Russian Nuclear Weapons: Past, Present, and Future

have been a much more robust high-tech conventional
capability and deterrent.
Russian defense industry’s concurrent failure to
modernize to the point where it can satsify both the
government and the armed forces’ demands for serial
production of reliable high-tech weapons and platforms
and system integration capabilities reinforces
this likely outcome, and suggests that Russia will only
partially realize its plan of a comprehensive modernization
of the armed forces by 2020. Here again,
rather than modernize the armed forces by 10 percent
a year to 2020 as previously planned, Medvedev is
now demanding that 30 percent of the armed forces’
weaponry be modernized by 2015, a sure sign of continuing
failure. 16 What makes this outcome even more
likely is the fact that, due to the impact of the current
crisis on the backward and overly statist Russian
economy, budgetary spending will be constrained at
least through 2015 if not 2020. 17 Indeed, the recently
approved State Armament Program from 2011-20
spends only 13 trillion rubles to rearm the armed forces,
a figure that the Acting Defense Ministry Chief of
Armaments, Lieutenant General Oleg Frolov, claims
will only allow for modernization of the strategic
nuclear forces, air, and air defense forces, leaving the
Navy and Army under-financed. 18 Not surprisingly,
the military demanded another 23 trillion rubles to
modernize the Army through 2020 and to modernize
all of the armed forces and their accompanying infrastructure.
19 This pressure already forced the Finance
Ministry to make concessions to the miliary, for instance
whereas defense spending stood at 2.6 percent
of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2010, in 2011-12 it
should increase to 2.9 percent of GDP and 3 percent in
2013, after which it will grow to 3.1 percent, leading to
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