[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 29 (Tuesday, March 17, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2099-S2104]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
NATO EXPANSION
Mr. ROBERTS. Mr. President, the letter got lost in the mail. It never
made it to President Yeltsin. It never made it to the radar crews in
Russia. As a result, within minutes, Russian President Boris Yeltsin
was brought a black nuclear command suitcase and for several minutes,
wild confusion reigned in Russia, as Russia's command and control
system was operating in a combat mode.
The letter was from the Norwegian Foreign Ministry, and it was
routine. It informed the Russians and other surrounding countries that
a joint United States and Norwegian research rocket would be launched
to study the northern lights. As I say, it was a foulup, a bureaucratic
foulup, and it prompted a hair-trigger war scare, a nuclear war scare,
only 3 years ago.
Mr. President, I rise today to focus on this incident, because I
believe it is
[[Page S2100]]
the kind of discussion that we should carefully consider as we move to
the debate on NATO and NATO expansion and the kind of debate that has
not received much, if any, public attention.
I encourage my colleagues to read two articles that appeared in the
Washington Post, Sunday the 15th of March and Monday the 16th. Those
two articles focus on areas that I feel the United States should be
most concerned about: United States-Russia relations and the status and
the direction of the Russian nuclear forces and their command and
control. The two articles, entitled ``Cold War Doctrines Refuse To
Die'' and ``Downsizing a Mighty Arsenal,'' are a two-part series by
David Hoffman and paint a very discouraging picture.
The first article describes the January 25, 1995, launch, as I have
indicated, of a joint Norwegian-United States research rocket off of
Norway's northwest coast. For a brief period of time, the Russians
actually mistook this launch as one from a U.S. submarine and a
possible threat to Russia. Some analysts say that day we came as close
as we ever have come to a counterlaunch by the Russians. The article
further discusses the deteriorating state of the Russian command and
control systems and early warning systems.
The second article discusses the impact of the economic problems on
the Russian strategic weapons system. The author outlines the sad
material and operational shape of the nuclear armored submarine and
rocket forces. He states that the economic weaknesses of Russia will,
outside of any bilateral agreements, drive the number of operational
warheads to below START II levels.
I suppose many could be saying, ``So, what's the problem? That's what
we want, fewer weapons systems and nuclear warheads, right?'' Well,
it's not that easy. Certainly, the wanted downsizing should be a
controlled, systematic, consistent process and not one that is as
chaotic as the article certainly portrays.
My purpose today is to highlight this problem and to urge that the
administration be more concerned and that the Congress be more
concerned about United States-Russia relations. Opponents of NATO
enlargement say our actions have resulted in a delay in the Duma's
ratification of START II. They further state that because of the
increased military capability of an enlarged NATO, Russia must depend
on nuclear weapons as a first-use capability since their conventional
forces are so weakened. Proponents of enlargement pretty much scoff at
these assertions and state that although Russia does not like NATO
enlargement, they need to ``get over it.'' My concern is not to guess
which camp is right but to say in our relations with Russia, we need to
go slow, we need to ensure we fully understand the long-term
implications of our actions.
My bottom-line concern and fear is that this administration has no
long-range, overarching strategy in our relations with Russia.
Unfortunately, I believe this is a hallmark in the President's foreign
policy, just as we have seen in his policy in Bosnia and just as we
have seen in his policy in Iraq. Where is the end game?
Russia is a huge country that does exist and does still have tens of
thousands of nuclear warheads. They will play a major role in the
future of Europe. Our choice, Mr. President, is to continue to treat
them as a defeated foe--and too many in the Congress certainly have
that view--or to work with them to continue to develop their form of
government and their military consistent with our common values.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that these two articles be
printed in the Record. I understand the Government Printing Office
estimates it will cost $1,616 to have these two articles printed in the
Record.
There being no objection, the articles were ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
[From the Washington Post, Mar. 15, 1998]
Cold-War Doctrines Refuse to Die--False Alert After '95 Rocket Launch
Shows Fragility of Aging Safeguards
(By David Hoffman)
Moscow.--At dawn on the morning of Jan. 25, 1995, a four-
stage Norwegian-U.S. joint research rocket, Black Brant XII,
lifted off from an island off Norway's northwest coast.
Ninety-three seconds after launch, the fourth stage burned
out, hurling the rocket and its payload nearly straight up.
The rocket was designed to study the Northern Lights, but
when it rose above the horizon, it turned into another kind
of experiment--a test of the hair-trigger posture that still
dominates the control of Russian and United States nuclear
weapons.
The rocket was spotted by Russian early-warning radars. The
radar operators sent an alert to Moscow. Within minutes,
President Boris Yeltsin was brought his black nuclear-command
suitcase. For several tense minutes, while Yeltsin spoke with
his defense minister by telephone, confusion reigned.
Little is known about what Yeltsin said, but these may have
been some of the most dangerous moments of the nuclear age.
They offer a glimpse of how the high-alert nuclear-launch
mechanism of the Cold War remains in place, and how it could
go disastrously wrong, even though the great superpower
rivalry has ended.
