Russia is making new nuclear delivery systems a national priority, with a new ballistic-missile submarine class and missile in production; continued deliveries of a modern, road-mobile ICBM; and reports of a new silo-based heavyweight weapon.
The nation is arming its bomber fleet with a new cruise missile and plans a new bomber (as does the U.S.), while tactical nuclear weapons are still considered an option for major combined-arms theater-scale wars.
Western experts across the hawk-to-dove spectrum tend to agree that Russia's motivation is a perception of conventional-force weakness relative to the U.S., NATO and China, which in turn stems from the Russian economy's inability to support rapid modernization of air, land and naval forces. However, some go further than this and argue that the Russian emphasis on nuclear weapons is destabilizing and could lead to the breaking of some nuclear weapon treaties.
The largest Russian program is the modernization of its strategic missile forces. President Vladimir Putin pledged in 2012 that those forces would receive more than 400 new missiles within 10 years, a complete overhaul of the arsenal.
That part is a hmm moment, but ok. What's deeply troublesome is the de-escalation doctrine which has become, well, potentially dominant in Russian military thinking:
The “de-escalatory” doctrine emerged after the 1999 Kosovo war as an equalizer in the case of threatened conventional defeat. “It's a concept that appears to be quite popular in Russia these days, “Podvig says. “Apparently, the thinking is that if Russia uses nuclear weapons in a conflict, everybody would just stop to avoid further escalation.”
The doctrine attracted more attention in September 2009, when the joint Russian-Belarus Zapad exercise included a simulated nuclear attack on Warsaw, Poland. The concern is that the combination of low-yield weapons and “de-escalatory” strikes could lower nuclear thresholds to a dangerous level.
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