The United States has also been conducting research in maneuverable warheads.
Putin and Phallic Symbol
Russia tests maneouverable missile
Associated Press Feb. 20, 2004
The test of a mysterious flying vehicle that the Russian military says could lead to weapons that can penetrate missile shields has left military analysts searching through history for clues to the craft. Many point to Soviet efforts to counter Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative program of the 1980s as the likely origin of the vehicle.
Retired Gen. Vladimir Dvorkin, a top expert in nuclear arms during the Soviet times, said the new vehicle appears to be a type of maneuverable ballistic missile warhead.
"Both Russia and the United States have long conducted research in maneuverable warheads," he said. Such a possibility was also raised by Phil Coyle, an adviser to the Washington-based Center for Defense Information.
President Vladimir Putin said that experiments performed during this week's military maneuvers proved that Russia could soon build strategic weapons that could puncture any missile-defense system.
Col-Gen. Yuri Baluyevsky, the first deputy chief of the General Staff of the Russian armed forces, later shed some light on Putin's announcement, saying that the military on Wednesday tested a "hypersonic flying vehicle" that maneuvered in orbit and the atmosphere.
Baluyevsky said that the vehicle's ability to change its altitude and its direction of flight made it capable of evading missile defense systems.
Dvorkin, now an analyst at the PIR Center independent research institute, said a maneuverable warhead could be equipped with small wings that allow it to zigzag through the atmosphere, dodging both space-based and ground-based components of a missile defense system.
"It may simply bypass zones of missile defense," Dvorkin told The Associated Press.
Alexei Arbatov, the former deputy chief of the parliamentary defense affairs committee, also said that scarce official details of the experiment indicated that the new craft "combined properties of both ballistic and cruise missile."
Although Putin said the development of such weapons wasn't aimed against the United States and Baluyevsky emphasized that it mustn't be seen as Moscow's retaliation to the US missile defense plans, most analysts scoffed.
"The Russian experiments can only be an anti-American ploy, since the United States is the only country that is developing a missile defense system," said retired Col. Andrew Duncan, an independent British defense analyst.
US officials reacted calmly to the Russian test, with the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Richard Myers saying that the Russians "have to design a missile force that they think is sufficient for deterrence, just like we do."
A Western diplomat in Moscow who spoke on condition of anonymity said that that the Russian experiment should be seen as an "evolutionary part of their weapons design."
As Russia's nuclear arsenals stand to be reduced by about two-thirds in line with a 2002 arms control treaty, "the value of those remaining warheads goes up" and Russia wants to increase their effectiveness and reliability, the diplomat said.
A Russian news website, www.gazeta.ru, claimed that Wednesday's experiment involved a new warhead launched on a ground-based Topol ballistic missile and equipped with engines allowing it to perform sharp maneuvers during descent.
It quoted unidentified General Staff officers as saying that its engines can function continuously, allowing the warhead to maneuver at six times the speed of sound. During Wednesday's experiment, the warhead successfully performed a series of sharp maneuvers and hit a designated practice target on the Kamchatka Peninsula, the publication claimed.
The daily newspaper Izvestia, meanwhile, said that the experiment could have involved a derivative of the X-90 experimental hypersonic cruise missile demonstrated during the 1997 Moscow air show.
The speculation echoed the Cold War era when the West tried to deduce what the Soviet Union had in its arsenal. Such speculation declined substantially after the disintegration of the Soviet Union left the Russian military teetering on the break of collapse, plagued by desperate funding shortages.
Russia's economic revival of recent years has filled government coffers and raised the appetites of the military industrial complex.
Israel is currently the only country in the world with a missile defence system, the Arrow.
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