Russia and the United States still rely on a doctrine that
calls for making rapid-fire decisions about a possible
nuclear attack. If a Russian president wants to retaliate
before enemy missiles reach his soil, he has about eight
minutes to decide what to do.
Yet, in the Norway episode, the information needed for such
a momentous decision was unclear. Although eventually the
Norwegian rocket fell into the ocean, it triggered a
heightened level of alert throughout the Russian strategic
forces, according to testimony to the U.S. Congress, and
other sources, and market the first time a Russian leader had
to use his nuclear briefcase in a real alert.
Now that the superpower tensions have eased, so have the
chances of a misunderstanding leading to nuclear war. But
some Western experts say the Norway rocket episode may not be
the last.
The reason is that Russia's system of early warning of a
possible attack, and command and control of nuclear forces,
is suffering many of the same problems plaguing the entire
military. Russia inherited from the Soviet Union a system of
radars and satellites, but after the Soviet break-up, many
are no longer on Russian soil. Russia's six-year economic
depression has led to hardship for many officers, including
many who work in nuclear command installations, who receive
low pay and lack permanent housing. The radar-and-satellite
system is vulnerable because there are gaps in the network,
which will grow more serious this year as yet another Russian
radar station is closed in Latvia.
The prospect of a mistake ``has become particularly
dangerous since the end of the Cold War,'' Vladimir Belous, a
retired general and leading Russian strategist, wrote
recently. He added that ``a fateful accident could plunge the
world into the chaos of a thermonuclear catastrophe, contrary
to political leaders' wishes.
The degradation of Russia's early-warning system comes as
its strategic forces are also shrinking. The forces made up
of nuclear-armed submarines, long-range bombers and
intercontinental ballistic missiles built by the Soviets
during the Cold War are declining dramatically in both
numbers and quality. Within a decade, experts predict, Russia
will have a nuclear arsenal just one-tenth the size of the
Soviet Union's at the peak of the superpower rivalry, because
of arms control treaties, looming obsolescence and Russia's
economic depression.
The process is posing painful questions for Russia's
political and military elite. They want to preserve Russia's
place as a global power but cannot support the colossal
forces and intricate systems that made up the Soviet nuclear
deterrent.
What makes the radar and satellite gaps worrisome is that
Russia still adheres to nuclear doctrines of the Soviet era.
The overall deterrence concept is known as Mutual Assured
Destruction, under which each side is held in check by the
threat of annihilation by the other. One part of this cocked-
pistols approach is ``launch-on-warning,'' in which both
sides threaten that if attacked they will unleash massive
retaliation, even before the enemy warheads arrive. The idea
is that such a hair-trigger stance will discourage either
from attempting to strike first.
Russia also inherited from the Soviet Union a second,
related approach, which is to preserve the ability to launch
a retaliatory strike even after the enemy's warheads have
hit. This is called ``launch-on-attack.'' In Moscow, massive
underground bunkers and a secret subway were built to protect
the Soviet leadership so they could launch a retaliatory
strike.
lost in the bureaucracy
The message from the Norwegian Foreign Ministry was
routine. On Dec. 21, 1994, it sent out a letter to
neighboring countries, including Russia, about the impending
launch of the Black Brant XII, a four-stage research rocket,
between Jan. 15 and Feb. 10, depending on weather conditions.
But the letter got lost in the Russian bureaucracy and
never made it to the radar crews, as had past notifications.
Norway had launched 607 scientific rockets since 1962. But
the Black Brant XII was bigger than any of those. The rocket
was a cooperative effort with the U.S. National Aeronautics
and Space Administration, and was built with surplus U.S.
rocket engines.
According to Peter Pry, a former CIA official who
chronicles the episode in a coming book, ``War Scare,'' the
rocket ``resembled a U.S. submarine-launched, multiple-stage
ballistic missile.'' Theodore A. Postol, a professor at MIT,
said that the Norwegian rocket
[[Page S2101]]
may well have looked to the radar operators like a multistage
missile launched from a Trident submarine. The launch
occurred in a region considered, during the Cold War, to be a
likely corridor for an incoming ballistic missile attack.
Anatoly Sokolov, the commander of the Russian radar forces,
recalled shortly afterward that ``what happened was an
unscheduled training exercise. . . . We all found ourselves
under stress.'' He said, ``An officer on duty reported
detecting a ballistic missile which started from the
Norwegian territory. What kind of missile is it? What is its
target? We were not informed. . . . If it had been launched
on an optimal trajectory, its range would have been extended
to 3,500 kilometers [2,175 miles], which, in fact, is the
distance to Moscow.''
``The thing is,'' he added, ``the start of a civilian
missile and a nuclear missile, especially at the initial
stage of the flight trajectory, look practically the same.''
The Black Brant XII triggered a tense chain reaction in
Russia. According to Nikolai Devyanin, chief designer of the
Russian nuclear ``suitcase,'' the radar operators were under
crushing pressure. They remembered how Mathias Rust, a German
youth, flew a small plane through Soviet air defenses in 1987
and landed it in Red Square, shaking the Soviet hierarchy to
its foundations. Moreover, in five or six minutes, the
Norwegian missile could hit the Kola Peninsula, where
Russia's nuclear-armed submarines are based.
