[Sixstrings]

US says Russia conducted missile test banned by 1987 treaty

U.S. officials have reportedly acknowledged that Russia has tested a new ground-launched cruise missile, in apparent violation of a 1987 treaty banning the testing, production, and possession of medium-range missiles.

However, The New York Times reports that White House officials are not yet ready to formally declare the tests to be a violation of the treaty signed by former U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.

The Times reported that Rose Gottemoeller, the State Department's senior arms control official, informed NATO about the tests at a closed-door meeting in Brussels earlier this month. The paper also reported that the Russian tests may have begun as early as 2008, but U.S. officials did not have enough information to consider the missiles a compliance issues until much later.

The issue of compliance centers on the missile itself, called the RS-26, which has been tested at both medium-range and intercontinental range. The small number of intercontinental tests qualifies it as a long-range system under the terms of the New START treaty negotiated in 2009.

Medium range missiles are defined as ground-launched ballistic or cruise missiles capable of flying 300 to 3,400 miles. Intercontinental missiles are capable of flying beyond that range.

Republicans have called on the White House to share any intelligence on suspected violations of the 1987 treaty with Congress and have urged the administration to be more aggressive in holding Russia to its terms.

"Briefings provided by your administration have agreed with our assessment that Russian actions are serious and troubling, but have failed to offer any assurance of any concrete action to address these Russian actions," Reps. Howard McKeon, R-Calif., and Mike Rogers, R-Mich., said in a letter to President Obama in April. McKeon chairs the House Armed Services Committee, while Rogers chairs the House Intelligence Committee.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/01/30/us-says-russia-conducted-missile-test-banned-by-187-treaty/

Hm..

Well, okey-dokey then. So what does the US have to do now, in response. Do we have to start developing and testing new medium range missiles? Is this treaty just void now? What other response is there, sanctions or something?

And, has Russia, going back to Soviet days, ever violated an arms control treaty before? I'm trying to think here, I don't think this has ever happened.

More details in the New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/30/world/europe/us-says-russia-tested-missile-despite-treaty.html?hp&_r=0

[Plantagenet]

So what does the US have to do now, in response.

The US isn't going to do anything in response. Putin has taken O's measure and decided there was little risk the US would do anything in response.

Obama already telegraphed that he wouldn't do anything in the famous "open-mic" session in 2012 when he was overheard telling Medvedev that after the election he would be "flexible" on missile defense.


The time has come for O to live up to his promise to the Russians to be flexible

[dissident]

The USA unilaterally abrogated the ABM Treaty, which killed the START II Treaty (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/START_II). Now we have foaming at the mouth demands for Russia to comply with some irrelevant Cold War era treaty. Russia has the right, just like the USA, to withdraw from these treaties. And you can stuff your sanctimony.

But let's look at the details:

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/01 ... 87-treaty/

The issue of compliance centers on the missile itself, called the RS-26, which has been tested at both medium-range and intercontinental range. The small number of intercontinental tests qualifies it as a long-range system under the terms of the New START treaty negotiated in 2009.

Medium range missiles are defined as ground-launched ballistic or cruise missiles capable of flying 300 to 3,400 miles. Intercontinental missiles are capable of flying beyond that range.

What a laugh riot of BS.

1) The RS-26 is NOT a cruise missile. It is an ICBM and a large one capable of carrying several warheads:

http://www.janes.com/article/29575/rs-2 ... y-year-end

2) Any ICBM can have its target range changed to violate this 1987 treaty. There is no such thing as a minimum ICBM throw distance. There is a maximum based on its motor and fuel characteristics. Choosing the range is a matter of programming the navigation computer. So we have some anti-Russian propaganda claiming this is an intermediate range missile just because it can be programmed to be one. Well, then, all the US ICBMs violate this treaty as well.

[Sixstrings]

The USA unilaterally abrogated the ABM Treaty, which killed the START II Treaty (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/START_II).

I'll look into that.

Russia has the right, just like the USA, to withdraw from these treaties.

Wouldn't it be good faith to tell the other side, if either side is withdrawing from a treaty?

What a laugh riot of BS.

1) The RS-26 is NOT a cruise missile. It is an ICBM and a large one capable of carrying several warheads:

Okay so it's a new ICBM, that's worse than a cruise missile. I thought these treaties banned new ICBMs???

Choosing the range is a matter of programming the navigation computer. So we have some anti-Russian propaganda claiming this is an intermediate range missile just because it can be programmed to be one.

Let me see if I follow you, is it a new ICBM or an old one that's had its targeting range expanded to work for medium range?

