Russian Nuclear Weapons: Past, Present, and Future

mid-1990s during debates about possible response to
NATO’s first round of enlargement. They are still often
conceptualized as a counterweight to NATO conventional
superiority, but this view primarily resides
with conservative nongovernmental experts while the
government and (with one exception noted below)
uniformed military remains silent about possible missions
for these assets. Instead, all political-military
guidance documents issues in the last 15 years have
not mentioned them. Moreover, the 2003 White Paper
referenced above specifically insisted that in case of
large-scale (regional or global) war Russia needed
long-range capability to strike out-of-theater assets of
the adversary. Thus TNW apparently do not have a
mission to speak of.
The only exception to that general rule is the Russian
Navy. Russian naval commanders admit that
they simply cannot confront the U.S. Navy—in case of
a direct clash between Russia and the United States—
without reliance on nonstrategic nuclear assets. Accordingly,
crews of surface ships and submarines have
reportedly trained to mate warheads to submarine
launched cruise missiles (SLCMs) and launch them. 28
In fact, Vice-Admiral Oleg Burtsev, deputy chief of
the Navy’s Main Staff, declared recently that the role
of tactical nuclear weapons on attack nuclear submarines
would increase. “The range of tactical nuclear
weapons is growing, as is their accuracy. They do not
need to deliver high-yield warheads, instead it is possible
to make a transition to low-yield nuclear warheads
that could be installed on the existing types of
cruise missiles,” he asserted. 29 Paradoxically, nuclear
warheads for short-range naval systems are supposed
to be in the status of nondeployed under the presidential
nuclear initiatives (PNIs), unlike those for the Air
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