Problems with Russia’s hype about “super weapons”- and risk of escalating war

The Hypersonic Hype and Russia’s Diminished Nuclear Threshold, Jamestown Foundation, Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 17 Issue: 116, By: Pavel Felgenhauer, August 6, 2020 President Vladimir Putin used the July 26, 2020, Navy Day and the Main Navy Parade in St. Petersburg to once again promote Russia’s “superweapons,” which will ostensibly give the Russian Military-Maritime Fleet (Voyenno-Morskoy Flot—VMF) “a unique advantage” over its Western counterparts. According to Putin, “The deployment of advanced technologies that have no equals in the world, including hypersonic strike systems and underwater drones, will increase naval combat capabilities” (Interfax, July 26). The Main Navy Parade displayed some 46 vessels. Smaller, satellite parades were also held in six other Russian naval base cities as well as at Russia’s foreign naval base in Tartus, Syria (Militarynews.ru, July 26).

The Ministry of Defense used the Navy Day festivities to announce that the nuclear-powered super-torpedo “Poseidon” is now in its final stages of development and will be soon tested using the specially designed nuclear submarine Belgorod—a modified Oscar II–class cruise missile submarine………

Together with the Poseidon, Russia’s president has been touting the Zircon hypersonic missile, which is also reportedly in its final stages of development. The Zircon, according to Putin, can fly at speeds exceeding Mach 9, with a range of up to 1,000 kilometers. ……

The Zircon has been in development since the 1970s and 1980s. It is apparently a weapon specifically designed to strike US carriers or other large, high-value seaborne assets. Aiming the hypersonic missile at land targets would be impractical since its radar is apparently only able to distinguish large-contrast targets on the open sea. …….

its chances of hitting a moving ship directly seem to be remote—a carrier would have moved a mile or two away while the Russian hypersonic missile blindly traverses its distance to the original target (Vpk-news, March 24). The extended-range Zircon thus makes sense only as a nuclear weapon with a 200+ kiloton warhead—an underwater massive nuclear explosion would disable a carrier with shockwave even from a mile or two away.

The Russian VMF had not received a new destroyer in 30 years, and it is presently struggling to build frigates like the Gorshkov because Ukraine stopped selling it frigate engines after 2014……..

The main problem with Putin’s superweapons is that they are truly doomsday devices, valuable only for deterrence. The Kremlin is constantly plying the deterrence game by trying to scare the West. But this situation has two dangerous ramifications. First, the nuclear threshold is becoming lower: in any serious skirmish, the Russian navy would either need to go nuclear or risk being sunk. And second, while the Russian leadership believes it has surpassed the West militarily thanks to its dazzling superweapons, Moscow’s threshold for employing military force in conflict situations may also drop further. https://jamestown.org/program/the-hypersonic-hype-and-russias-diminished-nuclear-threshold/