Russian Nuclear Weapons: Past, Present, and Future

THE SHRINKING NUCLEAR FORCES
Throughout the 1990s and into the next century,
not only did Moscow experience problems with particular
weapons systems, the number of nuclear weapons
was decreasing. Note the following criticism:
At the start of 1992, the Russian Federation had 6,347
nuclear warheads. When Boris Yeltsin resigned at the
end of 1999, he left his successor 5,842 warheads. At the
start of 2007, Russia had 681 ICBMs (including SLBMs
carried by submarines) with 2,460 warheads and 79
strategic aircraft with 884 cruise missiles. That’s a total
of 3,344 warheads. If current trends persist (new missiles
are being built at an extremely slow rate, while
the withdrawal of old missiles is accelerating), the
Strategic Nuclear Forces might have no more than 300
ICBMs by the middle of the next decade with no more
than 600 warheads. 55
In short, insofar as Moscow’s nuclear forces were
concerned, the future looked anything but bright.
THE STATUS OF CONVENTIONAL WEAPONS,
2010
If there were problems with nuclear forces, the
problems with conventional weapons were even
greater. This was brought home to the Kremlin in
great clarity by the War with Georgia. The war began
in chaos—especially among the high command in
Moscow. As one Russian source put it:
The Main Operations Directorate and the Main Organization
Directorate found themselves on August 8,
2008, in the street in the direct sense of the word. On
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