And something else I wonder,
Was this missile under development at the very same time Putin was wanting Obama to drop the missile shield?

I'm just asking questions by the way, don't get mad at me. At least I post it here, I could just read Fox News and the New York Times and not be interested in hearing the other side.

EDIT: I'm just trying to figure this thing out, okay, is this missile a WORKAROUND way of increasing Russia's ICBMs, so doesn't count yet effectively violates the treaty limiting the total number of ICBMs???

Russia and the United States signed the New START treaty in 2010 that caps the number of long-range missiles and bombers in the countries.

The alleged new intermediate-range cruise missile, however, would not fall under the limitation provisions of that treaty.
Intermediate-range nuclear missiles positioned near an adversary’s borders are considered by analysts to be destabilizing as they shorten the response time available to decision-makers to verify a nuclear attack as genuine and not a false alarm of an early missile warning system.
http://en.ria.ru/world/20140130/187045403/US-Alleges-Russian-Missile-Treaty-Violation--Report.html

That's what it sounds like no?

** New START treaty in 2010 that caps the number of long-range missiles **
** The alleged new intermediate-range cruise missile, however, would not fall under the limitation provisions of that treaty. **

Unless I misunderstood you Dissident, you just said it's a variable target range *ICBM* and not a cruise missile?
So is this like a backdoor ICBM, they can just make as many as they want, and we've got a new arms race on?

[Sixstrings]

I think I have the answers to my questions:

White House Must ‘Strongly Confront’ Russia Over Apparent Violation of Nuclear Treaty

The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee said Russia’s apparent violation of the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty could thrust relations with the former Soviet Union back toward the Cold War era.

If found to be in violation, the congressman said, “Russia must immediately bring itself back into full compliance.”

“The INF Treaty currently limits the United States from developing certain options to deal with terrorists and rogue states; we should not be unilaterally bound by any treaty,” he said.

“The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence continues to carefully monitor intelligence regarding Russian compliance with the INF Treaty.”

The report would mean that Russia was testing the ground-launched cruise missile in potential defiance of the treaty when Obama lobbied the Senate hard to ratify the New START Treaty in 2009 despite lawmakers’ concerns about Russia and the administration’s attitude toward the U.S. stockpile.

Lawmakers in both chambers have spent much energy since the suspicions came to light in 2012 pressing the administration on why it wasn’t taking the apparent violations more seriously.

...

A November article in Pravda claims that the Russian Foreign Ministry “notified the Americans in accordance with adequate procedures” before the test of the RS-26, an ICBM that has also been tested at medium range.

Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin called the missile a “killer of U.S. missile defense.”
http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2014/01/30/in ... ar-treaty/

Ok, to summarize:

1. It's a ICBM tested at medium range too
2. Russia says it's a “killer of U.S. missile defense”
3. Looks like the Russians did inform the US (according to Pravda anyhow)
4. Obama knew about it, Congress was concerned he wasn't taking it seriously
5. “Russia must immediately bring itself back into full compliance.” -- that ain't gonna happen

What I'm still not clear on is whether this allows Russia to increase it's total ICBM stockpile?

I'm not seeing anything saying these are in production, just tests, so maybe the game here is that it's leverage for Russia over the US. US has been ignoring the tests up to this point, so next thing you know there will be a compromise to throw Ukraine under the bus or else Russia will do more tests.

Checkmate, Putin's good.

[Tanada]

Technically every ICBM is variable range from hitting the building next door to the launch silo by going straight up and almost straight down again to hitting a target on the opposite side of the globe a little over 12,000 miles away. No point in designing a system to hit further as their is nothing on Earth further away to hit. Just because you can reach the opposite side of the globe doesn't mean you need too, it is just easier to mass produce missiles with that range then target them wherever you want to hit. For a typical missile deployed in central Siberia you could hit anything from North Africa or Spain on one side to Mexico on the other side and everything in between. If they make the missiles 12,000 mile range they can hit anything everywhere on the planet. I don't see why people get all wound up over it, we have been under MAD rules for going on 50 years now, so far the system has kept the peace. Besides why would anyone want to strike Australia/Argentina/South Africa anyhow? And if they did they could send a submarine close enough to do the job without needing land based missiles to do it.

[rollin]

Russia has been building it's military might since the 1990's. What else are they going to do with all that oil money? Personally, it looks like a case of just keeping up with the Chinese.
In a global society we are all neighbors. Problem is lots of the neighbors seem to have cannons on their front lawns pointed at the other neighbors. Not a nice way to live and a guaranteed way to keep anyone from backing down. Actually the whole thing is total insanity until you realize that keeping the threat alive controls the people within the borders.
Get with the plan. Edward Abbey stated it well, no government can continue to exist without enemies.

