俄罗斯导弹测试在华盛顿引起混乱和反对

The recent test-launch of a modified Russian ballistic missile has nuclear arms reduction opponents up in arms with claims that Russia is fielding a new missile in violation of arms control agreements and that the United States therefore should not pursue further reductions of nuclear forces.

The fact that the Russian name of the modified missile – Rubezh – sounds a little like rubbish is a coincidence, but it fits some of the complaints pretty well.

Although many of the facts are missing – what the missile is and what the U.S. Intelligence Community has concluded – public information and statements indicate that the missile is a modified RS-24 Yars (SS-27 Mod 2) with intercontinental range.

Whatever the missile is, it is certainly no reason for why the United States should not seek to reduce U.S. and Russian nuclear forces further. On the contrary, the continued modernization of nuclear weapons underscores why it is important that the United States continues its push for reducing the numbers and role of nuclear weapons.

指控

Under the headline “Russian Aggression: Putin violating nuclear missile treaty,” thearticleonWashington Times Free Beacon网站指责俄罗斯涉及“重大违规”条款Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty1987年与美国签署。

The treaty bans all nuclear ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with range between 500 and 5,500 km (about 300-3,400 miles).

在华盛顿军备控制辩论中，经常提出俄罗斯作弊的主张 - 就像关于美国作弊的主张在莫斯科军备控制辩论中经常出现 - 本文中的作弊的辩论很大程度上是一致的。claims由前国防部官员马克·施耐德（Mark Schneider）制作，现在是美国国家公共政策研究所。

The “new” in the article is that it quotes “one official” saying: “The intelligence community believes it’s an intermediate-range missile that [the Russians] have classified as an ICBM because it would violate the INF treaty.” In total, “Two U.S. intelligence officials said the Yars M is not an ICBM,” according to the article.

Two members of Congress, House Armed Services Committee chairman Howard “Buck” McKeon (R-CA) and House Permanent Select Intelligence Committee chairman Mike Rodgers (R-MI), have written President Obama about alleged Russian violations. They complain that they haven’t received a response but the administration says it deals with treaty compliance issue directly with Russia and informs Congress accordingly.

Accusations Disputed

The accusations that the Yars-M is not an ICBM and in violation of the INF Treaty are disputed by Russian officials and, interestingly, previous flight tests of the missile itself.

To its credit, theWashington Timestook the trouble of asking Colonel General Victor Yesin about the missile. Yesin is former Chief of Staff of the Russian Strategic Rocket Forces and apparently a consultant to the Chief of the General Staff. But Yesin clearly disputed the claim by the U.S. intelligence officials, saying that the Yars-M is a “Topol-M class ICBM” and that “its range is over 5,500 km.”

该评估符合一位消息人士在2012年11月在2012年10月从Kapustin Yar发起的首次YARS-M发起的消息，并说俄罗斯正在开发“基本新的导弹”之后。“对于[俄罗斯战略火箭部队]来说，没有根本上没有新的导弹'在方法上'。我们正在谈论通过改善弹头来使现有的YARS级现代化。”他告诉Interfax并解释说：

“把莱恩(修改SS-N-23)-based intercontinental ballistic missile, reported by some media to be a completely new missile. It is in fact a Sineva. Only the warhead is new. Novelty lies in greater missile defense penetration capabilities, achieved owing to, among other things, a greater number of re-entry vehicles (boyevoy blok) in the warhead. The same applies to the prototype missile that was successfully launched from Kapustin Yar (Astrakhan Region) recently. There is nothing new in the missile itself. Only the ‘head’ is new. Its creators went down the same route as the designers of the Layner.”

Moreover, the claim that the short flight range of the missile test launched from Kaputsin Yar in June 2013 would indicate that the Yars-M is not an ICBM ignores that an earlier flight test of the missile last year flew 5,800 kilometers from Plesetsk north of Moscow to the Kura test range on the Kamchatka Peninsula (see table).