Devyanin has said the radar operators could be reprimanded
for sending out a false, panicky signal. But they also
feared it was a real threat. So they decided to issue an
alert that it was an unidentified missile, with an unknown
destination.
The alert went to a general on duty. He, too, decided that
it was better to send on the alert to the highest levels,
than to be blamed for a disaster. One factor, Western
officials said later, might have been fear that the lone
missile would release a huge, debilitating electromagnetic
pulse explosion to disarm Russia's command-and-control
system, as a prelude to a broader onslaught.
At that point, the Russian electronic command-and-control
network known as Kazbek, had come to life.
The duty general received his information from the radar
operator on a special notification terminal, Krokus. He then
passed it to the Kavkaz, a complex network of cables, radio
signals, satellites and relays that is at the heart of the
Russian command and control. From there, it caused an alert
to go off on each of the three nuclear ``footballs'' in the
Russian system: one with Yeltsin, one with then-Defense
Minister Pavel Grachev and a third with the chief of the
General Staff, then Mikhail Kolesnikov. The black suitcases
were nicknamed Cheget.
The command-and-control system ``was now operating in
combat mode,'' Devyanin said. Yeltsin immediately got on the
telephone with the others holding the black suitcases, and
they monitored the rocket's flight on their terminals. (The
actual launch orders are not given from the suitcase, only
the permission to fire. The launching process, including
ciphers, is controlled by the military's General Staff,
which, in some circumstances, is authorized to act on its
own.)
Devyanin noted a strange irony. The Cheget suitcase was a
product of the final phrase of the Cold War, during the tense
early 1980s, when Soviet leaders feared a sudden attack
launched from Europe or nearby oceans. They needed a remote
command system to cut down reaction time.
The suitcases were put into service just as Mikhail
Gorbachev took office. Gorbachev, however, never used them in
a real-time alert, officials said. The first serious alert
came only after the end of the Cold War, on Yeltsin's watch.
Devyanin said that at the time he was disturbed by the way
a misplaced document led to such high-level confusion. ``The
safety of mankind should not depend on anyone's
carelessness,'' he said.
The day after the incident, Yeltsin announced that he had
used the nuclear briefcase for the first time. Many in Russia
dismissed his comment as a bit of bravado intended to divert
attention from the debacle of the Chechen war, then just
beginning to unfold.
Even today, Russian officials brush aside questions about
the incident, saying it has been overblown in the West.
Vladimir Dvorkin, director of the 4th Central Research
Institute, a leading military think tank, said he saw no
danger from the Norwegian alert, ``none at all.''
He added, ``It's very difficult to make a decision'' to
launch, ``maybe even impossible for civilized leaders. Even
when a warning system gives you a signal about a massive
attack, no one is ever going to make a decision, even an
irrational leader alarmed that one missile has been fired. I
think this is an empty alarm.''
But the incident did set off alarms. Former CIA director R.
James Woolsey told Congress in 1996 that the Russians went on
``some sort of'' alert, ``not a full strategic alert, but, at
least, a greater degree of strategic inquisitiveness.''
Bruce Blair, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution
in Washington who has written extensively on the Soviet and
Russian command-and-control systems, said a signal was sent
to the Russian strategic forces to increase their combat
readiness, but the crisis then ended. Blair said the
significance of the episode was the confusion that marked the
period during which Yeltsin would have had to make a real
``launch-on-warning'' decision. Blair pointed out that the
Soviet Union and Russia have been through coup, rebellion and
collapse over the last decade, and a leader may well be
called on to make crucial decisions at a time of enormous
upheaval.
Postol said, ``The Norwegian rocket launch is an important
indicator of a serious underlying problem. It tells us
something very important: People are on a high state of
alert, when there is not a crisis. You can imagine what it
would be like in a high state of tension.''
Pry said that there have been other false alarms in the
nuclear age, but none went as far as Jan. 25, 1995, which he
described as ``the single most dangerous moment of the
nuclear missile age.''
``partially blind'' russia
The first radar-blip warning of the Norwegian rocket came
from the early-warning system built around the periphery of
the Soviet Union. The concept of ``launch-on-warning''--a
quick-draw response to nuclear attack--depends on swift,
reliable warning.
``Get it right, it makes no difference to us what kind of
missile it is, meteorological, testing or combat,'' Sokolov,
the Russian radar forces commander, said after the Norwegian
episode. He said the radars are the ``eyes and ears of the
president.''
But the Soviet collapse has muffled those sensors. The
Soviet radar system was being modernized when the country
fell apart. One of the new replacement radars, in Latvia, was
torn down in May 1995. Russia won a temporary reprieve
against closing two older radars in Latvia, but that
agreement expires in August. Latvia recently announced it
will not let Russia renew. The radar is one of those covering
the critical northwestern direction.
Meanwhile, other radars used by Russia have been left in
Ukraine, at Mykolayiv and Mukacheve; in Azerbaijan, at
Mingacevir; and Kazakhstan, at Balqash. Some are functioning,
but there have been disputes over finances and personnel.
Russian authorities hope to complete an unfinished radar in
Belarus to compensate for the loss in Latvia, but the
prospects are uncertain.