Hey big powerful countries, while you play expensive cold war games to stay in power many of your own people are struggling and starving In the midst of plenty. Shows how interested you are in your own people. Todays big powers are the worst case of Nero-ism ever seen. Playing their stupid military power games while the world burns.

[PrestonSturges]

George Orwell on the importance of war to create poverty and class (1984)

The primary aim of modern warfare... is to use up the products of the machine without raising the general standard of living. Ever since the end of the nineteenth century, the problem of what to do with the surplus of consumption goods.....when the machine first made its appearance it was clear to all thinking people that the need for human drudgery, and therefore to a great extent for human inequality, had disappeared. If the machine were used deliberately for that end, hunger, overwork, dirt, illiteracy, and disease could be eliminated within a few generations....But it was also clear that an all-round increase in wealth threatened the destruction--indeed, in some sense was the destruction--of a hierarchical society....wealth would confer no distinction... the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would become literate and would learn to think for themselves; and when once they had done this, they would sooner or later realize that the privileged minority had no function, and they would sweep it away. In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance.

Goods must be produced, but they must not be distributed. And in practice the only way of achieving this was by continuous warfare......The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labour. War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent......War, it will be seen, accomplishes the necessary destruction, but accomplishes it in a psychologically acceptable way. In principle it would be quite simple to waste the surplus labour of the world by building temples and pyramids, by digging holes and filling them up again, or even by producing vast quantities of goods and then setting fire to them. But this would provide only the economic and not the emotional basis for a hierarchical society. What is concerned here is not the morale of masses, whose attitude is unimportant so long as they are kept steadily at work, but the morale of the Party itself. Even the humblest Party member is expected to be competent, industrious, and even intelligent within narrow limits, but it is also necessary that he should be a credulous and ignorant fanatic whose prevailing moods are fear, hatred, adulation, and orgiastic triumph. In other words it is necessary that he should have the mentality appropriate to a state of war. It does not matter whether the war is actually happening, and, since no decisive victory is possible, it does not matter whether the war is going well or badly. All that is needed is that a state of war should exist. ....It is precisely in the Inner Party that war hysteria and hatred of the enemy are strongest. In his capacity as an administrator, it is often necessary for a member of the Inner Party to know that this or that item of war news is untruthful, and he may often be aware that the entire war is spurious and is either not happening or is being waged for purposes quite other than the declared ones: but such knowledge is easily neutralized by the technique of DOUBLETHINK. Meanwhile no Inner Party member wavers for an instant in his mystical belief that the war is real, and that it is bound to end victoriously, with Oceania the undisputed master of the entire world.

[sparky]

.
Some technical detail from a source I found to be reliable

http://russianforces.org/blog/2013/12/m ... sile.shtml

meanwhile , the real good stuff is flying under the radar ( so to speak )
a new generation of weapon , the hypersonic missile and yes , everybody want one
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/01/ ... Z020140115

[dissident]

.
Some technical detail from a source I found to be reliable

http://russianforces.org/blog/2013/12/m ... sile.shtml

meanwhile , the real good stuff is flying under the radar ( so to speak )
a new generation of weapon , the hypersonic missile and yes , everybody want one
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/01/ ... Z020140115

The Free Beacon said the test made China the second country after the United States to have successfully tested a hypersonic delivery vehicle able to carry nuclear warheads at a speed above Mach 10 - or 12,359 kilometers per hour.

WTF is this drivel. This Reuters moron needs to get an education. You can't fly ICBMs under the radar, any radar. All warheads have to be propelled above the thicker layers of the atmosphere so as not to burn up and achieve the desired velocity for rapid delivery. You cannot fly objects near the surface at near orbital velocities. Even the most porous ceramics would evapourate.

If anything this story is about so-called MARVs, aka maneuverable delivery buses for warheads in MIRVed ICBMs. Sorry to break it to this idiot, Russia has had them for 10 years at least, and deployed.

