Nuclear Forces: Atomic Sword in Russian

Russia today is (and in the foreseeable future will remain) a power with a huge nuclear potential. Nuclear weapons are not only the most powerful means of arsenal of the country's military resources, but also the basis of national security of the state. In addition, nuclear forces are of crucial importance as a tool of deterrence policy.

Data from the analysis of international relations in the modern world indicate a tendency to reduce the likelihood of a full-scale war, in which nuclear weapons from the category of political instruments can become a category of military arguments. But, despite this, the power of nuclear weapons of Russia does not lose its paramount importance. At least - as a political counterweight, which guarantees stability in the world and achievement of the state's geopolitical goals. Nuclear weapons will always be a very serious argument of foreign policy!

In the past two decades, Russian nuclear forces have undergone significant reductions and significant optimization. Now in the nuclear arsenal of Russia there were only three with a small thousand warheads. For comparison, the USSR possessed ten thousand charges. But even such a nuclear ammunition is enough to repel a possible military threat, assured destruction of the theoretical aggressor and multiple suppression of the vital centers of the probable enemy (or enemy coalition).

Noting the considerable exaggeration of the very common "horror stories", narrating the chilling stories about the horrors of nuclear winter and devouring atomic explosions, it should be recognized that even without these exaggerations, nuclear forces are a kind of crown of a harmonious series of products created by mankind for the physical destruction of their own kind.

By and large, atomic weapons deprive the meaning of the very notion of "war". It is unlikely that any of the modern politicians will be able to win a victory, the price of which is tens of millions of lives of its citizens, the cities themselves that have been ground in dust and poisoned for decades by the territory of the country. And not only enemy! That is why the nuclear weapons of Russia and the United States, balancing each other, serves as a guarantor of overall stability in the world.

So, what does Russia have in its arsenal today as the "last argument of kings"? The main force and the striking force of the country's nuclear potential are the Strategic Missile Forces. These strategic forces, constantly on alert, have 1,641 combat units on 441 vehicles. These (very significant) nuclear forces include 75 R-36M and M2 Voyevoda missiles (codified by NATO SS-18).

The radius of action of the latter, which is 16,000 kilometers, in fact, does not leave invulnerable and unattainable points on the surface of the globe, which guarantees the inevitability of a retaliatory strike. The value of the "Voivode" is also that the time required to prepare them for the launch is only three minutes, and also in the highest level of protection of launchers of these missile systems. In addition, the Voevods are equipped with a perfect breakthrough complex, which makes them virtually invulnerable to enemy missile defense. And the highest accuracy (deviation from the goal of less than three hundred meters) makes it possible to use them both for preemptive strikes and for retaliatory actions. Ten 750-kiloton warheads, equipped with one similar missile, are able to turn into the lunar landscape any metropolis of the world with all its environs.