After the May 2012 flight test, Colonel-General Vladimir Zarudnitsky of the General Staff said: “As part of the approved plan of your building the armed forces of the Russian Federation last night made a promising test launch rocket system” Frontier “with an洲际弹道导弹高精度射击。”（添加了强调）。

Col. Vadim Koval, a Russian defense ministry spokesperson, said “the main goals and tasks of the launch consisted of receiving experimental data on confirming the correctness of the scientific-technical and technological decisions in开发洲际弹道导弹以及检查性能并确定其系统和组件的技术特征。”（添加了强调）。

Koval进一步解释说：“该导弹是通过在开发第​​五代导弹综合体开发中获得的，而不是现有的新能力和技术解决方案，而不是全新的导弹。关于其创建的条款和支出。”

在普莱塞斯克（Plesetsk）成功推出的最初发射之后，第二次测试被移至卡普斯汀·雅尔（Kapustin Yar），显然是测试了YARS-M有效载荷的能力，以逃避弹道导弹防御系统。一位行业消息人士告诉Interfax，“使用新燃料是导弹的特征之一。它减少了增强相发动机的操作时间。因此，导弹穿透导弹防御的能力将提高。”

ICBM是从Kapustin Yar推出到Sary-Sagan测试范围的很少见，但并非闻所未闻。当ICBM有效载荷正在针对导弹防御系统测试时，这似乎会发生。除了最近对修改后的SS-27测试外，还于2012年6月7日从现场启动了SS-25。测试飞行验证了SS-25的“扩展服务寿命”和“最新测试ICBM战斗有效载荷。”俄罗斯国防部表示，在测试“收到的信息中，将来将使用，以开发有效手段来克服导弹辩护”。

After the June 2013 test, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, called the modified SS-27 a “missile defense killer.”

具有洲际范围的弹道导弹在压缩轨迹中以较短的范围进行测试并不罕见。但是，这并不比战略武器少。例如，2006年3月，美国海军在压缩轨迹的2200公里（1,380英里）的压缩轨迹中发射了三叉戟II II D5海上弹道导弹，其范围超过7,400公里（4,000英里） - 与范围相同。YARS-M测试于2013年6月6日。没有人建议Trident II D5因此是INF武器。

结论和建议

If there are Russian violations of the INF Treaty, then the United States certainly should raise it directly with Moscow.

但声称Yars-M导弹flight-tested on June 6 to a range of 2,050 kilometers is an intermediate-range ballistic missile in violation of the INF treaty seems strange since the same missile apparently was flight tested to an ICBM range of 5,800 kilometers just a year ago.

Of course, we don’t know who the U.S. intelligence officials cited in theWashington Timesarticle are, if what they say is accurate, and to what extent it reflects a coordinated assessment by the U.S. Intelligence Community. We may learn more about the Yars-M in the future.

但是，几位俄罗斯政府，军事和行业官员一直表示，YARS-M不是新导弹，而是对RS-24 YARS（SS-27 MOD 2）的修改，并且具有洲际范围。

The intension of the allegations in the article seems clear: to create doubts about further reductions of U.S. nuclear forces. One of the “officials” quoted in the article directly questions: “How can President Obama believe [the Russians] are going to live up to any nuclear treaty reductions when he knows they are violating the INF treaty by calling one of their missiles something else?”

The thought that Americans would use INF treaty allegations to argue against reducing the number of strategic nuclear weapons that can hit the United States seems kind of bizarre. After all, under current Russian war plans, many of the 400-500 warheads President Obama has proposed can be offloaded under a new agreement, are most likely currently tasked to hold at risk several hundred targets in the United States – including some in California and Michigan.

由于俄罗斯与美国不同 - 是已经以下the New START Treaty limit on deployed nuclear weapons and likely to drop further before the treaty enters into force in 2018, it seems like a no-brainer that it is in the U.S. interest to nurture that trend by reducing its own forces further.

这一点更为重要，因为一些俄罗斯官员可能会想争辩说需要一个诉讼的原因是中国正在现代化其中距离导弹部队的原因。具有讽刺意味的是，在美国，许多人对俄罗斯侵犯的指控都与警告中国的核现代化相同。

这篇文章似乎完全错过的是，可以说服中国和较小的核武器国家对其核武库施加限制的唯一途径是，如果美国和俄罗斯采取大胆措施减少其仍然巨大的核武库。为什么关于可疑的INF指控的挑剔是为了阻止这种情况的发生呢？

新地基金会和植物基金会的赠款使该出版物成为可能。所作的陈述和表达的观点仅是作者的责任。