Overall, only about half the original radars remain inside
Russia. In addition, the system of satellites used for
detecting missile launches is also depleted. There are two
groups of satellites. One group in a high elliptical orbit
monitors U.S. land-based missile fields, but cannot see
missiles launched from the ocean. Russia has two other
geostationary satellites but they do not provide complete
coverage of the oceans, where U.S. Trident submarines patrol.
Postl has calculated that Russia has serious
vulnerabilities in its early-warning network, especially
given the highly accurate Trident II sea-launched ballistic
missile system. For example, Russia could entirely miss a
missile launched toward Moscow from the Pacific Ocean near
Alaska because of radar gaps, he said.
``Russia is partially blind--that's absolutely correct,''
said a former air defense officer.
admonished by yeltsin
In January 1997, a group of workers at a small state-owned
institute near St. Petersburg went on strike. The workers at
the Scientific Production Corp. Impuls said they had not been
paid for eight months.
The strike touched a nerve among those who knew about
Impuls. Its founder, Taras Sokolov, pioneered the Russian
nuclear command system, known as Signal. The workers at
Impuls said they were fed up and would not go back to work
until paid.
Within days, Defense Minister Igor Rodionov took an
extraordinary step. He too was frustrated. He had devoted his
career to the conventional army, but it was disintegrating
before his eyes. Yeltsin was ill, and Rodionov could not
reach him on the phone. Finally, he wrote an alarming letter
to Yeltsin. He said the command-and-control systems for
Russia's nuclear forces--including the deep underground
bunkers and the early-warning system--were falling apart.
``No one today can guarantee the reliability of our control
systems,'' Rodionov said. ``Russia might soon reach the
threshold beyond which its rockets and nuclear systems cannot
be controlled.''
A retired colonel, Robert Bykov, who had worked in some of
the military's electronic command systems until 1991, echoed
Rodionov's comments in an article he wrote for a mass-
circulation newspaper, Komsomolskaya Pravda. Bykov said
Rodionov was ``absolutely correct.'' He added, ``Even in my
period of service, the equipment ceased functioning properly
on more than one occasion, or certain parts of it
spontaneously went into combat mode. You can imagine what is
happening now.''
In a lengthy interview, Bykov said he was the subject of an
investigation by the Federal Security Service after the
article appeared. Recalling his experiences, he said that
periodically the central command system went into a ``loss of
regime'' mode, which he described as a neutral position,
where it could not send out commands. He said there were also
a few incidents in which individual missile silos or
regiments would report to the center that they were in
``combat mode,'' but he said the main system could prevent
any accidental launch.
Bykov's article had an impact outside Russia. It was picked
up in a CIA report outlining Rodionov's concerns about
nuclear command and control. The Washington Times
[[Page S2102]]
disclosed the report on the day Rodionov arrived in
Washington in May 1997 for a visit.
Rodionov recalled in an interview that he eventually had a
meeting with Yeltsin. ``You shouldn't have said that,''
Yeltsin admonished him, he said.
Rodionov said he drew up a plan for army reform that
included drastic cuts in nuclear weapons, but never got a
chance to take it out of his briefcase. He was dismissed and
replaced by Igor Sergeyev, the head of the strategic rocket
forces--a move crystallizing the new emphasis on nuclear
deterrence.
Russian officials have repeatedly denied that the strategic
forces command system is weakening. They say it has rigid
controls against an accidental launch or theft. The U.S.
strategic forces commander, Gen. Eugene Habiger, visited
Russian command centers last fall and said they were ``very
much geared to a fail-safe mode'' in which any command level
``can inhibit a launch'' of a missile.
But Sergeyev has acknowledged the system is growing old;
most of the command posts were built more than 30 years ago.
The rocket forces are also suffering shortages of trained
personnel and severe social problems such as a lack of
housing for 17,000 officers. A well-informed Russian expert
on the command system said, ``Today it's not dangerous but
tomorrow it might be. It is going down. It has not reached
the critical point. But the trends are down--days when
designers are not paid, when money is not allocated for
upkeep.''
In the coming decade, Russia is to move toward a
drastically curtailed nuclear force, one that will be just
larger than those of China or of France and Britain combined.
Some Russian strategists are already rethinking the Cold War
doctrines that called for Moscow to deploy vast weapons
systems carrying thousands of warheads for attack on the
United States. With fewer weapons, limited finances, gaps in
early warning, and the dissipation of Cold War rivalry, some
analysts have urged Russia and the United States to take
nuclear weapons off hair-trigger alert.
Lowering the Risk
Blair, the Brookings analyst, has been the chief proponent
of ``de-alerting,'' which he said ``means we increase the
time needed to launch forces from the current minutes to
hours, days, weeks or longer, through a variety of measures
like taking the warheads off the missiles.'' He added, ``It
would take them out of play, so there is a much lower risk of
their mistaken use.''
But in Russia, there is no clear sense of direction. If
anything, analysts here said they think Russia may drift away
from launch-on-warning. This is driven by necessity: The
warning system is deteriorating. ``Basically, the shift is
being made already,'' said the Kremlin defense strategist.
