Armed Forces of the Russian Federation: Encyclopedia II - Armed Forces of the Russian Federation - Nuclear weapons

Armed Forces of the Russian Federation - Nuclear weapons

More realistically, the Russian military doctrine, then and now, has called for the reliance on the country's strategic nuclear forces as the primary deterrent against attack by a major power (such as NATO forces or the People's Republic of China). In keeping with this dictum, the country's nuclear forces have received adequate financing throughout the lean 1990s while the rest of the military was cash-starved and decayed. The military division in charge of the nuclear weapons is the Strategic Rocket Forces. The number of intercontinental ballistic missiles and warheads on active duty has declined over the years, in part in keeping with arms limitation agreements with the USA and in part due to insufficient spending on maintenance, but military power of nuclear forces didn't decline because of deployment of new rockets virtually invulnerable for missile defences. The ICBMs it has on duty would be more than sufficient to wreak global havoc, hence serving as a very credible deterrent. See also: Russia and weapons of mass destruction Still, Russia possesses new SS Topol' M missiles that are stated to be able to easily penetrate any missile defence on the planet, including the US missile defence system. Russian nuclear forces are confident that they can carry out a successful retaliation strike if attacked.

Interestingly, because of the international awareness of the danger of Russian nuclear technology falling into the hands of terrorists or rogue officers who might want to use it to threaten or attack the West, The Pentagon and other agencies have actually provided considerable financial assistance to the Russian nuclear forces over the years. This money went in part to finance decommissioning of warheads under bilateral agreements, but also to improve security and personnel training in Russian nuclear facilities. This may be one of the big reasons why no terrorist nuclear incidents have so far occurred in the world despite existence of many terrorist organizations and rogue states' intelligence services who would have been interested in acquiring nuclear technology from Russia.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Nuclear weapons", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki