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

13. The 12th Main Department of the Ministry of Defense
(GUMO) is in charge of h<strong>and</strong>ling nuclear weapons from the moment
they are received from a production facility <strong>and</strong> until they
are returned to the nuclear complex for refurbishment or dismantlement.
The 12th GUMO has storage facilities where nuclear
weapons are normally kept to be released to troops in case of
emergency; weapons are serviced only by 12th GUMO personnel.
One partial exception is the weapons permanently deployed on
strategic delivery vehicles, but even then personnel of Strategic
Forces or the Navy do not h<strong>and</strong>le them—deployment, removal,
<strong>and</strong> servicing are performed by 12th GUMO personnel, <strong>and</strong> spare
warheads are kept at 12th GUMO storage facilities attached to
military bases. This system, which was created in the early days
of the Soviet nuclear program, is supposed to ensure that operational
comm<strong>and</strong>ers cannot have control of nuclear weapons.
14. Interviews with Russian officials (who requested anonymity).
15. “Rol Takticheskogo Yadernogo Oruzhiya na Mnogotselevykh
APL Vozrastet – VMF” (“The Role of <strong>Tactical</strong> <strong>Nuclear</strong>
<strong>Weapons</strong> on Multipurpose Submarines Set to Grow—the Navy”),
RIA-Novosti, August 23, 2009, available from www.rian.ru/defense_
safety/20090323/165742858.html.
16. The notion of global war is self-explanatory; the category
of regional wars pertains to the situation when Russia faces a coalition
of states, some from out of the area <strong>and</strong>/or some of them
nuclear. The example the drafters of the 2000 Military Doctrine
had in mind was escalation of the war in Chechnya through direct
military involvement of the United States <strong>and</strong> its allies. The
doctrine also included two other categories: (1) “local war” (in
which Russia faces one or more neighboring states that have limited
goals); (2) <strong>and</strong> “military conflict,” which means fighting with
nonstate actors (such as the war in Chechnya).
17. “Menyaetsya Rossiya, Menyaetsya i ee Voennaya Doktrina”
(“As Russia Changes, its Military Doctrine Changes Too”),
Izvestiya, October 14, 2009.
18. See, for example, Alexei Arbatov, “Deep Cuts <strong>and</strong> De-
Alerting: A Russian Perspective,” p. 321.
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