INF Treaty - coming to the end of its life

The INF treaty includes all ground launched missiles including ballistic and cruise missiles.

the irony is that the US can base missiles in Europe while the Russians have no place to base intermediate range missiles that would be strategic if located close to its targets.

Russia urges NATO chief to take care of making INF Treaty multipartite

MOSCOW, July 31. /ITAR-TASS/. Russian Foreign Ministry urged NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen to take care of making the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty multipartite which Russia called for repeatedly.

“Moscow has studied NATO general secretary’s statements on the issue of the Treaty on the Elimination of Intermediate-Range and Shorter-Range Missiles with some surprise,” the diplomatic agency said.

“We hope that the general secretary will not challenge this treaty was concluded in December 1987 between the Soviet Union and the United States, but not between the Soviet Union and NATO or Russia and NATO,” the ministry said.

“If the essence of concerns voiced in the statement lies in the situation over observing provisions of this document, he should address not to us, but to the North Atlantic Alliance member state which is a signatory nation to the treaty,” the Foreign Ministry said.

US statements that Russia breaks INF Treaty unfounded - FM
“If the NATO general secretary would like to make a serious contribution in making the INF Treaty regime stronger, we would recommend to him to take care of making the agreement multipartite which Russia called for repeatedly,” the ministry added.

On July 30, the NATO chief said “Russia should work constructively to resolve this critical Treaty issue and preserve the viability of the INF Treaty by returning to full compliance in a verifiable manner. Continuing to uphold the Treaty strengthens the security of all, including Russia.”

Backing US accusations against Russia made at a media briefing of ambassadors from 28 NATO states Rasmussen recalled that the INF Treaty obligations envisage “not to possess, produce, or flight-test a ground-launched cruise missile with a range capability of 500 to 5,500 kilometers.

The air launched Kh-101 and Kh-102 have flight ranges of 5,500km... it would not be that difficult to design a ground launched missile able to be launched from the Iskander TEL vehicle that is in the 2-3 ton range with a heavy rocket booster to get it airborne that has a flight range of 5,800km or more which would make it not an IRBM and therefore not limited by the INF treaty.

Russian Military Reaffirms Strict Adherence to INF Treaty

MOSCOW, July 31 (RIA Novosti) – Chief of the Russian General Staff, Gen. Valery Gerasimov, said on Thursday that Russia is strictly implementing the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty with the United States.

Gerasimov discussed the situation around the Soviet-era agreement in a phone call with US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey.

“Gerasimov reaffirmed Russia’s adherence to strict implementation of the INF Treaty,” the Defense Ministry said in a statement.

Washington has recently accused Moscow of violating its obligations under the treaty, but declined to provide any evidence.

But now White House spokesman Josh Earnest said the United States has determined that Russia has violated provisions of the INF treaty.

On Wednesday, the US administration released a report claiming that Russia “is in violation of its obligations under the INF Treaty not to possess, produce, or flight-test a ground-launched cruise missile (GLCM) with a range capability of 500 km to 5,500 km, or to possess or produce launchers of such missiles.”

Josh Earnest said earlier US President Barack Obama conveyed his findings to Russian President Vladimir Putin in a letter, in addition to US previous attempts to raise the concern “with the Russians on a number of occasions through our standard diplomatic channels."

The accusation prompted the Russian Foreign Ministry to dismiss the White House statement as “ungrounded,” citing the absence of evidence to support this claim. It also bashed Washington for its plan to deploy MK 41 VLS launching systems in Poland and Romania as part of the “phased adaptive approach” for missile defense.

The INF is a 1987 agreement between the United States and the Soviet Union to eliminate the use of nuclear and conventional missiles with intermediate range, defined as 500 to 5,000 kilometers (310 to 3,100 miles).

The pact has often been lauded as an example of successful arms control because it eliminated an entire class of nuclear weapons.

Keep in mind that the Kh-10X also get a "push" off of the aircraft when they are launched (aircraft speed). That shouldn't reduce the Kh's range that much, but maybe it would travel 50 km less than the air-launched model.

When we are talking about such a long range cruise missile the solid rocket booster to get it airborne should equate to most of the energy given to a cruise missile launched in flight by the carrier aircraft.

Very simply a slight increase in fuel tank size plus flying at medium altitude at a lower more efficient power setting should allow any loss of range from ground launch to be made up over air launched models.

A larger more efficient wing giving better lift could easily raise performance too.

In fact a much better idea would be to greatly enlarge the missile to say 4 tons with a heavy solid rocket booster for launch and a larger wing that is designed to be stealthy and fly at medium to high altitudes and carrying up to ten nuclear payloads that are ejected upwards in flight and fall by parachute onto the target while the missile flies a preprogrammed path all over europe...

I mostly agree, France and Britain should have indeed signed sought a treaty, but that treaty could not be the START treaty, because the biggest reason for the START treaty was to lessen the amount nuclear weapons, you cannot have nations with far less nukes then the treaty allowed (max), this would give these weaker nations permission not to decrease there stockpiles, but to increase them instead, which makes the entire point of the treaty (START) meaningless.

But you need to acknowledge that there are "sides" in Europe and it is basically NATO vs Russia so rather than allowing the UK and France to have the same number of strategic nuclear weapons as Russia or the US the weapons of Americas allies should be included with Americas weapon numbers.... otherwise it ends up like the farce that the CFE became where instead of balance as originally wanted it ended up with NATO having most of the Warsaw Pacts allocation of numbers with a resulting huge imbalance that became rather meaningless.

Russia and the INF Treaty violation

The 2014 Compliance Report released by the U.S. State Department last week officially declared that the United States believes that "the Russian Federation is in violation of its obligations under the INF Treaty." The report, however, provides no details about the specifics of the violation, leaving plenty of room for uncertainty. The story still have more questions than answers, so this post is an attempt to summarize what do we know about the alleged violation.

The little information that is available suggests that it is not related to the RS-26 ballistic missile, even though it looks like it's an intermediate-range missile that was tested once at a range that would qualify it as an ICBM. The missile will therefore be counted against the New START limits, so an argument can be made that the future RS-26 deployment will be limited by arms control obligations (unless we note that the limit will disappear once New START expires in 2021).

Instead, the current controversy seems to be centered at a "new ground-launched cruise missile." At least this is what the United States, according to a New York Times story, told its NATO allies at a briefing in January 2014.

Most reports immediately focused on the ground-launched cruise missile that is part of the Iskander system that Russia has been developing for some time. Iskander is a somewhat unusual weapon system that includes ballistic missile as well as cruise missile launchers (these systems are known as Iskander-M and Iskander-K respectively). So, it appears the the cruise missile of Iskander-K, identified as R-500, is the one that is causing all the problems. At least this is what Jeffrey Lewis of Armscontrolwonk.com and Hand Kristensen of FAS said in their posts on Russia's INF (non-)compliance. It's became a popular theory that invites a fairly straightforward political solution -- confront Russia about the violation and don't let it go until it confesses and reverses the course, just as Reagan did with the Krasnoyarsk radar and the ABM Treaty in the 1980s. Unfortunately, things seem to be a bit more complicated and a simple strategy may not work.

Let's start with the facts about R-500 and Iskander. The only reliable appearance made by a cruise missile named R-500 was the test on 29 May 2007. The missile was launched from the Kapustin Yar test site. MIlitaryrussia.ru has a nice collection of photos of the launch (which appear to be authentic - see a photo distributed by RIA Novosti). The photos are too grainy to provide any details, but we could tell that the missile is about 6 m in length and 0.5 m in diameter (The TEL truck, which is about 3 m high, provides a reference for the size of the missile):

Since the missile is only 6 m long, it is not "very similar to the SS-N-21" as Hans Kristensen suggested in his post and the side-by-side comparison on the left is not entirely accurate. SS-N-21 SLCM and its ground-launched version, RK-55 Relief/SSC-X-4, are 8.09 m long. R-500 on the photo looks more like a different cruise missile, 3M14 Kalibr-M/Club-M, which is reported to be 6.2 m long (with the solid-propellant booster). The R-500 appears to have a slightly different TEL, but the launch containers of R-500 (top, shown as Iskander-K TEL in a 2009 photo) and Club-M (bottom) look very much alike, at least from the outside:

Club-M is part of a family cruise missiles that could be deployed in a variety of ways (the Club-K could famously fit into a standard shipping container). The sea-launched version of the missile can be deployed in standard 533-mm torpedo tubes. It's a sort-range missile, though -- the 3M14 is reported to have a range of 300 km (the domestic version may have a range of 500 km).

Since R-500 was touted as a new missile at the time of the May 2007 test, it would be reasonable to assume that it is somewhat different from 3M14, although it is not clear what's the difference is. One possibility is that it is integrated with the Iskander system that could include short-range ballistic missiles as well. It's tempting to suggest that R-500 has an extended range, but my guess is that it's unlikely - there is only so much one can do with a missile of a given size that has to carry a certain payload. Ted Postol and George Lewis at some point estimated that one can probably double the range in this case, but that would require significant advances in materials and propulsion. Given that 3M14 is a relatively new missile, it's somewhat unlikely that there is much room for improvement there. Also, if the big thing about R-500 is its integration with Iskander, then one would expect the ballistic and cruise missiles of the system to have a comparable range. On the other hand, older (but bigger and nuclear) RK-55 Relief/SSC-X-4 and SS-N-21 have a range of about 2500-3000 km, so one should not rule out that the R-500 has a range significantly over 500 km (although 2000 km is still unlikely). I'm very much open to suggestions and ideas on this point.