However, others said the change is not certain. The Russian
military elite was trained to think in global terms but now
faces the reality of becoming a second-class power at a time
of overwhelming American superiority. Russia may be reluctant
to give up the threat of a launch-on-warning, at least
formally.
``I think there will be some kind of transition period, 10
to 15 years,'' said Anatoly Diakov, director of the Center
for Arms Control, Energy and Environmental Studies here.
``Russia will save the opportunity to return to launch-on-
warning, just in case. This is some kind of hedge against
adverse developments. But the main priority will be a
transition from launch-on-warning to a retaliatory'' posture.
Asked whether Russia should give up launch-on-warning,
Dvorkin said, ``On even days, I think we should reject it. On
odd days, I think we should keep it.''
``Why?'' he asked. ``Because how is launch-on-warning
dangerous? It's dangerous with a possible mistake in making
the decision to launch.'' But, he added, ``making this
mistake in peacetime, a time like now, the likelihood is
practically zero. Because the situation is quiet. Only if
there is some increase in tension between countries, then the
likelihood of a mistake increases.''
Just the fact of having launch-on-warning, he said, would
discourage both countries from returning to Cold War
tensions. ``We must sit quietly,'' he added, ``like mice in
our nook.''
____
[From the Washington Post, Mar. 16, 1998]
Downsizing A Mighty Arsenal--Moscow Rethinks Role As Its Weapons Rust
(By David Hoffman)
Moscow.--Russia's strategic forces, the vast phalanx of
nuclear-armed submarines, bombers and intercontinental
ballistic missiles built during the Cold War by the Soviet
Union, are suffering a dramatic decline because of arms
control treaties, the Soviet breakup, looming obsolescence
and Russia's economic depression.
Regardless of whether the United States and Russia move
ahead on bilateral arms-control treaties, a decade from now
Russia's forces will be less than one-tenth the size they
were at the peak of Soviet power, according to estimates
prepared in Russia and in the West. Ten years from now, if
current economic trends continue, Russia may have a strategic
nuclear force just larger than that of China, and somewhat
larger than Britain's and France's combined.
This slide has enormous implications for Russia and the
West that are only now beginning to emerge. For Russia, the
decline has raised painful dilemmas about its place in the
world, underscoring yet again the erosion of its superpower
status.
At the same time, while the nuclear shield is shrinking,
Russian leaders have decided to rely on the deterrent power
of the nuclear weapons more than ever--to compensate for
their even weaker and more chaotic conventional forces.
President Boris Yeltsin recently signed a new national
security doctrine that enshrines this idea. Russia also has
dropped its pledge not to be the first to use nuclear
weapons.
``All we have is the nuclear stick,'' said Lev Tolkov, a
prominent Russian military strategist. ``Of course, we should
all together decrease this nuclear danger. But right now, we
have nothing else. We're naked. Can you imagine that?''
Some Russian strategists are beginning to look for an exit
from the arms-race mentality of the Cold War, a way that
would preserve Russia's membership in the nuclear club,
perhaps even its Great Power status, but without the enormous
drag on its resources. One recent proposal is for Russia
simply to abandon the bilateral arms-control process with the
United States and go its way with a small, independent
nuclear force.
In Moscow, leading politicians and military experts are
also looking, nervously, not at the West, but at Russia's
long, sparsely populated southern and eastern borders, toward
China and the Islamic world, where they see the real future
threats to Russian interests.
In the West, too, the decline of Russia's strategic forces
could have serious repercussions, raising questions about
sizes and posture of U.S. forces. Some see it as a chance for
the United States to pursue still-deeper cuts in nuclear
weapons, including a new strategic arms agreement, that would
keep Washington and Moscow at approximate balance, ``locking
in'' the lower Russian levels with formal treaties. Also,
some experts say both sides should remove the still-tense
nuclear-alert posture of the Cold War.
But there is also resistance from those who urge caution.
For example, in the 1994 nuclear posture review, the Clinton
administration decided to create a ``hedge'' of warheads
against the prospects of future uncertainty in Russia and to
preserve the existing U.S. structure of land-sea-air forces.
Some argue that, as the only global superpower, the United
States does not need to match the steep Russian decline. And
Russia's woes may embolden backers of building a ballistic
missile defense system.
Only a decade ago, when the Soviet arsenal hit its peak,
the Pentagon warned that a parade of new weapons systems was
being deployed, including the SS-18 Satan missile, the
supersonic Blackjack bomber, and the giant Typhoon ballistic-
missile submarine. The Pentagon's annual ``Soviet Military
Power'' tract declared that ``the most striking feature of
Soviet military power today is the extraordinary momentum of
its offensive strategic nuclear force modernization.''
Today, that momentum has stopped. The Typhoons, Satans and
Blackjacks are doomed. Russia, the sole heir of the Soviet
nuclear forces, still has thousands of warheads. But the
mechanical leviathans needed to carry them are deteriorating.
The Russian landscape is littered with stark evidence of
this decline. At Russia's Northern and Far Eastern ports,
nuclear-powered submarines are piling up in watery junkyards.
