Real Clear Defense:
In April 2017, the Russian UN Mission Charge d’affaires Petr Ilyichev declared, “Currently we are systematically getting to the full-scale implementation of the New START [Treaty].”[1] Unfortunately, Russians actions contradict this statement. For example, in May 2017, President Vladimir Putin announced, “The Strategic Missile Force is smoothly switching over to Yars mobile and silo-based systems…Such modern systems already account for 62% of the armament of the Strategic Missile Force and their share will rise to 72% by the end of the year.”[2] A ten percentage point increase in just seven months represents about a doubling of the highest previously announced deployment rate. The Strategic Missile Force (the ICBM force) comprises 60% of Russia’s strategic nuclear delivery vehicles which it declared to be 523 on March 1, 2017.[3] A ten percentage point increase in the modernized portion of the Strategic Missile Force in seven months requires the deployment of over 30 multiple warhead (MIRVed) RS-24 Yars ICBMs. By comparison, Russia announced that in 2014 it had deployed 16 Yars and 23 in 2016.[4] The Russian numbers for 2014 and 2016 are for an entire year, not just seven months.
Russia’s accelerated modernization rate is significant because it is exactly the opposite of what Russia should be doing if it intends to comply with the New START Treaty. Russian New START data for March 1, 2017, eleven months before the deadline when the New START numerical limits come into legal effect, indicated that Russia had moved from below the New START deployed warhead limit of 1,550 at New START entry-into-force in 2011 to 215 warheads above it. (At New START entry into force Russia had 1,537 deployed warheads.) We are now only eight months away from the deadline. Putin’s programmatic announcement will probably increase the number of Russian warheads that have to be removed from accountability by February 5, 2018, to over 300 because Russian single-warhead SS-25 ICBMs are being replaced by Yars ICBMs carrying at least four warheads.[5] The remaining eight months includes a long, cold Russian winter, hardly ideal weather for making the type of changes necessary for Russia to comply with New START…
