Russian Nuclear Weapons: Past, Present, and Future

Even though defense spending has been steadily
rising and was projected before the economic crisis
to rise still faster, the war in Georgia and the visible
animosity to America has led the regime to embark
on a return to quasi-Stalinist military planning. Nezavisimaya
Gazeta reported that the Ministry of Defense
has already begun working on a 10-year plan for arms
procurement and re-equipment from 2011-20 that
was to be sent to the Duma for approval in 2010. This
program grows out of the failure of the current arms
program from 2006-15 that was budgeted at 5 trillion
rubles ($155 billion). Typically, that plan proved to be
“ineffective and expensive, leading to delays in introducing
new armaments.” 23 Indeed, “Not a single one
of the previous arms programs was fulfilled even at
20 percent of the planned level. Even the existing program,
which came about during the years of oil-sale
prosperity, is not being fulfilled.” 24
Yet despite this continuing record of failure, it has
not only led to ever greater state control of that sector
but to neo-Stalinist answers. Even in late 2008 when
crisis was apparent, Moscow sought to accelerate the
utterly failed 2006-15 plan and compress it to be completed
by 2011 when the new plan, which certainly
entails even more state control and thus guaranteed
suboptimal outcomes, is to begin. 25 Thanks to the economic
crisis, the unending inflation in the Russian defense
industry and its inability to function in a market
economy, the government first had to cut the 2009 defense
budget by 15 percent and, despite its denials, cut
procurement. 26 By July 2009, funding cuts were hampering
the acquisition of manpower for the planned
new permanent readiness units, construction of the
Yuri Dolgoruky class of ballistic nuclear submarines
(SSBNs), and funding for the development of foreign
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