The largest group of Blackjack bombers is rusting away in
Ukraine. Even the core of the Russian strategic deterrent,
the missile force, is expected to shrink dramatically in the
years ahead, although Russia is trying to deploy a new class
of land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles. But so
far, only two rockets have been put on duty, three years
behind schedule.
silent factories and shipyards
Moreover, most of the huge factories and shipyards that
rolled out the giant Soviet arms buildup in the 1980s have
fallen silent. In many cases the experts who built them have
simply disappeared.
Like the United States, Russia has a three-legged structure
of nuclear forces: a triad of land, sea and air weapons. But
Russia's triad may cease to exist over the next decade. Most
likely, experts say, the long-range bombers, which have
always been the least significant leg of the Russian triad,
will become obsolescent, leaving a diminished submarine fleet
and land-based rocket forces to carry the nuclear deterrent.
How far and how fast the Russian forces decline depends on
whether the now-moribund economy can recover. But independent
estimates by authoritative Russian and Western experts show
the same outcome in the next 10 to 15 years--movement toward
a drastically reduced nuclear force. The result is being
decided today; weapons take decades to design and build but
almost none are in the works, and existing programs are
starved for money.
According to the estimates, Russia's nuclear forces are
shrinking even faster than the START II treaty will require.
The treaty, which called for both sides to have between 3,500
and 3,000 warheads, was signed five years ago but has yet to
be ratified by the lower house of the Russian parliament, the
State Duma.
Even more striking, Russian and Western specialists now
estimate that, if the economy remains flat, Russia probably
cannot even sustain the level of nuclear weapons envisioned
just a year ago for a follow-on treaty, START III. In a
meeting at Helsinki last
[[Page S2103]]
March, Clinton and Yeltsin set the target for this treaty as
2,000 to 2,500 warheads on each side. Both treaties would be
implemented by 2007 but warheads would be deactivated by
2003.
More likely, Russian and Western specialists said, Russia
will wind up with an arsenal of 1,000 to 1,500 warheads a
decade from now. However, it could fall to half that if the
economy does not recover. That would put Russia in a league
with China, which is estimated to have 400 warheads today--or
roughly equivalent to the total by Britain, with 260, and
France, with 440.
Volkov, the Russian military analyst, recently estimated
that even with robust economic growth, Russia will have only
700 warheads a decade from now. Sergei Kortunov, a top
Kremlin defense aide, has written that ``with a lot of
effort'' Russia might reach 1,000 warheads by 2015.
By contrast, according to the Natural Resources Defense
Council in Washington, the Soviet Union in 1990 had 10,779
strategic nuclear warheads. (This does not include the
estimated 6,000 to 13,000 nonstrategic, smaller nuclear
charges Russia also still possesses, which have never been
covered by arms control treaties.)
The U.S. strategic forces are relatively modern. The land-
based Minuteman missiles, Trident submarines and B-52 bombers
are expected to remain in service for a long-time. Gen.
Eugene Habiger, commander of the U.S. strategic forces, said
recently, ``I do not see the United States even thinking
about having to modernize any of our forces until the year
2020.''
nuclear-age ``graveyards''
Boris Yeltsin has always been unpredictable while abroad,
and last Dec. 2 he popped another surprise. On a visit to
Stockholm, he declared: ``I am here making public for the
first time that we, in a unilateral manner, are reducing by
another third the number of nuclear warheads.''
Yeltsin's press secretary, Sergei Yastrzhembsky, said he
was referring to a future START III arms control treaty with
the United States. But later back in Moscow, a senior Russian
defense strategist shook his head at Yastrzhembsky's
explanation.
``To tell you the truth, I was bewildered,'' he said.
Yeltsin's comment captured perfectly what is happening to
Russian strategic forces, he added.
The decline was set in motion by the START I treaty, now
being implemented. Russia has made cuts mostly by eliminating
missiles it inherited from Belarus, Ukraine and Kazakhstan.
Looming are deeper cuts in the forces now inside Russia,
mandated by START II. But even more important than the
treaties, the ebb of Russia's strategic forces is being
driven by a simple fact: They are running out of steam, out
of money, and out of time.
For example, in its 1989 report on Soviet military power,
the Pentagon warned about the deployment of the Blackjack
bomber, the Russian supersonic Tu-160. With low-mounted,
swept-back wings and a long pointed nose, the plane was the
most powerful combat aircraft in the Soviet air force, and
was deployed with nuclear-armed AS-15 cruise missiles.
Although the Soviet Union had planned to build 100
Blackjacks, only 25 were deployed. They had many
malfunctions, but the biggest problem came on the day the
Soviet Union fell apart: Most of the Blackjacks were not in
Russia.
Nineteen Blackjack bombers were parked in Ukraine, where
they remain. Years of negotiation between Russia and Ukraine
for repurchase of the bombers by Russia have gone nowhere.
According to Jane's Intelligence Review, the planes have
practically lost their combat value.
Russia has only six Blackjacks, built in 1991, currently
deployed at the Engels air base in the Volga region, but a
Russian military source said only four of them are combat-
ready. There are a few more Blackjacks partially finished or
being used as trainers. Russia also has a fleet of older Tu-
95 Bear bombers.
Russia's submarine fleet is the least vulnerable leg of the
strategic triad--while the submarines are hidden under the
ocean. But the navy is also in trouble. A.D. Baker III,
editor of Combat Fleets of the World, said that at the
present rate of decline, Russia's strategic-missile submarine
fleet ``will be virtually extinct within a decade.'' At the
end of 1997, he said, for the first time since the 1930s, the
Russian navy had fewer operational submarines of all types
than did the U.S. Navy.
