Aby The Liberal

Aby August 27th, 2007

This article is in response to the claims made by a few scaremongering dissident sites and blogs that the US National Missile Defense program could lead to a global hegemony with the US achieving nuclear primacy and launching a nuclear holocaust on Russia. The claim is seemingly based on the assumption that the US can destroy more than 90% of Russia’s nuclear arsenal and then take cover under its ABM defence to prevent any retaliatory nuclear strike by Russia. An excerpt of such a claim is given below, taken from a Canadian site Global Research in its article “The Real Danger behind US ABM Deployment in Eastern Europe“.

By means of a US first strike about 99%+ of Russian nuclear forces would be taken out. So Bush Jr. needs ABMs to take care of what remains. And in any event what really matters here is the perception. Namely, the United States Government believes that with the deployment of a facially successful first strike capability, they can move beyond deterrence and into “compellence.” In other words, with an apparent first strike capability, the USG can compel Russia to do its bidding during a crisis.

The above scenario is a risky proposition which could easily inflame public paranoia and cause an alarming rise of  anti-American movements around the globe. However such a nuclear war scenario be impossible from practical consideration due to the fail deadly mechanism employed by nuclear powers. The fail deadly mechanism (also known as second strike capability) is put in place by a nuclear capable country to prevent an enemy wiping off its nuclear arsenal with an overwhelming first strike. A force of survivable nuclear arsenal is developed and deployed as mobile ICBMs, submarine SLBMs and reinforced blast-resistant ICBM silos - all equipped with multiple nuclear warheads (MIRV). We will explain in brief using publicly available data and verifiable information, the technologies and strategic measures employed by Russia to protect their systems from US first strikes. We will also construct simulated attack scenarios to understand the second strike capability of Russia. The technical jargon will be kept to a minimum for easier understanding, with only as much technical details as necessary to explain the factors/scenario. For further technical details you may follow one of the resource links provided below or read up the resources in public and declassified databases, on the subject.

Submarine Nuclear Forces and SLBMs
This is the primary fail-deadly second strike measure employed by matured nuclear powers like United States, Russia, China, UK and France to have survivable nuclear deterrence capability. It is for this reason that both France and Britain are secured against enemy attacks as the stealth nature of submarine nuclear forces provide enough power for a strong nuclear retaliation. Submarine launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) are based on large submarines (SSBNs) which have a premium on survivability and stealth. Autonomy of launch decision is also ensured in case enemy destroys the command-and-control of a country’s administration. In case of Russia, its strategic submarine nuclear force is estimated to be divided into at least five Delta III and six Delta IV ballistic missile submarines. Each of Delta III submarine carries 16 RSM-50 Stingray SLBMs with 4 MIRV warheads of 200 KT each. The Delta IV submarines carry 16 RSM-54 Skiff SLBMs with 4 MIRV warheads of 100 KT each. A minimum of 624 nuclear warheads are believed to be deployed in the 11 Russian submarines which makes about 18.6% of the known Russian strategic nuclear forces (NATO estimates quote a higher figure of 13-15 submarines).

Due to the mobile nature of nuclear submarines in oceans, they cannot be easily tracked and destroyed. Tracking several stealth submarines with acoustic and hydrological apparatus in oceans the size of Pacific and Arctic is an impractical task even during peacetime and ideal weather conditions. In a tense situation the security of nuclear missile submarines will be inevitably upgraded with larger number of decoys, higher secrecy, increased security and increase in warheads per missile (both Stingray and Skiff have been tested with 10 warheads each). Even if a single submarine is tracked and attacked, the loss of communication might alert the rest of the submarines and lead to the possibility of nuclear missile launches. To successfully neutralise Russia’s SLBM force, all the submarines must be tracked, attacked and destroyed simultaneously, without fail, as even a single surviving submarine is capable of carrying out an attack on no less than 48 targets. The technical difficulties of conducting such a precise operation in a short span of time against a matured nuclear might is practically impossible and would risk a deadly retaliation in case of a failed attempt.

Mobile ICBMs and Blast Proof Hard Silos
In addition to SLBMs, the erstwhile Soviet Union also had an advantage in ICBM survivability because of its successful truck and rail based mobile launchers. The advantage is inherited by Russia, which is currently expanding mobile ICBM capability to all its ICBM upgrades. The maintenance and operation of mobile ICBMs is significantly cheaper than submarine SLBMs without drastically reducing the survivability to a nuclear first strike. High survivability of the mobile ICBM complex is achieved by off-road movement and camouflage abilities, which enable a continuous change in location and a missile launch from any point along the movement route, from ‘all-terrain’ heavy trucks like MAZ7917.

