Russian Nuclear Weapons: Past, Present, and Future

production of Topol (SS-25) was reportedly at 50 per
year. Speaking in late 2007, at the time of relative financial
plenty, First Vice-Premier and former Minister
of Defense Sergey Ivanov sought to make it clear that
the government consciously chose “butter” versus
“guns.” “We believe,” he stated, “that we do not need
30 Topol-Ms a year. 47 Of course, we would not mind
having them, but this would mean that we would
need to cut social programs, housing programs, and
other things.” He added that the annual deployment
of six to seven new missiles is sufficient for the SRF. 48
At the same time, Ivanov emphasized that “military
capability, especially nuclear capability, should be
sufficient if we want to be at a [safe] level or even
merely independent. No one likes the weak, no one
listens to them, everyone abuses them, and when we
have parity, others talk to us differently.” 49
There are other explanations for the low rate of
production. One is the breakup of the traditional Soviet
networks: many Soviet-era enterprises that contributed
to production of components remained outside
Russia. It is known that the number of only first-order
suppliers for Topol-M is around 200; recreating
these networks from scratch is difficult, expensive,
time-consuming, and probably outright impossible.
Another possible explanation is that Russia sought to
reserve some unused production capacity for the new
submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) Bulava.
Nonetheless, the SRF confidently promises that by
2016 about 80 percent of all ICBMs will be new, i.e.,
deployed in the post-Soviet period. 50 Reduction under
New START and perhaps under the next agreement
could certainly contribute to that goal, but it nevertheless
appears wishful thinking without a significant
increase of funding.
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