Of 62 strategic submarines deployed by the Soviet Union in
1990, the Russian navy currently has only 28, and by some
recent reports, as few as 23 are operational. Most of the
rest have been junked or are waiting to be.
At a peak of the Cold War tensions, 20 to 22 submarines
were at sea. Today, there are usually two, and they do not go
far.
One of the fearsome symbols of Soviet power was the
Typhoon, the largest submarine ever built--each accommodating
20 missiles with 10 warheads apiece. The six Typhoons
completed between 1980 and 1989 could, in the event of a
nuclear attack, send 1,200 nuclear warheads aloft.
But today only half the Typhoons are working. Three of the
huge boats have been taken out of service. A new missile
planned for them has yet to materialize, and it is unclear
whether they will ever sail again.
Russia started construction in November 1996 on a new
generation of strategic submarine, the Borey class, at the
Severodvinsk shipyard in the north. But according to Baker,
only 1 percent of the first submarine has been completed in
15 months of work, and the new missile planned for it has
failed four times.
In addition to preserving its strategic submarine fleet,
the navy is facing other pressing financial obligations. One
of the most persistent headaches is that submarines have a
service life of 25 to 30 years, but most undergo an interim
overhaul every seven or eight years. For lack of financing
for these repairs, many vessels are being retired early.
So far, 152 submarines have been retired officially and
more are unofficially in line to be retired. A huge backlog
of nuclear-powered vessels awaiting dismantling is building
up in the Northern and Far Eastern ports, which
environmentalists and others have warned has the potential
for a naval disaster similar to that at the Chernobyl nuclear
power plant in 1986.
``We have whole graveyards of nuclear weapons and we don't
know what to do with them,'' Said Georgi Arbatov, a prominent
strategist and adviser to Soviet leaders.
The core of Russian strategic forces is the land-based,
continent-spanning missiles. But the clock is ticking for
them, too.
Most of the missiles built in the 1970s and '80s are due to
be retired or decommissioned if the START II treaty is
ratified. This includes the 10-warhead ``heavy'' missile, the
SS-18, which embodied the destabilizing threat of multiple-
warhead missiles. Russia's force of SS-19 six-warhead
missiles would also be reduced, and fixed with only one
warhead each. The abolition of multiple warheads was the
chief accomplishment of the START II treaty.
Some Russian politicians have threatened that Moscow could
return to multiple-warhead missiles if it had to, but
military experts pour cold water on the idea. It would be
``senseless from the military point of view and impossible
from the economic point of view,'' Said Vladimir Dvorkin,
director of the 4th Central Research Institute, the once-
secret think tank for the Russian rocket forces.
a brick wall of obsolescence
If START II is not ratified, the Russian missile forces
will nonetheless hit a brick wall of obsolescence in the next
decade. Gen. Vladimir Yakovlev, chief of the strategic rocket
forces, said recently that 62 percent of Russia's missiles
are already beyond their guaranteed service life. For the
Russian military, this is often flexible. But there are
serious problems: As the factories that made the missiles
grind to a halt, and the workers and designers leave for
other jobs, the problem of maintenance becomes acute.
Scavenging for spare parts is common.
``They have to decide,'' said a Western diplomat, ``what is
the risk? And, what choice do they have?''
The Russian military has repeatedly test-fired old rockets
to see if they still work. They usually hit their targets.
But last spring, according to one source, when a Typhoon
attempted to fire 20 older rockets as part of a destruction
routine, only 19 missiles came out. One failed to launch.
Volkov said: ``Everything ends. In 22 or 23 years, a moment
comes when everything starts to collapse or fall apart. Each
piece of equipment has a moment when the construction simply
get old. You can change the equipment, you can change small
things. But when the silo, the container, the body of the
missile, when they are corroded, fungus eats through the
metal, things start to grow on it--God knows what.''
Dvorkin said there is an expensive, labor-intensive drive
to stretch out missile-service life. ``But of course, we
can't hope that we can do it endlessly,'' he said. ``Not a
single builder or scientist can tell you right now how long
we can extend it. ``He added that eventually it becomes more
costly to fix the rockets than to buy new ones.
The Strategic Rocket Forces are already struggling to
deploy a new missile, the three-stage Topol-M, to be the core
of Russia's future deterrent. That missile, both road-mobile
and silo-based, is built entirely within Russia and designers
have said its payload contains still-secret means for
slipping through antimissile defenses.
The main question about the Topol-M is not so much
technology as money and time. In December, the first two
rockets were installed in an old SS-19 silo near Saratov, on
the Volga River. Yakovlev said Russia hopes to deploy 10
missiles this year, but needs another $600 million before
production can start. In the Soviet era, the Votkinsk
factory, which builds the missiles in the central Urals
mountains, made about 80 rockets a year. But now there are
doubts about whether Russia can afford just 10 a year.
Looking for an Exit
For Russian strategic planners, the choices are painful.