[UPDATE: As I expected, the range issue is not that simple. At least one report from 2012 quoted the commander of the Caspian Flotilla as saying that the conventional ship-based Kalibr-NK has a range of 2600 km.]

What's interesting is that the missile was eventually deployed with the Iskander-K system appears to be different from the R-500 tested in May 2007. At least it clearly has a different launch container:

This is a photo taken in June 2013, when the industry delivered the first "complete set" of Iskander missiles to the military. It may not be obvious at a first glance, but the placement of outer rings on the Iskander-K container is different from the one on the 2009 version (see the photo above). This does not necessarily mean that the missile itself is different, but something has clearly changed since that 2007 launch. What is the same, though, is the size of the missile - the new container still appears to hold a missile that is about 6 m long - a longer container would not fit into the transporter bay.

This one appears to be longer, but a closer look suggests that the difference between this container and the one from June 2013 is an attachment on top (the one with an orange cap). Since this thing would presumably still have to fit into the 7 meter-long transporter bay, this may be a temporary attachment that protects the container during the loading operation. Or maybe not - it's hard to tell from the photo.

In fact, we don't really know if the cruise missile that allegedly violates the INF Treaty has anything to do with Iskander. Indeed, the little bits reported by the New York Times in January don't quite fit the Iskander theory. The NYT story said that "American officials believe Russia began conducting flight tests of the missile as early as 2008." Since the R-500 missile was tested in May 2007, it doesn't fit that description. It's possible, of course, that the missile in question is the modification of the missile that was eventually deployed with Iskander-K -- the different launch container would seem to point at this possibility. But the United States told NATO that in January 2014 the culprit GLCM had not been deployed yet -- this doesn't fit the fact that the first "complete set of Iskander" (with cruise missiles) was delivered to the military in June 2013. I wouldn't say that this information rules Iskander out, but in my view it strongly suggests that Iskander is the wrong place to look at.

An alternative explanation, floated some time ago, is that the violation is largely a technicality having to do with the fact that the INF Treaty requires that any missile that is not a GLCM covered by the treaty should be test-launched from a "fixed land-based launcher which is used solely for test purposes and which is distinguishable from GLCM launchers." Strictly speaking, a test of a SLCM (with a range of more than 500 km) from a road-mobile launcher would mean that this SLCM would qualify as a GLCM and therefore will be a treaty violation. I have no direct evidence that would indicate that this explanation is correct, but it fits the facts much better than the Iskander/R-500 one.

The evidence is very much circumstantial at this point, but the reluctance of the U.S. administration to charge Russia with a violation suggests that the case is not exactly clear-cut. It probably would not have taken the United States three years to go open with the case had Russia tested a 2000 km-range missile several times (even though, admittedly, determining the range of a cruise missile is a tricky business). Then, unless the case has something to do with the launcher, I don't see why the administration would include a specific reference to that INF Treaty clause in its 2014 Compliance Report.

Also, even though Russia is hardly an exemplary law-abiding global citizen these days, I don't believe it would go ahead with a blatant and open violation of the INF Treaty conditions. Whatever complaints they may have about the treaty, the Russians are usually quite legalistic and would rather find a loophole than covertly break out of the treaty.

I know that people would point out that the story of the ABM Treaty and Krasnoyarsk radar to say that the Soviet Union did just that in the past. However, that story is a bit more complicated than it may appear. Even though the radar was not exactly treaty-compliant, the Soviet Union was fully prepared to defend it and to work with the United States to clarify the ABM Treaty terms (like "located on the periphery" or "pointed outwards") to make it so. The Soviet Union had a good case in its claim that the U.S. PAVE PAWS early-warning radar in Fylingdales, U.K. was a technical violation as well (the treaty allowed an upgrade of existing radars, while PAVE PAWS was built next to the old radar, so it didn't really qualify as an upgrade). The hope in the Soviet defense ministry was that the United States would trade the violations, especially since the radar in Krasnoyarsk was clearly an early-warning rather than a treaty-prohibited battle-management radar. The politics of the moment worked against the Soviet Union, though, and the Reagan administration correctly judged that the Soviet Union was not in the position to press its case or to negotiate.

This is not to say that the Obama administration was wrong in charging Russia with a violation, but its case may not be as impressive as the one that Reagan had in the 1980s -- it's one thing to point at a massive structure built in Siberia and quite another to debate fine points of interpretation of some obscure provisions of the treaty. My guess is that if it were not for the domestic pressure on Obama, he would much rather discuss this issue quietly.

As for why Russia would do a test like that, I could certainly imagine a situation when it needed a launcher for one of its SLCMs and the mobile launcher seemed like a best available option - since the launch tubes are standard, it's not an implausible scenario. The alternative would be to build a new fixed one and for whatever reason that wasn't practical.

As it often happens, the bottom line is that we don't have enough information to say anything definitive yet. I hope that as the story develops we will have more details. It well may be that the culprit is the Iskander cruise missile, but at this point my money is on a technicality.