Russian press is quoting an unnamed source in the General Staff as saying that the first RS-26 ballistic missiles will be deployed at the Irkutsk missile division in 2015. Flight tests of the missile are expected to be completed in December 2014. The deployment date has been mentioned before, but the place is new.
RS-26, also known as Rubezh, is the controversial new missile, which appears to be an intermediate-range missile based on (the first two stages of) RS-24 Yars ICBM.
Deployment in Irkutsk is probably somewhat surprising. It was often assumed that because of its intermediate range RS-26 is a missile fir Europe - sort of new incarnation of SS-20. Irkutsk, however, is pretty far from Europe, so if we assume that RS-26 has a range on the order of 5000 km, then the deployment appears to be directed at China. This would be generally in line with Russia's complains about the INF Treaty - the main one being that other countries (including China) are allowed to have them while Russia and the United States are not. But if I were the Chinese I would not consider this deployment a particularly friendly gesture.
Saudi Arabia has long been a backroom player in the Middle East's nuclear game of thrones, apparently content to bankroll the ambitions of Pakistan and Iraq (under Saddam Hussein) to counter the rise of its mortal enemy, Iran.
But as the West and Iran have moved closer to a nuclear accommodation, signs are emerging that the monarchy is ready to give the world a peek at a new missile strike force of its own - which has been upgraded with Washington's careful connivance.
According to a well-placed intelligence source, Saudi Arabia bought ballistic missiles from China in 2007 in a hitherto unreported deal that won Washington's quiet approval on the condition that CIA technical experts could verify they were not designed to carry nuclear warheads.
The solid-fueled, medium-range DF-21 East Wind missiles are an improvement over the DF-3s the Saudis clandestinely acquired from China in 1988, experts say, although they differ on how much of an upgrade they were.
The newer missiles, known as CSS-5s in NATO parlance, have a shorter range but greater accuracy, making them more useful against "high-value targets in Tehran, like presidential palaces or supreme-leader palaces," Jeffrey Lewis, director of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, tells Newsweek. They can also be fired much more quickly.