The Cold War is over but its immense and destructive hardware
remains in place. Russia hungers for global prestige; many
see the nuclear arsenal as its last remaining calling card as
a great power. But Russia can't afford to sustain it any
longer.
Some prominent military and political analysts have begun
to talk about finding a way out of the cocked-trigger nuclear
embrace with the United States, if only because Russia's
dwindling forces demand it.
``The model of nuclear deterrence that existed during the
Cold War must of course be radically changed,'' Dvorkin said,
``since it is senseless right now to deter the United States
from an attack, nuclear or conventional, on Russia.''
[[Page S2104]]
Sergei Rogov, director of the USA-Canada Institute and a
leading strategic analyst, said Russia and the United States
have settled their long ideological struggle, but not even
begun to wind down the nuclear threat. The 1994 agreement by
Clinton and Yeltsin that missiles will not be targeted at
each other was ``a step back from this trigger-happy
situation,'' he said, but it was ``a gimmick, because it's
reversible in one or two minutes.'' In fact, according to a
Russian specialist, the Russian missiles can be re-targeted
in 10 to 15 seconds.
Rogov said both countries still preserve intact the
doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction, a Cold War legacy
under which both sides threaten to respond to an attack by
wreaking massive damage on the other. ``You don't threaten
your `strategic partner' with assured destruction 24 hours a
day,'' Rogov said, ``We need to abandon the Mutual Assured
Destruction conditions with the United States.''
But the traditional arms control process is at an impasse.
The Duma has refused to ratify the START II agreement.
Without it, the United States has refused to begin formal
negotiations on deeper cuts in a START III treaty. Many of
Russia's top military strategists are eager to move ahead
with deeper, joint reductions that would match the looming
obsolescence of their forces.
At the same time, there is a new line of thinking that
Russia should abandon bilateral negotiations with the United
States and instead create a small and ``sufficient'' nuclear
force, not unlike France's independent nuclear posture.
In an article just published in a Russian academic journal,
Kremlin defense aide Kortunov and Vladimir Bogomolov, of the
rocket forces, suggested Russia keep an independent force of
1,000 warheads. They argued that this would ``allow Russia to
choose and adopt her own nuclear strategy.'' They said Russia
could do this unilaterally and ``there will be no need for
new talks'' with the United States.
Among Russia's military and political elite there is also a
strong consensus that the West is no longer Russia's
strategic adversary--and that the nuclear face-off is
burdensome, diverting resources from other real problems.
Many have concluded that Russia, with a long, sparsely
populated southern border, needs to deter potential threats
from the south and east--from the Islamic world and China--
over the coming decade.
``I don't think Russia will have to worry about its western
borders,'' said a top Kremlin security specialist. ``This
will give us more time to pay attention to the southern
borders.''
Russia's Dwindling Arsenal--Russian Strategic Weapons, 1990-2012
The level of Russia's forces could change depending on the
country's economy and how Russia decides to structure its
forces. These estimates for future years are based on
interviews by The Washington Post with Russian and Western
experts. Levels will be even lower if the Russian economy
does not recover.
TOTAL WARHEADS
------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------
1990................................................. 10,779
1997................................................. 6,260
2007................................................. 1,200
2012................................................. 700
Start-2 level........................................ 3,500
Start-3 level........................................ 2,000-2,500
------------------------------------------------------------------------
RUSSIAN OPERATIONAL STRATEGIC NUCLEAR FORCES, 1998
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
No. Range Total
Type NATO designation deployed Year (miles) warheads
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bombers:
Tu-95M................................... Bear-H6.................... 29 1984 7,953 174
Tu-95M................................... Bear H16................... 35 1984 7,953 560
Tu-160................................... Blackjack.................. 6 1987 6,835 72
Intercontinental ballistic missiles:
SS-18.................................... Satan...................... 180 1979 6,835 1,800
SS-19.................................... Stiletto................... 165 1980 6,214 990
SS-24.................................... M1/M2 Scalpel.............. 36/10 1987 6,214 460
SS-25.................................... Sickle..................... 360 1985 6,524 360
Sea-launched ballistic missiles:
SS-N-18.................................. M1 Stingray................ 192 1978 4,039 576
SS-N-20.................................. Sturgeon................... 80 1983 5,157 800
SS-N-23.................................. Skiff...................... 112 1986 5,592 448
Total.................................. ........................... 1,205 ....... ....... 6,240
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: ``Taking Stock, Worldwide Nuclear Deployments, 1998,'' by William Arkin, Robert S. Norris and Joshua
Handler, Natural Resources Defense Council, 1998.
RUSSIAN SUBMARINE PATROLS PER YEAR, 1991-96
------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------
1991................................................. 55
1992................................................. 37
1993................................................. 32
1994................................................. 33
1995................................................. 27
1996................................................. 26
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence, released under FOIA to
Princeton Center for Energy and Environmental Studies.
Mr. ROBERTS. I yield the floor.
Mr. KENNEDY addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts is recognized.
Mr. KENNEDY. I thank the Chair.
(The remarks of Mr. KENNEDY pertaining to the introduction of S. 1789
are located in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced Bills
and Joint Resolutions.'')
____________________