Churchill
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The core of today’s Russian strategic fleet is the six submarines of the Delta IV class. The total number of nuclear warheads that they can carry is 384 – a submarine of this class carries 16 SS-N-23 missiles with four warheads each. The actual number of operationally available warheads is smaller, since two of the six submarines are undergoing overhaul. This overhaul seems to be part of the program to extend operational lives of the submarines by equipping them with newly manufactured missiles. This program is expected to be completed around 2008, so the submarines could stay in service until about 2020 or even longer.
The Russian fleet has strategic submarines of two other classes, but these are being decommissioned and are not expected to stay in service for much longer. Submarines of the first class, Delta III, were built in the late 1970s–early 1980s and are being withdrawn from active service due to their age. The second one, the Typhoon class, is a more interesting case. These submarines were built in the late 1980s and are not much older than Delta IVs that will be kept in service. However, Typhoons do not have missiles – the ones that they initially carried, SS-N-20, have been retired because of age, while the development of the follow-on modification was cancelled in favor of a competing project in 1997. That project, however, was slow to materialize and as a result the Typhoon submarines were removed from service in April 2004. The only submarine of this class that is left has been reconfigured as a test platform for the new sea-launched ballistic missile.
The new missile in question, known as Bulava, is supposed to become the primary sea-based missile for the future Russian strategic fleet. It development program was initiated in 1997 (it was the competitor mentioned above) and initially it was proposed as a naval version of the SS-27 Topol-M missile. This seemed to be a good way to cut the development cost, but in reality it produced mostly delays and, quite likely, cost overruns. As of the end of 2004, the new missile has just reached the stage of initial tests and seems to be several years from its first flight, not to mention from operational deployment.
The new missile will be deployed on submarines of a new class, known as Borey. Two ships of this class are currently under construction in Russia – the first one was launched in 1996 and the second – in 2004. The plan is to finish the construction in 2005-2006, but given the status of the Bulava missile program, it is probably unrealistic to expect these submarines to become fully operational before the end of the decade.
In the long run, Russia will probably be able to maintain a strategic fleet of six to ten submarines that would carry up to 500 nuclear warheads. This would be comparable to the projected number of warheads in the Strategic Rocket Forces, but as we could see, it is not clear if the Navy could actually implement the development program as it is currently planned.
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In the end, the future of the strategic forces will be decided by the changes in the security environment. Even today, nuclear weapons cannot do anything about the most serious security challenges that Russia is facing – unresolved conflict in Chechnya, terrorist attacks associated with it, and general instability at Russia’s borders. In this situation the strategic nuclear forces, which were designed to be a weapon in a completely different kind of war, will find their mission largely disappear. This process, however, will take considerable time, so Russia will probably get to complete its current round of modernization and keep about 1500 nuclear warheads in its strategic arsenal.
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"Настало время искать другой, отличный от неолиберального, путь для развития человечества." © Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías |
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