[sparky]

.
Dissident , I totally agree with your comments
it seems impossible to go Hypersonic below 30.000 feet for any length of time

to call anything sonic in space is quite absurd , there is no sound
still , maybe it's all a plot to get some juicy defense research projects
http://defensetech.org/2014/01/14/congr ... sile-test/

in space no one can hear the taxpayer scream

[Subjectivist]

.
Dissident , I totally agree with your comments
it seems impossible to go Hypersonic below 30.000 feet for any length of time

to call anything sonic in space is quite absurd , there is no sound
still , maybe it's all a plot to get some juicy defense research projects
http://defensetech.org/2014/01/14/congr ... sile-test/

in space no one can hear the taxpayer scream

It is quite common for reports to refer to things in orbit in terms of mach number as in the shuttle used to go mach 25 around the Earth. Really it is just easier for them than saying 18,000 miles per hour.

[Sixstrings]

Can these Aegis destroyers counter the new Russian missile?

Russia threatens to quit START as US deploys Aegis destroyer to Spain

The US has deployed a ballistic missile defense destroyer to Spain to boost NATO’s anti-missile shield in Europe. The move, allegedly aimed at curbing the Iranian threat, has sparked talks about Russia possibly scrapping the START nuclear treaty.

“An important posture enhancement is European missile defense in response to ballistic missile threats from Iran,” Hagel said, adding that the US is committed “to deploying missile defense architecture there,” as a part of Phase 3 of the European Phased Adaptive Approach (EPAA).

“There are some capabilities that the United States military will continue to invest heavily in,” Hagel told the Munich conference. “We will continue to be the world leader in those kinds of capabilities.”

In his Munich speech, Hagel also mentioned that China and Russia “are rapidly modernizing their militaries and global defense industries, challenging our technological edge and defense partnerships around the world.”

The USS Donald Cook will become the first of four ballistic missile defense (BMD)-capable ships based in Europe. It will be joined by the destroyer Ross in a few months, while Carney and Porter will reach European waters in 2015.

In the meantime, if the US continues boosting its anti-missile capabilities through developing its missile defense system in Europe, Russia may eventually be forced to withdraw from the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), the Russian Foreign Ministry’s top disarmament official, Mikhail Ulyanov, has warned.

"We are concerned that the US is continuing to build up missile defense capability without considering the interests and concerns of Russia,” Ulyanov told Interfax. “Such a policy can undermine strategic stability and lead to a situation where Russia will be forced to exercise [its] right of withdrawal from the [START] treaty.”
http://rt.com/news/destroyer-us-poland-start-treaty-530/

[Sixstrings]

So what's the bottom line with the new missile, and if Russia exits the START treaty too? All bets off, no more restrictions on stockpiles? Will Russia significantly increase its arsenal?

The Moscow Missile Mystery
Is Russia actually violating the INF Treaty?

If Moscow has developed a prohibited INF missile, it will have implications for U.S.-Russia arms control. But it will have even more important implications for Russia's relations with its neighbors in Europe and Asia, including China.

The INF Treaty banned all U.S. and Soviet land-based ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,500 kilometers (300 to 3,400 miles). When the treaty's reduction period concluded in June 1991, 846 American and 1,846 Soviet missiles had been eliminated, as well as their associated launchers and other equipment.

Critics have expressed concern that the RS-26 has flown to intermediate ranges, which apparently it has. But the Russians have also tested the RS-26 to ranges greater than 5,500 kilometers. That makes it an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) subject to the limits of the 2010 New START agreement. New START defines ICBMs as land-based ballistic missiles "with a range in excess of 5500 kilometers," whereas the INF Treaty bans land-based missiles with ranges "in excess of 500 kilometers" but "not in excess of 5500 kilometers." These definitions clearly make the RS-26 an ICBM.

New intermediate-range nuclear arms would spark concerns among all of Russia's neighbors, especially as the Russian military already has some 4,500 nuclear weapons -- well more than 10 times the number of nuclear weapons that any country (other than the United States) has. Moscow will not have an easy time explaining this. If the reports of the new cruise missiles are true, the Russians are buying themselves more than just a new problem with Washington.
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/01/30/the_moscow_missile_mystery_russia_inf

[sparky]

.
For the Russians ,the missile shield is the problem , they have shouted it high and low
it's written as a deal breaker in the SALT 2 treaty , to no avail .
as a continental power they need an intermediate missile ,

the US under GW Bush scraped the anti ballistic treaty
ultimately , any side can ditch a treaty for national security reasons ,
they are always written with a withdrawal clause
it is biding only if both side want to ,SALT 2 was seen by both side as a money saving exercise
It has been said , with some reasons , that the Reagan arm race bankrupted the old USSR
an inconvenient fact was that the USSR was paying cash while the US had much deeper credit

a new arm race , should it come to that , would wreck the US finances further
while Moscow is sitting on a pretty pile of cash