Russian Nuclear Weapons: Past, Present, and Future - Strategic ...

the Russian military has continued to deploy hundreds
of nuclear warheads on short-range tactical
surface-to-surface and air-to-ground strike missiles
as well as systems designed for anti-air and anti-ship
defense. The greater destructive power of their nuclear
warheads compensates for the higher targeting
inaccuracies and lower preparedness of Russian military
forces compared with their NATO counterparts.
Some Russian military leaders also seem to view Russia’s
TNWs as helping Russian troops compensate for
China’s much larger ground forces in the event of a
Russia-China war—though this perspective is rarely
discussed in public given the official line. 8 Since it
could take decades for Russia’s defense industrial and
military reform programs to achieve success, the Russian
military will likely believe it will need to rely on
nuclear weapons, including TNWs, for years to come.
Although security tensions between Russia and
the United States and its NATO allies have lessened
from the time of troubles in the years between 2007
and 2009, Russian leaders still consider nuclear weapons—tactical
as well as strategic—an essential tool in
their foreign and defense policy portfolio. Despite the
recent emphasis on how Russia’s oil and gas have replaced
the Army and Navy as Russia’s two most influential
strategic tools, the most important fact about
Russia is that, along with the United States, it possesses
one of the world’s two most powerful nuclear
arsenals, with sizeable offensive nuclear forces in all
categories of the traditional triad of strategic nuclear
delivery vehicles—ICBMs, SLBMs, and long-range
strategic bombers. Russia also possesses far more
TNWs than any other country.
During a Duma hearing on ratifying the New
Strategic Arms Treaty (START) in July 2010, Russian
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