The mobile ICBM arsenal of Russia is made up of 45 RT-2UTTKh Topol M and 242 RT-2PM Topol missiles. Both the Topol and Topol M had been tested with 6 warheads per missile but fitted with only one warhead each, to comply with START II treaty. However the expiry of START II in light of US missile defence program has made the Russian military propose to rearm the Topol series of missiles with MIRV and MARV warheads, as evident by the RS-24 tests on May 29th, 2007. In addition to the road mobile ICBMs, the R-36M Voevoda (SS-18 Satan) heavy ICBMs are based on hardened silos capable of withstanding a blast overpressure of at least 4000 psi, which makes them invulnerable to nuclear weapons of present age (and quite sometime into the future). The Topol and Topol M ICBMs of Russia account for a total of 45 warheads, for a single warhead per missile. The Voevoda ICBMs have 10 warheads each which add up to 800 warheads for the 80 missiles. This adds up the total number of warheads in high survivability ICBMs to 845, which represent 25.3% of Russia’s strategic nuclear warhead stockpile.

Scenario 1: Attack Scenario with ABM Defences and MIRV Warheads
As explained above, 18.6% of Russian SLBMs and 25.3% of mobile and hardened ICBMs have high survivability which will leave 43.9% of strategic nuclear stockpile intact in case of a nuclear first strike on Russia. To pit things against Russia further, we take an extreme technical failure rate at 25% for the surviving 43.9% nuclear warheads, this leaves Russia with 32.9% warheads, about 1100 at an average yield of 350 Kilotons each. Modern ICBMs and SLBMs like the US and Russian ones are equipped with multiple warheads (MIRV) and penetration aids like decoy warheads to overcome enemy missile defence systems. The ability of current ABM systems are quite limited against such high speed and sophisticated ballistic missiles; it is also negated by a large scale attack from a military superpower. However we can consider a worse case scenario against Russia and give the US ABM systems an extremely optimistic success rate of intercepting 20% Russian warheads . It still leaves 880 warheads free to strike, a number high enough to completely devastate and destroy the United States. If Russia conservatively uses only half of its surviving stockpile (440) on 100 most populated US cities, it would leave less than 100 million human survivors, destroy trillions worth of infrastructure and push US economy back by centuries.

Scenario 2: An Alternative Real Scenario - Launch on Warning
The above scenario has been based on the assumption that a first strike by US could destroy the entire nuclear arsenal of Russia except the residual retaliatory forces that will inevitably survive (as explained above). This puts the situation incredibility in favour of the United States (despite the bleak outcome); in a real nuclear stand-off such a powerful attack will be detected long before it manages to strike Russia. Long range ballistic missiles like ICBMs and SLBMs can be detected by early warning satellites in about 5-10 minutes of launch. Even if such a large number of ICBM launches escape satellite detection, the ground based advanced warning systems will detect the incoming missiles about 10-15 minutes before they hit their targets. A Minuteman 3 ICBM launched from US would take more than 30 minutes to strike a Russian target and a Trident II SLBM launched from the Pacific or Atlantic would take at least 20 minutes to do the same. This leaves Russia with enough time to launch their high alert missiles and bombers before they can be destroyed by United States.

If the launch on warning Scenario 2 seems unlikely (due to political reasons), it can be reverted back to the first scenario where US successfully destroys 60-70% of Russia’s forces. The surviving residual force will be large enough to launch a deadly second strike on the US which leaves no victors after a nuclear exchange. This maintains the MAD balance and complies to the Game Theory of nuclear deterrence - MAD ensures destruction of both parties while Game Theory maintains the attack principle between two nuclear states, viz. “the only way to win is not to play at all”. Military and political strategists in both the United States and Russia can easily do these calculations with greater accuracy than we could and would be able to conclude that whoever launches a first strike ends up in a no-win situation. It is for this reason that Bush’s National Missile Defense project started in 2002 did not meet as much opposition from Russia or China as a ‘nuclear primacy’ scenario would have done. Defence officials of both countries are aware of the technical limitations of a missile defence systems and as such, understand that nuclear deterrence is not undermined by small scale ABM systems.

Further Reads and Resources -

• The Future of Russia’s Strategic Nuclear Forces - Federation of American Scientists
• Database of Russian/Soviet Nuclear Forces - Global Security Organisation
• Ballistic Missile Defense Overview - CRS Report for United States Congress

• World Politics , Military , Myth Busters
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