On Wed, 17 Nov 2004 16:45:03 -0500, Cliff wrote:
Russian President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday that Russia is
developing a new type of nuclear missile system which no other nuclear
powers possess.

News reports have speculated that Russia is developing a new
generation of heavy nuclear missile capable of carrying up to 10
nuclear warheads weighing 4.4 ton. The current generation Topol-M
missiles are limited to a 1.3-ton combat payload.
[snip]

Anyone know more about these good tidings? This is bound
to be very expensive & risky, right? After all, in the misguided
past, reduction & control of all these bombs & rockets was a goal
to be worked for internationally, with some success.

Putin is not talking about a heavy MIRV missile (the USSR had
those decades ago and scrapped them). The new system is not
ballistic. It is actively guided during the entire flight. It will be
launched by the existing Topol-M booster. This non-ballistic
flight vehicle, in theory, will be able to "duck and dodge" ABM
weaponry.

The US has just completed a similar development program
employing SCRAM jet technology (X43A).

Of course the problem of detecting and avoiding ABMs is more
difficult than detecting and intercepting incoming ballistic missiles.
That's because the RV can't host large search radars the way the
ground based ABM systems can. So practical application of active
avoidance is going to be orders of magnitude more difficult than
building ABM systems.

It does give Russia's unemployed aerospace workers something
to do. And it does throw a sop to the disaffected Russian military
leadership who have become increasingly restive as the former
USSR's military machine has been allowed to decay. In other
words, this is primarily a domestic political move on the part of
Putin.

Gary