Russian Nuclear Weapons: Past, Present, and Future

USING STRATEGIC NUCLEAR FORCES TO
OFFSET CONVENTIONAL WEAKNESSES
It is clear that the Kremlin’s attempt to maintain a
strong nuclear deterrent to provide an umbrella while
Russia’s conventional forces were modernized failed
on both grounds. First, while Russia maintained a nuclear
deterrent of sorts, if anything it decreased during
the Yeltsin, Putin, and Medvedev periods. As long as
one has the option of a nuclear first use, Moscow has
a nuclear deterrent, but it is far less than it was in 1993
or even 2000. Furthermore, for practical purposes, it is
limited to ground based ICBMs for the immediate future.
The other two legs of the nuclear triad—the Bulava
naval variant is dysfunctional to this point, and the
few obsolete Tu-95MS and TU-160 LAR bombers—for
all practical purposes are irrelevant.
Turning to the conventional forces, the military
is clearly in a period of transition. Defense Minister
Serdyukov has undertaken a major restructuring of
the Russian military and faces a monumental task in
updating and modernizing its weapons systems. If
anything, the quality of the current inventory has continued
to deteriorate despite some efforts to modernize
them. Weapons systems from the 1970s, 1980s, and
even 1990s are everywhere, but they are of little use
against weapons systems based on technology from
the 21st century.
There is a major problem facing both the modernization
of nuclear and conventional weapons, and that
is the sad state in which the military-industrial complex
finds itself. As a Russian general put it in April
2010, “The Defense Ministry cannot buy something
that does not guarantee parity in the event of a conflict.
. . . The army cannot buy artillery with a range of
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