Congress May Direct Pentagon to Counter Russian INF Breaches

bobbymike

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House Would Launch New Weapon Development To Counter Russian Cruise Missile

Posted: April 22, 2015

House lawmakers are laying the groundwork for the Pentagon in fiscal year 2016 to start -- if necessary -- a major new weapon system program to counter Russia's development of a ground-launched cruise missile, which Washington maintains violates the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.

The House Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee, in its mark of the FY-16 defense authorization bill, grants the Defense Department wide latitude to begin work on a yet-to-be-identified capability in the event the White House determines Russia is not taking action "to return to full compliance with the INF Treaty," the draft bill states.

The draft bill would authorize funding from defense-wide research, development, test and evaluation accounts to begin developing "counterforce capabilities to prevent intermediate-range ground-launched ballistic missile and cruise-missile attacks, including capabilities that could be acquired from allies."

In addition, the draft legislation would allow the Pentagon to start developing "countervailing strike capabilities to enhance the armed forces of the United States or allies of the United States, including capabilities that may be acquired from allies."

Last July, the State Department's Arms Control Verification and Compliance Bureau published a report declaring the Russian Federation "in violation of its obligations under the INF Treaty not to possess, produce, or flight-test a ground-launched cruise missile (GLCM) with a range capability of 500 km to 5,500 km, or to possess or produce launchers of such missiles."

Since then, DOD officials have repeatedly voiced concerns about Russia's development of this new ground-launched cruise missile, noting the Pentagon is exploring a wide range of options for how to respond, including active defense to counter the new cruise missile, counterforce capabilities, and new strike capabilities.

Last month, Defense Secretary Ash Carter told the House Armed Services Committee the Pentagon is exploring its options. "So we are looking at our alternatives in the areas of defense against the systems that they might field in violation of the INF treaty, counterforce options and countervailing options," Carter told the panel on March 18. "All of those are available to us. We're looking at all of those because the Russians need to remember this is a two-way street."

Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at the same hearing said he believed Washington has to make it clear to Moscow that the INF treat violation cannot stand.

"I think we have to make it very clear that . . . things like their compliance with the INF treaty -- that there will be political, diplomatic and potentially military costs in terms of the way we posture ourselves and the way we plan and work with our allies to address those provocations," Dempsey said. "So I've seen it, it concerns me greatly. I certainly would counsel them not to roll back the clock to previous experiences."

Air Force Gen. Philip Breedlove, U.S. European Command head, told the House Armed Services Committee on Feb. 25 that "we need to first and foremost signal that we cannot accept this change and that if this change is continued that we will have to change the cost calculus for Russia in order to help find their way to a less bellicose position." -- Jason Sherman
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Both strike and defensive weapons. Cross posted under the Nuke News Thread as well please use this thread for commentary/speculation if there is any.
 
bobbymike said:
Air Force Gen. Philip Breedlove, U.S. European Command head, told the House Armed Services Committee on Feb. 25 that "we need to first and foremost signal that we cannot accept this change and that if this change is continued that we will have to change the cost calculus for Russia in order to help find their way to a less bellicose position." -- Jason Sherman

Sadly, we have already signaled that we will accept this change by ratifying New Start; the INF violations were known (to the present administration) during the New Start
ratification process. More recently, abandoning SM-3 IIB sent a very similar signal.
 
marauder2048 said:
bobbymike said:
Air Force Gen. Philip Breedlove, U.S. European Command head, told the House Armed Services Committee on Feb. 25 that "we need to first and foremost signal that we cannot accept this change and that if this change is continued that we will have to change the cost calculus for Russia in order to help find their way to a less bellicose position." -- Jason Sherman

Sadly, we have already signaled that we will accept this change by ratifying New Start; the INF violations were known (to the present administration) during the New Start
ratification process. More recently, abandoning SM-3 IIB sent a very similar signal.
This theory is often cited but has yet to be proven. The mundane truth is that SM-3 IIB's work in progress design had outgrown the fleet's VLS cells by the time it was cancelled, the cost of refitting the fleet and/or Aegis Ashore to handle a fat missile on top of the missile's own R&D was a the leading reason it was killed.
 
sferrin said:
Too big even for the Mk57s?

No one is designing for the Mk 57 VLS, because there's no sign that there will be more than three ships in the fleet with it (the Zumwalts) and those ships aren't ABM shooters.
 
TomS said:
sferrin said:
Too big even for the Mk57s?

No one is designing for the Mk 57 VLS, because there's no sign that there will be more than three ships in the fleet with it (the Zumwalts) and those ships aren't ABM shooters.

Which doesn't preclude the possibility of them being used in the future. Frankly, I'm surprised the USN isn't trying to get some of them in the Flight III Burkes. (No, not swapping them out whole hog, just swapping out a few 8-cell modules for an equivalent footprint in Mk57s.) Both China and South Korea have introduced larger VLS cells on their ships for exactly this purpose.
 
My understanding is that the oversized VLS in the Korean ships is for strike missiles, not ABM. And we don't know what the Chinese are puttnig in their VLS -- it's not clear they've really gone to universal launchers quite yet.
 
TomS said:
My understanding is that the oversized VLS in the Korean ships is for strike missiles, not ABM. And we don't know what the Chinese are puttnig in their VLS -- it's not clear they've really gone to universal launchers quite yet.

China's got a VLS system that is a virtual carbon copy of the Mk41. I'll post a pic later. Even a lot of the bolts are in the same places. It's one of the more brazen examples of China's Copy/Paste thievery I've ever seen.
 
