drawn up based on fiscal assumptions that are no longer valid. Sanctions imposed after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the decline in oil income have significantly reduced Russian revenues, but the financial decline was already under way even before those events,” according to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.

The verdict is simple: Russia cannot afford military expenditures at such scale in the long-run.

“The modern Russian economy just does not generate enough resources to finance the current 2011-2020 rearmament program. This seriously reduces the ability to efficiently renew the Russian armed forces’ equipment,” a recent analysis by the Moscow-based defense think tank CAST notes.

So far the impact of the financial shortfalls on the modernization program appears to have been limited. Indeed, the current massive rearmament program constitutes the biggest increase in nuclear capabilities of Russia since the end of the Soviet Union and should be watched carefully. It would not be the first time that Russia is throwing financial caution to the wind for the sake of maintaining cutting-edge nuclear strategic forces.