US moves to develop banned cruise missile

THE United States is researching the development of a ground-based cruise missile, banned by a Cold War-era treaty, because it believes Russia has already violated the agreement, officials said yesterday.

The aim of developing the banned weapon is to force Russia to comply with the arms control agreement, unnamed officials told the Wall Street Journal. The US believes that Russia has already deployed a banned cruise missile that threatens US and Nato facilities in Europe. By developing its own missile, the US hopes to demonstrate to Russia its military prowess and to force Moscow to back down.

The Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INV) was signed by President Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, the leader of the Soviet Union, at the White House in 1987, coming into effect the following year. It was a crucial step in the process of ending the Cold War. The treaty banned all short and intermediate-range groundlaunched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges of between 500–5,500km (310-3,420 miles). Sea-launched missiles were excluded.

“The idea here is we need to send a message to Russians that they will pay a military price for violation of this treaty,” an official said. “We are posturing ourselves to live in a post-inf world … if that’s the world the Russians want.”

The US military stated earlier this year that the deployment of the missile by Russia deliberately threatened US and Nato facilities in Europe.

The New York Times reported last month that Russia had two battalions of the banned missile, thought to contain four launchers and six missiles. One was said to be at Russia’s test site at Kapustin Yar in southern Russia, while the other was moved to an operational base at an unknown location. Moscow said the report was “fake news”.

The US government has known since 2012 that Russia was building the banned missile and Republicans made frequent calls for the Obama administration to confront President Putin about it. US officials demanded in November 2016 that Russia admit to violating the treaty, but Russian officials denied it.

At a Nato conference last week James Mattis, the US defence secretary, said: “We have a firm belief that the Russians have violated the INF. Our effort is to bring Russia back into compliance.” The US Senate yesterday passed a $700billion defence policy Bill, which included authorisation for the defence department to spend $58 million to counter Russia’s violation of the INF. The measure, passed by the House of Representatives on Tuesday, will now need to be signed by President Trump. ♦ Kaspersky Labs, the Russian cyber security firm, has blamed a virus for its Microsoft Office software taking classified files from America’s spy agency, as it denied colluding with the Kremlin.