The Real Message From Putin's Claim Of Powerful New Weapons: Weakness

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Russian President Vladimir Putin’s saber-rattling weapons announcements last week can be regarded as a desperate plea for strategic relevance

But the nature of these weapons also reflects a Hail Mary pass, needed to rectify serious deficiencies in Russia’s long-range strike capabilities.

The most ominous-sounding weapon on Putin’s vainglorious list was a cruise missile propelled by a nuclear engine. In theory, this would give a low-flying missile a very long range, helping it to evade defenses. Given the comparatively unimpressive state of Russia’s small gas turbine capabilities, range is an issue for the country’s current cruise missile designs. Nuclear propulsion would help rectify that problem.

Yet nuclear propulsion is hardly a new idea. The U.S. and the Soviet Union investigated nuclear-powered strategic bomber programs in the 1950s and early 1960s. The U.S. also pursued a nuclear-powered cruise missile under Project Pluto. This was cancelled in 1964.

These ideas went nowhere for many good reasons. Adding a complex device like a nuclear reactor to an expendable missile leaves little room for the guidance system or the warhead. Development costs are immense, and unit production costs prohibitive, especially since each nuclear-powered system is designed to be used once. Given a near-total lack of experience with nuclear propulsion, it would be a very long time before such a system could be made operational.

Most of all, how, exactly, would they test a missile that relied on a nuclear reactor with minimal shielding or containment? If the many necessary tests of this missile went exactly as planned, they would produce a series of very badly contaminated target ranges, with unpleasant ecological consequences. If one or more tests went wrong, as at least one probably would, then Russia would need to deal with the consequences of serious nuclear contamination in unexpected, and possibly inhabited, areas.

Pursuing foolish ideas like nuclear propulsion hardly inspires confidence. But consider the strategic context that has driven Putin to announce these scary-sounding systems. The U.S. has a remarkable lead in penetrating long-range strike, largely based on stealth technology, one of the many capabilities that makes the country a superpower. The USAF has 20 B-2 stealth bombers, on top of scores of earlier-generation long-range bombers. Each B-2 can carry 16 stealthy AGM-158 Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles. Unlike long-range missiles, bombers can be recalled, and generally have greater credibility when deployed to areas of tension. They can also be used for the selective application of force; using ballistic missiles would almost certainly precipitate an all-out nuclear war.

Work has also begun on Northrop Grumman’s B-21, a next-generation strategic stealth bomber, with plans to deploy between 100 and 175 aircraft starting around 2025. It will be accompanied by other new stealth stand-off weapons and related systems, particularly the new Long Range Standoff (LRSO) cruise missile.

Russia’s bomber force, by contrast, consists of about 50 propeller-powered Tu-160s, a type first flown in 1952, and about a dozen Tu-160s.  The latter is a rough equivalent of the USAF’s B-1 bomber, built by Rockwell International in the 1980s.  These planes have very large radar signatures and are not a challenge to detect, track, and intercept.

For years, Russia has been trying to design a stealth bomber, the PAK-DA (“Prospective Aviation Complex For Long-Range Aviation”).  So far, technical challenges and resource constraints have prevented this idea from getting off the ground, even in prototype form.  The country does not seem to have the technological base needed to create the equivalent of a 1980s-era B-2.  Instead, Russia has launched the Tu-160M2, a new variant of the aging Cold War legacy design.  The first ten M2s were ordered in January, with deliveries planned to begin in 2023.

In other words, in the next decade, the USAF will be retiring its B-1s and introducing its second-generation stealth bomber. At the same time the Russian Air Force will introduce the equivalent of a modernized B-1, with no hope of obtaining a long-range penetrating stealth bomber for another decade, if ever. Russia’s military may have a genuine preference for cruise missiles over penetrating bombers, but they no longer have much of a choice.

Given this grim reality for Russia’s long-range air power, the only way forward for Russia, if it is to maintain its global power pretensions, is to pursue risky leap-ahead technologies. These technologies, be they nuclear propulsion or hypersonic, would allow the country’s air force, in theory, to penetrate U.S. air defenses.

Or, at least, Russia’s government will talk about these technologies, and hype them extensively. After all, if they can’t find the resources and technological base needed for a modern, penetrating strategic bomber fleet, what does that say about their ability to develop, build, and deploy strategic systems that are even more advanced?

The point of these weapons development programs can be debated. One can also debate whether long-range cruise missiles or stealth bombers are more effective. But clearly Putin’s new weapons announcements come from a position of perceived weakness.

Richard Aboulafia, Contributor

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