MOSCOW, September 11. /ITAR-TASS/. Russia has capability for an appropriate response to the US concept of the Prompt Global Strike, military experts said in an opinion round-up organized by ITAR-TASS.
Development of a state program for armaments for the years 2016-2025 was discussed on Wednesday at a conference chaired by President Vladimir Putin, who said the US was promulgating a so-called theory of the global incapacitating strike and this meant many new threats were emerging.
Russia’s Deputy Minister of Defense said Russia could set up its own system of a global instantaneous strike but it would proceed from a concept of Armed Forces Development based on defense. “Russia can do it and will be compelled to do it,” one of the experts said.
The US has not only designed a program for delivering prompt global strikes, the concept of which was endorsed by George W. Bush back in 2003. Now Washington is boosting it, believes Colonel-General Leonid Ivashov, Ret., the president of the International Center for Geopolitical Problems.
“The Russian community of military experts was issuing signals of alarm back then in the connection with the challenge that had been thrown to us,” said Gen Ivashov who was the head of the Defense Ministry’s department for international military cooperation.
“The Prompt Global Strike is an initiative of the US Armed Forces that aims to develop a system enabling Washington to deliver a strike with the aid of conventional weapons in any part of the planet within a period of just one hour,” he went on. “Such strikes will be effectuated by several thousand cruise missiles capable of eliminating up to 70% of the Russian nukes.”
“The US plans to unfold a system of anti-missile missiles so as to intercept the remaining Russian missiles in the boost phase, in the flying-by space phase, in the orbital path and then to destroy them by ground-based and sea-based armaments,” Gen Ivashov said.
“In these conditions, Russia’s potential of nuclear missiles stops being the guarantor of our national security,” he said.
The threat this doctrine poses consists in the fact it furnishes the Pentagon with an ability to neutralize Russia’s nuclear potential and to inflict an irreparable damage to military facilities, industries and activities of the countries friendly to Russia,” Dr. Konstantin Sivkov, the President of the Academy of Geopolitical Problems, told IITAR-TASS.
“Russia is capable of creating a system similar to the American Prompt Global Strike,” he said. “We also have strategic cruise missiles in our non-nuclear arsenal, among them the missiles for Kalibr family submarines and air-based missiles X-555.”
“New air-based non-nuclear cruise missiles X-101 have been entered in the tales of equipment,” Dr. Sivkov said. “Their physical and operational characteristics are on a par with the American missiles and some characteristics, like the effective range of fire, are superior.”
The expert cited the precise data saying, the X-555 missiles could hit targets at a distance of about 2,000km, while the X-101 missiles had a range of over 5,000 km and a prospect for extending it to 10,000 km.
Dr. Sivkov indicated that a Tupolev-160 strategic bomber could take up to twelve missiles of this kind aboard and a Tupolev-95 MS bomber - up to eight missiles.
The combat load of the Tupolev-22M3 allowed it to take four cruise missiles aboard and some 32 sea-based missiles could be installed on Yasen submarines.
“This means Russia has quite up-to-date samples of strategic non-nuclear armaments and it can design a global strike system of its own in the coming few year - a system parallel to the American one.”
“Analysis of the military threats this country is faced with shows it would be reasonable to vest the following tasks in the Russian system of this type,” Dr. Sivkov said. “First is strategic nuclear deterrence compound with a threat of inflicting unacceptable damage to a potential aggressor.”
“Number two, it should disorganize and destroy terrorist organizations and other multinational criminal entities, which endanger the national security of Russia and its allies,” he said. “Number three is to suppress various facilities by way of supporting the operations of multinational forces carried out under UN mandates."
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