Putin brags nuclear missiles unstoppable
Analysts say Russia open to taking more risks
Russian President Vladimir Putin boasted Thursday about new nuclear missiles that cannot be intercepted, but none poses an unprecedented threat to the United States.
A few details aside, Russia and the United States have had the same capability to rain nuclear death on each other since the 1970s, said Hans Binnendijk, a former White House defense adviser under President Clinton.
Putin, who seeks his fourth term as president in an election March 18, drew applause during a swaggering annual speech to the Federal Assembly in Moscow.
The systems included a heavy intercontinental ballistic missile, or ICBM, with multiple warheads that Putin said would be immune to anti-missile defenses. He described a low-flying cruise missile under development with a novel engine that would enable the missile to attack any target around the world from any direction. Putin highlighted work on a nuclear-powered underwater drone armed with a nuclear warhead.
“As you may have guessed, no other country in the world has anything like that. Possibly, something similar will appear someday, but our guys will come up with something else by then,” Putin said.
Binnendijk and other defense analysts described Putin’s new ICBM as a truck-mounted system that modernizes Russia’s aging missiles. It probably includes technology to confuse enemy radar and re-entry vehicles that are either highly maneuverable or travel at least five times the speed of sound.
The weapons Putin described would be more difficult for the United States to intercept. The United States has 41 missile defense launchers in Alaska and California to intercept a much smaller North Korean threat. American missile defenses deployed and planned for Poland and Romania are aimed at intercepting a threat from Iran.
“This is Russia, which in some ways is open to taking on a lot more risk,” said Thomas Karako, an arms control ana- lyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimea province, provided military assistance to anti-government forces in eastern Ukraine, used its air force to prop up Syrian President Bashar Assad and has unwelcome troops stationed in Moldova and Georgia. Russia has aimed nuclear threats at NATO members and harassed U.S. and NATO ships and planes with close fly-bys.
When Putin talks about these new delivery systems, “we need to take them seriously because in a crisis, that’s the kind of thing they might reach for,” Karako said.
The Trump administration’s Nuclear Posture Review described Russia as a threat. The Pentagon will soon release the Missile Defense Review, which Congress said should address cruise missile threats to the homeland.
Putin’s timing is significant because of the upcoming election. Putin has little else to offer than bragging about the military, said Anthony Cordesman at CSIS.