During the last five years, hearing about the US disarming while the Soviets (China as well) re-arm and modernize is alarming, but nothing new under the sun. What’s new, and yet more alarming, is that they are further concentrating on road mobile missiles. To be realistic, they likely never abided by the previous START treaties as it’s in Russian history to treat treaties as pie crusts, which is to say they’re meant to be broken. Nobody knows what roads/routes they travel, which is what makes them hard to detect. There is no such thing in the United States, and this would quite possibly give them first-strike capability. To avid readers of current events, the ability to penetrate US missile defenses was also not new and something bragged about years ago by the Russians.
As the Obama administration prepares to launch a new round of strategic nuclear missile cuts, Russia’s strategic nuclear forces are undergoing a major modernization, according to U.S. officials.
Russia’s military announced last month that as part of the nuclear buildup, Moscow later this year will deploy the first of its new intercontinental ballistic missiles called the Yars-M.
Details of the missile are being kept secret, but it has been described as a fifth-generation strategic nuclear system that Russian officials say will be able to penetrate U.S. missile defenses using a new type of fuel that requires a shorter burn time for booster engines.
…
Retired Russian strategic forces commander Col. Gen. Viktor Yesin has said the Yars-M “is one of the military technological measures that the Russian military-political leadership has devised in response to the development of a global missile-defense system by the Americans.”
Last year, a Russian official explained the new missile’s fuel and anti-missile defense capabilities in an interview with Moskovski Komsomolets. The strategic nuclear weapons specialist said the high-tech fuel “allows for the reduction of the working time of the engines during the boost phase of flight, when it [the missile] is most vulnerable to detection by defensive means.”
“As a result, we achieve the most complex part of the rocket boost so fast that the enemy does not have time to calculate its trajectory and, therefore, cannot destroy it,” the official said. “That is, we can say that our ability to overcome missile defense will be significantly increased.”
Russia also announced last month that it has launched a new research-and-development program for a modernized rail-mobile ICBM. Russia’s Deputy Defense Minister Yuri Borisov told RIA Novosti April 23 that work on this rail-based missile is in the early stages and could be deployed by 2020.
…
The rail-mobile ICBMs were prohibited under earlier versions of the U.S.-Russia START treaties. However, the 2010 New START treaty did not prohibit rail-mobile basing of missiles, and Moscow is taking advantage of the omission.
In addition to the new strategic missiles, Russia is building a new strategic bomber that is expected to be deployed by 2020.
Full article: Inside the Ring: Russia builds up, U.S. down (Washington Times)
Global Geopolitics 