Moose said:
marauder2048 said:
bobbymike said:
Air Force Gen. Philip Breedlove, U.S. European Command head, told the House Armed Services Committee on Feb. 25 that "we need to first and foremost signal that we cannot accept this change and that if this change is continued that we will have to change the cost calculus for Russia in order to help find their way to a less bellicose position." -- Jason Sherman

Sadly, we have already signaled that we will accept this change by ratifying New Start; the INF violations were known (to the present administration) during the New Start
ratification process. More recently, abandoning SM-3 IIB sent a very similar signal.
This theory is often cited but has yet to be proven. The mundane truth is that SM-3 IIB's work in progress design had outgrown the fleet's VLS cells by the time it was cancelled, the cost of refitting the fleet and/or Aegis Ashore to handle a fat missile on top of the missile's own R&D was a the leading reason it was killed.

It wasn't *that* fat.
 

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Any chance of a version of that with numbers on the vertical axis? ;)
 
TomS said:
My understanding is that the oversized VLS in the Korean ships is for strike missiles, not ABM. And we don't know what the Chinese are puttnig in their VLS -- it's not clear they've really gone to universal launchers quite yet.

Here ya go:
 

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This theory is often cited but has yet to be proven. The mundane truth is that SM-3 IIB's work in progress design had outgrown the fleet's VLS cells by the time it was cancelled, the cost of refitting the fleet and/or Aegis Ashore to handle a fat missile on top of the missile's own R&D was a the leading reason it was killed.

Yet again the right hand not talking to the left hand! :mad:
The Russian's & Chinese must be laughing the heads off!
This is once again good money waisted by US Defence. Good money the US can no longer afford.
Its ironic that once the US bragged about itself defeating the Soviet Union on economical grounds, and yet its been looking for a long time that both Russia & China are doing the same to America!
The billions...trillions of $$$ the US has waisted on 'failed' military weapons/systems programs is not just staggering, its near criminal.
And still the US has no credible ABM capability :eek:

Sorry for frustrated rant :-[

Regards
Pioneer
 
Pioneer said:
This theory is often cited but has yet to be proven. The mundane truth is that SM-3 IIB's work in progress design had outgrown the fleet's VLS cells by the time it was cancelled, the cost of refitting the fleet and/or Aegis Ashore to handle a fat missile on top of the missile's own R&D was a the leading reason it was killed.

Yet again the right hand not talking to the left hand! :mad:
The Russian's & Chinese must be laughing the heads off!
This is once again good money waisted by US Defence. Good money the US can no longer afford.
Its ironic that once the US bragged about itself defeating the Soviet Union on economical grounds, and yet its been looking for a long time that both Russia & China are doing the same to America!
The billions...trillions of $$$ the US has waisted on 'failed' military weapons/systems programs is not just staggering, its near criminal.
And still the US has no credible ABM capability :eek:

Sorry for frustrated rant :-[

Regards
Pioneer

I bit on the hypergolic hyperbolic side, I see. Around $250M (IIRC) was spent on SM-3 IIB before Zero zero'd it. If that effort
managed to improve yields of large, LWIR/MWIR FPAs for strategic systems by even single digit percentages it'll all have been worth it.
 
U.S. believes Russia deployed new missile in treaty violation: NYT

Russia has deployed a new cruise missile despite complaints by U.S. officials that it violates an arms control treaty banning ground-based U.S. and Russian intermediate-range missiles, the New York Times reported on Tuesday, citing unidentified officials.

The newspaper said Russia had secretly deployed the ground-launched SSC-8 cruise missile that Moscow has been developing and testing for several years, despite U.S. complaints that it violated sections of the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces treaty.

The Russian Defense Ministry did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the New York Times story.

The U.S. State Department concluded in a July 2014 arms control report that "the Russian Federation is in violation of its obligations under the INF Treaty not to possess, produce, or flight-test a ground-launched cruise missile (GLCM) with a range capability of 500 km to 5,500 km (310 miles to 3,420 miles), or to possess or produce launchers of such missiles."

Russia accused Washington of conducting "megaphone diplomacy" after the accusation was repeated by the State Department in 2015. Moscow also denied it had violated the INF treaty, which helped end the Cold War between the two countries.The New York Times said the previous U.S. administration of President Barack Obama had attempted to persuade Moscow to correct the violation while the missile was still in the testing phase.

Instead, Russia has moved ahead with the SSC-8 missile, deploying it as an operational system, the report said.

Russia now has two battalions of the cruise missile, the newspaper quoted administration officials as saying. One is located at Russia's missile test site at Kapustin Yar in the country's southeast.The other cruise missile battalion has been located at an operational base elsewhere in Russia, the Times quoted one unidentified official as saying.

(Reporting by David Alexander; Editing by Susan Heavey and Grant McCool)
 
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Had not seen that acronym before.
IIRC I first saw it a few years back as a way to narrow the usage between tactical and strategic weapons over defining large yield but “tactically” applied weapons
 
"The military balance in the Pacific is going in the wrong direction," said former U.S. defense department strategist Elbridge Colby recently. Following the dissolution of a landmark arms control treaty in early August, the U.S. is now eyeing where it might field missiles as a counterweight to China's sizable arsenal.
How about Taiwan?
 
I'm sure the House will find some way to spike it. Or it'll be a kludged together, one-off "demonstrator". I'd be astonished if it were an actual prototype of a new IRBM.
 

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