nuclear-news

Putin held the meeting in Sochi on Nov. 11, 2020. Russian Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu and Russian Army General Valery Gerasimov, Chief of the General Staff of the country’s military, were also in attendance, among others. The day before, the Russian President had held another meeting, which touched on the country’s general nuclear deterrence policy, where he indicated that he would only authorize a nuclear strike in response to one against Russia. This apparent declaration of a so-called “no first use” policy would seem to conflict with previous official statements in recent years.

“It is absolutely clear that the combat capability of the nuclear triad, and the capability of the army and navy on the whole to adequately and quickly respond to potential military challenges directly depend on the stability, effectiveness and reliability of these systems under any circumstances,” Putin said at the Nov. 11 gathering. “I would like to point out that a great deal has been done during the past few years to maintain all the command elements of our strategic nuclear forces at the highest possible level.”……..

It’s not completely clear from these comments whether Putin was talking about an entirely new facility or the refurbishment, improvement, and/or expansion of an existing one. His remarks about the need to protect the overall command and control infrastructure against any threats, including a nuclear attack, strongly point to the site he’s talking about being deeply buried underground bunker of some kind. Russia already understood to have two sites that would match this general description, one at Kosvinsky Kamen in the Northern Ural Mountains and another under Mount Yamantau in the Southern Ural Mountains.

The construction of both sites reportedly began in the late 1970s. It’s worth noting that no facility on earth is totally survivable in the face of strikes by modern nuclear weapons, but deeply buried sites offer probably the best possible defense. As such, the Soviets and the United States both, among others, invested heavily in such bunker complexes during the Cold War, ………

Kosvinsky Kamen, at least some portions of which are believed to be buried under around 1,000 feet of solid granite, is probably the better known of the two, due to its connection to a semi-automated nuclear command and control system first developed under the Soviet Union called Perimeter. This system was long described as a “dead hand” doomsday machine akin to the fictional one in Stanley Kubrick’s famous Cold War black comedy film Dr. Strangelove that could carry out an entirely automatic retaliatory launch of Russian nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) after an attack.

More recent reporting has indicated that actual humans, who could be pre-authorized in a crisis to launch nuclear strikes if certain conditions were met, were still very much involved in the operation of Perimeter and operated its central components from within the Kosvinsky Kamen complex. That being said, reports still indicate that this main Perimeter bunker was like something you’d find in a villain’s lair in a James Bond movie………

Less is known about the facility at Mount Yamantau, which reportedly lies, at least in part, under some 3,000 feet of rock, primarily made up of quartz, and has been said to be absolutely massive, encompassing an area “as big as the Washington area inside the Beltway,” or around 400 square miles. The complex is situated within Mezhgorye, which is what is known in Russia as a closed town, where only authorized individuals are allowed to live and work………

President Donald Trump’s Administration also announced in 2018 that it had decided to maintain an operational stockpile of B83-1 nuclear gravity bombs, which have very large yields, reported to be around 1.2 megatons, as an alternative nuclear means of striking at especially hardened facilities. These weapons had previously been slated for retirement……..