- Joined
- 24 January 2006
- Messages
- 1,375
- Reaction score
- 682
Seeing a lot of talk about Russia being required to park their strategic bombers in the open for NEW START verification purposes and that Ukraine's strike may have very serious consequences.
That's untrue.
From an arms control expert who has been in the field for decades:
"However, Podvig told Meduza that the agreement places no restrictions on hiding these aircraft under “environmental shelter,” which includes hangars.
The only circumstance under which an aircraft must be displayed in the open, he explained, is when either Moscow or Washington wishes to declare that it has eliminated that particular warplane from its fleet. “There’s a great photograph of one of these boneyards in the United States in Arizona, where these B-52s are lying there, all cut up into pieces neatly,” Podvig said, referring to Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson. Asked if Russia might try to claim the bombers destroyed in Ukraine’s drone strikes as warplanes dismantled under New START, he said it would likely be possible under the treaty, at least technically."
Untangling Operation ‘Spiderweb’ Arms control expert Pavel Podvig explains what Ukraine’s surprise drone strikes reveal about Russia’s strategic nuclear forces — Meduza
On June 1, Ukraine attacked Russian military airfields with hundreds of drones as part of Operation “Spiderweb.” According to Ukrainian media reports, the drones hit at least four different airfields, striking targets in the Irkutsk, Murmansk, Ryazan, and Ivanovo regions. Kyiv claims to have hit...
The treaty text is available online for anyone to read: https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2010/04/08/new-start-treaty-and-protocol
And yes, it isn't in effect anymore anyway, so claiming someone interfered with it is of dubious intelligence.