Tactical Nuclear Weapons and NATO.pdf - Program on Strategic ...

armed struggle at sea for the period 2010-20, in which
the U.S. Navy would pose the primary threat to Russia
from the sea. The emphasis is upon precision-strike
systems, including cruise missiles launched from submarines
that could otherwise mount a disarming attack
against Russian strategic nuclear systems. Kapitanets
argued that the only means that Russia would
have to counter this threat in this period would be nuclear
weapons, <strong>and</strong> that such a response would lead to
“the complete political isolation of Russia in the world
arena.” Instead, he called for the creation of a “metasystem
of non-nuclear deterrence of aggression.” 47
The Russian Navy was, however, also pursuing
a nuclear response to counter the threat Kapitanets
outlined. In 2009, Chief of the Main Naval Staff Vice
Admiral Oleg Burtsev, asserted that naval strategic
nuclear forces in the future will remain a part of the
nuclear triad of the Russian armed forces. The role of
multi-purpose attack nuclear submarines will exp<strong>and</strong>.
Burtsev declared:
There is a possible future for tactical nuclear weapons.
<strong>Tactical</strong> nuclear weapons are getting greater range <strong>and</strong>
more accuracy, which makes it possible to dispense
with more powerful warheads <strong>and</strong> go to less powerful
ones that could be deployed on existing models of
cruise missiles. 48
In early November 2009, Prime Minister Vladimir
Putin signed a contract with the Unified Shipbuilding
Corporation for follow-on construction of five
Lasen’-class multiple-purpose nuclear attack submarines
after the completion of the first ship of the class,
the Severnodvinsk. 49 However, as Aleks<strong>and</strong>r Khramchikhin
has made clear, Russia’s Arctic naval frontier
is quite indefensible now. It is precisely in this area
141